98% on Rotten Tomatoes
Chloe's thoughts: A must-see
Watch it if you: Want to watch a perfect film; love cars/explosions/action (but hey watch it even if you don't even love all that stuff because this film is so much more than that)
Okay, so I was super keen for this movie already, but the controversies of the Men's Rights Activists just made me even MORE keen to watch this film.
Yehp, in a world where Pitch Perfect 2 and Mad Max: Fury Road become unlikely candidates for reigning over box office, the film with a male title character and male target audience still proves to be the better film for females.
Whilst the film revolves around it's male protagonist Mad Max, he's a character that is inherently not going to be the most interesting. He's a man of action rather than words, so he doesn't say much, he's awfully reserved and he's fine with taking orders from someone who knows more than him. No, the true focus of the film is not Mad Max, the true focus of the film is the strong female presence. So pervasive is the power and strength of the females in this film that it's getting the MRA's panties all tied up, because how dare we make a film with strong females in it.
No, this isn't anything new... we've seen strong female characters in action films before (Alien, Hunger Games, Edge of Tomorrow). The thing that makes this so shocking and different is that the title of the film implies a male as a main character, and yet while Tom Hardy's Mad Max is a strong male character, Charlize Theron's Furiosa shines as the furious main character.
The film dives straight into it, with a voice-over setting the tone of the whole film: gritty and tough. It dives straight into the action sequences; there's no mucking around with George Miller. From the onset, the film gives you non-stop, back-to-back action sequences. We are introduced to the world of dystopian Australia, where warriors are in dire need of a bucket of lipbalm each day, where the highlight of the day is sending out a truck to fetch oil, where everyone has an amazing eye for custom car jobs, and where javelins can frikkin explode. While Mad Max is a character of interest, he becomes nothing more than a car accessory for the first part of the film, while Furiosa calls the shots and literally drives the plot.
In fact, you wouldn't think that I could describe the most epic 2-hour long car chase you have and will ever see as having a good plot, but you'd be surprised. Whilst the film, as I said before, had constant action sequences revolving around the car chase, they managed to cleverly put in a good plot as well. Women are selectively picked to breed healthy children for the citadel's leaders, but what if, dare I say it, they don't want to be breeders? What if they don't want their little boys to grow up as lunatic warriors? What happens then?
Another great thing about the plot was that I don't recall seeing any cheap deus ex machina moments where something last minute comes out to save the day. It's gritty and realistic; not everyone is going to live.
The actors were fantastic. Tom Hardy was typically good in this, and I have to give Nicholas Hoult a tremendous round of applause for his performance (he looks, sounds and acts completely different) and for expressing the best line of the film in the most perfect way (cf. the title of the post). However, as you probably guessed it, the true star was Charlize Theron. She was simply divine in this.
That being said, every single character was amazing. The make up, costuming, and car jobs were also true perfection. They had between USD100-150 million as their budget, and according to IMDb, 80% of the effects were practical effects, with CGI being used only sparingly for the landscape, removing stunt rigging, and Furiosa's prosthetic.
Unfortunately, they didn't have much money left for marketing, but hey, thank goodness for the MRA complaints, yeah? It literally made people more inclined to watch the film than if they didn't, so thanks guys.
Overall, with this being a heavily male-targeted film (seriously, there are so many explosions in this, the movie is essentially Michael Bay's wet dream) with heavy feminist values (and when I say feminist I mean the notion of females being able to also be strong and powerful; I don't mean the man-hating feminazis that everyone hates), I would say this film is a must for EVERYONE.
Literally everyone needs to watch it, and everyone needs to experience it for the first time IN CINEMAS. This is really important. I can't stress how much you would be missing out on if your first experience of this film is on your laptop or even on your TV. And, dare I say it, I think this will remain my favourite film of 2015.
A few side notes:
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