re: Is 'Mad Max Fury Road' The GOAT Action Film?

I’m glad other people weren’t wowed. I watched it months after it came out and thought I was missing something.

My vote would probably be Die Hard. Is The Matrix an action movie? I’d want to watch that to break in a new theater system.

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I watched it months after it came out and thought I was missing something.

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You had to see it on the big screen for the full effect, IMAX preferably, imo.

I saw it in IMAX and haven’t seen it since because I know my home setup won’t do it justice.

I agree that the story was lacking and is overhyped. I honestly don’t even remember what all happened in the end.

I compare it to Interstellar and Blade Runner 2049. I liked all three movies, but overall the writing, while not awful, could have been better. The cinematography and what the directors were able to put on film is what makes it notable, not the storiy that was told.

Coco and I usually see fairly eye to eye on movies, but I couldn't disagree with him more. Not only is MAD MAX FURY ROAD the greatest action movie ever made, I think you can make a reasonable case it is the greatest movie ever made, period.

I will grant that people tend to overrate Tom Hardy, but that's usually because Hardy has the good sense to hitch his wagon to genius directors. I don't think he's a great actor so much as he has starred in a lot of Christopher Nolan films and here, he worked for George Miller, who is one of the all-time greats.

I think the film works on every level. It's a technical marvel, most famously pointed out by Soderberg, who wrote such gushing praise for it that he asked, in all seriousness, how they aren't still shooting it and how people aren't dead? Most of the stunts were actually performed, and they added digital effects to make them more impressive. The storyboarding for this movie must have taken, no lie, several years.

It's also a simply gorgeous film. It's not just technically brilliant, it has a distinctive look and feel. You can take a still from the movie and always know its Mad Max, but also all of the action is clear and discernable. It doesn't get confused with different points of perspective and it creates a rich, detailled world, usually in just a few quick strokes. It's a masterpiece of visual storytelling with little wasted motion and more showing, less telling.

And I have to disagree that it doesn't have much of a plot. It has a great one, and one that works as a metaphor for today. It shows how people in power lie and create myths in order to support their own power structure, even if it actively harms every other person in it. Even the War Boys, ostensibly the top of the pyramid, are riddled with disease and curse to a short, brutal life. Immortan Joe isn't just a liar, he's a living lie. He puts on an armor that exists to make him look more healthy and powerful than he really is, and his mask exists not just because it looks cool, but because he cannot breathe. He turns necessities of life into luxuries ("Beware the evil of water and how you resent its absence") and controls people through his enforced artificial scarcities. Things ARE scarce in this universe, but he makes them more scarce.

The film's true arc isn't Max's, but Nux's. He is the one who sees the world fall apart and be reformed before his eyes. It is he who fails before his god, Joe, only to realize he's not god, and that Nux is the master of his own fate. He rejects one world for the new one.

But the film also deconstructs the hero's myth as well. We are programmed to see Max as the hero. He's in the title for godsakes. But its also the common trope of the mysterious strangers rolls into a foreign land and then liberates the people and rights injustice. Max doesn't do any of that. He liberates no one and the people have to free themselves. Furiosa is the hero of the film, even using Max as a tripod to level her gun after he misses. Max is still a valuable asset, but he's not a savior, except when he talks Furiosa out of chasing the fantasy of her youth. There's only death and desert that way.

The movie's brilliance and subversion of tropes can be summed up in one scene. The women are hosing themselves off from the war rig, and in a normal action movie, this would be played for titillation. Here's the sexy women getting wet. But we watch the scene through Max's eyes, and he is full of lust... for the water. He's just a thirsty guy who sees a hose.

Why does everyone forget True Lies so easily?

It's absolutely badass in every facet with some GOAT comedy scenes as well.

Charlton Heston cameo is just a bonus.

Fury Road is top 3 theater experience for me I think.

Marvelous to watch on the big screen. Really enjoyed the story too.

I tell people all the time its the best action film ever.

Fury Road is a perfect movie to me.

it did everything it was supposed to flawlessly.

Great movie.

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It’s not a genre defining film by any means

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na, it definitely is.

we wont see a movie like it for a long time.