I’ve been a Mad Max aficionado since the second in the series, which was really the first in terms of popular notice. Nobody saw the wonderfully vicious first take, which actually wasn’t bad, until they had already seen the second. I still remember sitting in a theater in Silver Spring, Md., at a different, forgotten movie when they ran a trailer for Mad Max II. Everybody’s jaw was on the floor.
More generally, I’m always up for an apocalypse movie. Plagues, aliens, zombies, apes, meteors, climate change, you name it. We are due for something. The new, ravaged landscape usually raises interesting problems of cooperation versus the ruthless survival impulse. It’s also interesting to see the fledgling attempts at civilization renewing itself. These efforts always seem to come to grief.
Now Mad Max/Furiosa is available free on HBO. I am frugal in certain ways, which include almost never paying for a new movie. I never go to theaters anymore either. My hearing loss prevents me from enjoying a film in a theater, and you won’t catch me wearing any assistive gadgets in there. I’m always streaming on my 55” Sony (eight years old and still going strong) with subtitles. I have most streaming services except those providing sports, foreign language, and porn.
I’m not sure if there is a movie I would bother paying for these days. Maybe a big new Jurassic Park or a George Romero zombie sequel, though Romero is a zombie himself by now. I don’t think much of the rash of new Godzilla-creatures springing out of the hollow earth. I thought of going to see Dune II in IMAX, but it became free on the teevee soon enough. Plus it wasn’t anything to write home about, especially compared to the widely reviled 1984 David Lynch version, of which I think highly.
At any rate, the latest Max resembles and is nearly a rip-off of Max Max/Fury Road, which I believe to be a masterpiece. It starts a little slowly but gets going soon enough.
I miss the original “Immortan Joe,” whose portraying actor has passed away. The new one looked a little diminished. So too with the young Furiosa; we see little of her, and she can’t compare to the awesome Charlize Theron. The chief villain, “Dementus,” is played by Chris Hemsworth. His dialog is interestingly droll and baroque, the acting not so much. It seems as if the director couldn’t decide whether to make him likable or supremely evil; the combination doesn’t quite work.
Hemsworth is humongous enough, but the original Humongous in Max Max II blabbed less, was equally eloquent, and was more mysterious. And there is no replacing the Feral Kid.