I can't remember the last time I heard so many positive reviews and impressions from friends about a film before seeing it. In this day and age of extremely-hyped-up blockbusters, you often run into the problem that films can never live up to the marketing build-up. Usually, this will be tempered by an immediate counterpoint from fans and reviewers, and so you're reset to a somewhat neutral position. Not so with Fury Road, though, which seems to get glowing reviews from all sides.
So where do I fall on this?
Well, let's be frank - yes the movie was built up too much. But before you take that to mean the movie is bad, let's back up and remember that a movie can still be good, even great, and still not live up to expectations. And when the expectations are that the movie will fundamentally change your life because of how awesome it is, there's nowhere to go but down. And in this case, that's from A+ to maybe A-. (And in fact, upon reconsideration over the last few days, I actually think it might just get a flat A. I think the minus was really the result of the build-up.)
But A- is better than the vast majority of movies, and I already feel like there are elements of the movie that will reveal themselves upon further reflection. And of course, that sort of letter grade is inherently problematic, because one is tempted to reward certain genres above others (something award shows like the Oscars are notorious for.)
The story of Fury Road revolves around one of the pockets of tyrannical civilization that have arisen out of the collapse of society. In this case, a man called Immortan Joe has control of a large reserve of water and has thus become something of a God-Emperor among his subjects. Out of the teeming masses who come to him for water (which he warns they shouldn't get "addicted to" after giving them a rather pitiful amount) he has people used as equipment to keep his society running, such as women permanently hooked up to milking machines, and his white-painted "War Boys," who are religiously devoted to him and yearn to die in battle so that they can be reborn in Valhalla. And finally, there are his wives - a group of beautiful women he wants to use to have his children.
Max is our surrogate as we enter this world - he's kidnapped and his car is seized, and when they discover he has O-negative blood, he's made into a donor to keep one of the War Boys alive (a lot of people have massive tumors, presumably from nuclear fallout.) The film has two protagonists, though. Max is pretty much just in it to survive, though if he helps some people along the way, he's not opposed. However, the real driving force of the movie is Furiosa - an "Imperator" in Joe's army who decides to smuggle Joe's wives away and bring them to the "Green Place," which is where she grew up.
What I find kind of fascinating about Immortan Joe is that he represents civilization, but it's the absolute worst-case-scenario of patriarchy - one in which absolutely everything flows up to Joe. All the War Boys call him "dad," and he wants to take back his wives, particularly the pregnant Splendid, because he sees the children as his property. In positioning himself as a god, he has reduced everyone in his service to objects.
Many have been raving about Fury Road as a feminist film (the always-hilarious "men's rights activists" see this as a bad thing,) and I certainly think it qualifies, given that it's literally about women's liberation, as well as the fact that the real hero-savior is Furiosa. But even though the War Boys are largely seen as antagonists, we get some insight into their condition as warrior-fanatics through Nux, a War Boy who gets taken along for the ride after his "Blood Bag," (Max) and he survive a massive sandstorm. There is a childlike innocence to Nux, and the gravity of a personality like Joe, and the potential to have a larger meaning, draws him into the madhouse of violence. Their lives are tossed away by Joe, who uses his religion to ensure total loyalty, even to the point of death. Yes, men suffer in a patriarchy as well - there's your "men's rights" issue.
The wider problem is how one builds a good civilization. On one hand, we have the baggage of thousands of years of flawed systems, but through the gradual change of those years - and even revolutions often bring about only incremental changes - we can try to make life better. Chance are that if you're reading this, you probably live in a place where there's clean water to drink and you can generally trust that most strangers you pass on the street aren't going to kill you. That's an improvement. Whatever caused society to collapse in the Mad Max world is left a bit unclear (at least in this movie, though a combination of peak oil, nuclear war, and global warming seem to be possible culprits,) but it suggests that starting from scratch is going to make for a lot of problems. In essence: Anarchy breeds dictators.
At one point in the film, Max says that hope is a bad thing, but it seems that what's really bad is hoping for some perfect paradise far away that already exists. Instead, one needs to take what one has and make it into the world you want to live in. You can't get caught up in the Green Place or Valhalla for that matter, when there's a real world filled with real people who could change for the better with a little respect and cooperation.
However, beyond these philosophical ramblings on theme, the movie is truly exciting, and the action definitely got my heart racing. The production design is fantastic, with its cobbled-together aesthetic that gives the whole world a real sense of history to it, even as that history is being rewritten by those in power. One aspect that I love is that Joe has turned steering wheels into religious artifacts - before they go out for a ride, the War Boys must procure their wheels from a big altar and affix them to their cars.
And while Immortan Joe is a God-Emperor of his own little patch of the world, there's a great sense of new centers of power outside of his domain. We're seeing the start of tribes and city-states, but at least for now, the people running them are mostly crazy over-the-top tyrants. Who's to say you can't wear a wig made out of bullets? You're the boss, Bullet Farmer!
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