‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ redefines expectations for action and sci-fi movies

For the man who practically invented the post-apocalyptic movie genre as we know it today, making another “Mad Max” movie 30 years after the last one was a gamble. But George Miller has not only matched the marks set by his original trilogy—he has surpassed them with flying colors.

Miller’s vision of his increasingly disparate future takes the type of movies filled with vehicular mayhem, violence galore and non-stop intensity and challenges them to become smart, thought-provoking works of art.

For George Miller, it is a lovely, lovely day.

In the stark wasteland of the Australian desert, a broken humanity is sparsely populated and driven to one instinct: survival at any cost. Between the crazed fighting for the necessities of life and the unending ravage for gasoline, a loner named Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy) is unwantedly caught in the middle.

Max finds himself on the run with the resilient Furiosa (Charlize Theron), a woman of action who believes her route to survival is escaping the clutches of a ruthless gang leader and making it across the desert to her childhood homeland. With the harsh desert sands in front of them and ruthless marauders led by the dictator Immortan Joe behind, only the maddest will prevail the storm.

Luckily, all these years later, Max is still mad.

While many reboots seem more like a love letters to their predecessors with obvious jokes and references, Miller’s use of the same actors for the same minor characters and the same props, vehicles and images from the originals only enhances the world’s realism. These aren’t references, though—they are proof that this is the same, insane universe and nothing has changed. Right from the opening sequence, this looks and feels like nothing but a “Mad Max” movie.

The biggest reason the world looks just like it did in the originals is most of the special effects are really on screen. Yes, many of the landscapes, the sandstorm and the two-headed lizard were CGI, but all of the vehicles, sets and props are actually there and fully functional.

One of the gang’s trucks has a wall of speakers 10 feet high by 12 feet wide with a blindfolded guitarist blaring out hard rock riffs on his double-necked flame-thrower guitar on the hood while bungee jumping. In the back of the truck are six drummers pounding out primitive rhythms on barrel-sized timpani. When this truck is on screen, it’s going 50 mph in the Australian desert with 30 mph winds blowing sand everywhere. While many filmmakers would have used green-screen and computer graphics, Miller has everything there and it all really works. The movie looks the better and the realer for it.

Even though this is a “Mad Max” movie, the real star and hero is Charlize Theron as Furiosa. In a movie with seemingly non-stop action, there are many (relatively) quieter and intimate scenes of character development that mostly revolve around Furiosa and her story. But even with the waves of feminism rippling under the current of the movie and in many moviegoers’ minds, the decisions behind making the heroic renegade a new woman instead of Mad Max are sincere.

It doesn’t matter what her gender is, because Theron plays Furiosa an inspiring person with a tragic past. What does matter is that she is disabled and has a mechanical arm. Does it matter how she lost her arm? Not really, but that’s okay because she is still a hero who doesn’t let her handicap define her.

All we know about the characters is what Max ask them, which are only the basic plot devises since Max is not a talker. But in a movie like this, character comes from the actions taken and not the words spoken. There is more power in an image lasting five seconds than any monologue no matter how long, and Miller knows this.

Not only are Theron and Hardy excellent as Furiosa and Max, but Nicholas Hoult is astonishing as Nux, a follower of Joe and his gang who has to decide between blindly following the cult or doing what he feels is right by helping Max and Furiosa. Hoult has grown immensely as a professional in recent years, playing roles in recent “X-Men” movies, the comedy “Warm Bodies” and the critically praised “A Single Man.” His range is wide and he delivers emotional, relatable performances in every movie he’s done so far.

If anything, “Mad Max: Fury Road” has become the pinnacle of the action/adventure and post-apocalyptic cinematic experience. The pacing is perfect with quieter character-focused moments never going on longer than they have to. When they do need to happen, they do with minimal dialogue, letting the visuals tell the story for the characters. Most often character development happens during the pure action sequences, making car crashes that have been around for decades new, exciting and personal again.

The scope is huge, the fun is non-stop, the action is real and the characters more real. There is no fear by the filmmakers to make this a sequel that ups the ante on every level. And no one apologizes for making this the exact kind of movie it wants to be. It’s soft-spoken and invincible. It’s about unjust systems and no system at all. It’s about people, humanity and life in general disguised as a two-hour demolition derby.

And it took a mastermind like George Miller to make perfect sense of that insane world—that beautiful, hectic, mad world.

A Blockbuster Season to Look Forward to

With the temperatures rising and the sun shining more often, getting outside after a long winter will be a priority for many this spring. But this year has a number of blockbuster movies in store that you will want to get right back inside to see come May and June.

Blockbuster season kicks off May 1 with Marvel’s “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” the eleventh movie of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This interconnected series of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes began with “Iron Man” back in 2008 and continued with the origin films of other Avengers including “Thor” and “Captain America: The First Avenger” in 2011. This film is the sequel to “The Avengers” from 2012, both of which are written and directed by Joss Whedon.

When Tony Stark tries to jumpstart a dormant peacekeeping program several years after the events of “The Avengers,” things go awry, and Earth’s Mightiest Heroes are put to the ultimate test as the fate of the planet hangs in the balance.

As the villainous Ultron emerges, it is up to The Avengers, including Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), The Incredible Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), to stop him from enacting his terrible plans.

Two weeks later on May 15, the fourth installment of the “Mad Max” series rolls into theaters. George Miller, the man who brought the original trilogy starring Mel Gibson to life, is back as writer and director. Although when in the timeline this movie takes place in uncertain, it is the first one since “Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome” in 1985.

“Mad Max: Fury Road” is an apocalyptic story set in the furthest reaches of our planet, in a stark desert landscape where humanity is broken and almost everyone is crazed fighting for the necessities of life. Within this world exist two rebels on the run who just might be able to restore order.

One of them is Max, played by Tom Hardy, a man of action and few words who seeks peace of mind following the loss of his wife and child in the aftermath of the chaos. The other is Imperator Furiosa, played by Charlize Theron, a woman of action who believes her path to survival may be achieved if she can make it across the desert back to her childhood homeland.

On May 22, Walt Disney Pictures presents “Tomorrowland,” a science-fiction adventure film inspired by futuristic themed land of the same name found at the Disney parks. The movie is directed and co-written by Brad Bird, best known for his animated movies “The Iron Giant” and “The Incredibles,” cementing Bird as someone who knows how to make sci-fi adventure flicks.

In this movie, a bright, optimistic teen (Britt Robertson) bursting with scientific curiosity and a former boy-genius inventor (George Clooney) are bound by a shared destiny to embark on a dangerous mission to unearth the secrets of an enigmatic place known as Tomorrowland.

The buzz for this film began several months ago with the teaser trailer that told the audience nearly nothing, but the mystery only added to the anticipation. Although the follow-up trailers did not give much more away, they did show a movie full of high-paced action in a futuristic setting.

Come June 12, Jurassic Park is open again.

Twenty-two years after the events of the first movie, “Jurassic World” is the fourth film in the franchise about the island with resurrected dinosaurs run amok. With a new cast and crew separate from the previous three films, the movie will star Chris Pratt, Vincent D’Onofrio and Bryce Dallas Howard, and is directed by Colin Trevorrow directing only his second feature film.

The island of Isla Nublar now features a fully functioning dinosaur theme park, Jurassic World, as originally envisioned by John Hammond. After ten years of operation, visitor numbers are declining, but a new attraction is created in order to fulfill a corporate mandate and re-spark visitors’ interest. As with all Jurassic Park movies, the plan horribly backfires and the dinosaurs run loose again.

On June 19, the Walt Disney and Pixar Animation studios will release “Inside Out,” their newest animated family film and one of their few non-sequel movies in several years. The film will be co-written and co-directed by Pixar veteran Pete Docter, director and screenwriter of “Up” and “Monsters Inc.,” and Ronaldo Del Carmen, animator on “Up,” “Brave” and “Ratatouille.”

“Inside Out” is the story of a girl named Riley who is uprooted from her Midwest life when her father starts a new job in San Francisco. Like all of us, Riley is guided by her emotions: Joy, Fear, Anger, Disgust and Sadness, who live in Headquarters, the control center inside Riley’s mind where they help advise her through everyday life.

Growing up can be a bumpy road, and as Riley and her emotions struggle to adjust to a new life in San Francisco, turmoil ensues in Headquarters. Although Joy, Riley’s main and most important emotion, tries to keep things positive, the emotions conflict on how best to navigate a new city, house, school and life.

The film has an all-star cast featuring some of this decade’s best comedy actors, including Amy Poehler, Mindy Kaling, Bill Hader, Phyllis Smith and Lewis Black as Riley’s emotions. Based on Pixar’s usual success at both the box office and with critics, this should be the must-see family film of the summer.

These are only some of the many popular movies being released this summer. So remember to keep your eyes and ears open for what’s coming soon to a theater near you.