(no subject)
I'm going to start by saying this: I'd never seen any of the Mad Max movies until the afternoon before we went to the theater, so I didn't have nostalgia amping me up for the new movie.
That said, HOLY SHIT was this a great film. Solid action, strong characters, incredible stunts (more on that in a minute). For those unfamiliar with the Mad Max series: take one of the later Fast and Furious movies and put it in a post-apocalyptic world where people have to fight for resources like fuel. The driving and fight sequences are incredible, and the violence is not even remotely graphic, as some action movies have grown to rely upon for the most effect.
By now, you've probably heard about the MRA being all up and arms because of the "feminist agenda" of the film. I'm going to say one things about that: one aspect that I LOVED about this film is yes, you have strong women on screen, but they haven't been "inspired by their man" to be strong. Nothing makes me roll my eyes faster than a damsel in distress who suddenly picks up a weapon just because her man is in trouble. Instead, you have Furiosa, who I would rank on the same level as Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor in terms of amazing female heroes, who is a badass from the first moment you see her, far before she meets the male character. There's a very telling quote that came out prior to the film: "...it’s possible [George] Miller recognized the limitations a male director and three male writers faced in trying to cover every nuance of a story about female exploitation and survival. ... director George Miller enlisted the help of activist, feminist icon, and Vagina Monologues author Eve Ensler in order to ensure that Fury Road wasn’t just another story about helpless female victims."
I'm going to include a post from a friend of mine who saw the movies in advance. He described it all much better than I ever could.
So many things to love about this movie. An ungodly amount of work went into it, in a real "blood, bones, grit, sweat" kind of way. We're so used to seeing a wall of names in the end credits to big summer movies when the "Digital Effects Artists" are listed. Here it's a handful of guys, but the wall of names is for "Stunts" and every bit of it shows on the screen.
George Miller had a cinematographer set for this, some guy in this thirties, but then scheduling conflicts forced him to drop out and so George tracked own his DP on the old films -- John Seale, who'd RETIRED FROM BUSINESS -- and went to his house, convinced him to come out of retirement to shoot this last film. Miller basically Wild Bunch'd this goddamn movie. So you had two men in their seventies manning cameras on moving rigs out in the Nimibia desert for a year.
The stunts are patently insane. Local stunt coordinators are having aneurysms watching this work. One commented: "He's... he's not under-cranking the cameras on the chase sequences. They should be driving at 30mph tops... But these crazy fucks are actually at 70-75mph out there!" And the reason being, there are people climbing all over the vehicles, vaulting from one to the other, operating mounted weapons, etc., so you can't under-crank anything.
The stunt team was giddy through it all. Finally, a movie where they got to do things that normally got farmed out to CG. They did it all. They even had to rehearse for one stunt for four weeks, to try and get it to work like Miller wanted it to. They finally did, much to everyone's surprise. [additional note: The 78-year-old woman who was the star of the Many Mothers did her own stunts in the film.]
The world-building is INSANE. Remember how we talked about this in John Wick? It's over the top here, like it's an Obsidian MMO or something. In the Q&A I attended I found out why: A bunch of the extras who were painted up and given a slew of props and gear and trinkets had a full six weeks to rehearse together out in the desert locations before Miller showed up to shoot the sequences. And when he arrived, he walked through the crowd and would ask various extras/bit players -- "You. Where did you get that scar? And what is the history of the trinket you wear on your neck? Why are you crewed on this particular vehicle? How long have you been with these mates?" Those who answered with full stories were put to the front of the group. But so many of them already had it all thought up. There's real purpose and meaning to so much even though it's never mentioned in exposition.
Absurdly, they shot this thing with a slew of basic consumer lenses. Nothing fancy. Because they'd abuse the shit out of the lenses, or a dust storm would render one inoperable, or one would get smashed in a stunt, etc. So Miller would send a PA with his credit card to the Nimibia airport where he bought another half-dozen lenses from the increasingly suspicious duty-free shopkeep, and they'd be back in business.
Miller shared that there's something like 400 hours of footage. Enough for a massive, epic series just about these characters and stories, but obviously it works better as the narrative of the movie. And part of that was finding the pacing in editorial. He says a technique that helped him a lot in editing, so he wouldn't get bored, would be to have the editor "flip the image" so he was watching the same scene horizontally reversed -- if Tom Hardy was on the left side of the screen, now he's on the right. It woke up his brain and allowed him to find problems he wouldn't otherwise see.
I don't know how else to push this movie, other than to say it's a goddamn masterpiece.
I'm probably going to go see it again, if only because I was so damn stunned at the stunt and camera work that I'm sure I missed some amazing details. Consider this my encouragement that you all see it as well.