Live Poll: Best Mad Max Movie

The thing is that the first 3 films form a whole where we get to know Mad Max, his backstory, his demons, his wounds, the irony of his heroism, a word he rejects probably because he failed to save his beloved ones... anyway, he's a fully developed character because we saw him evolve from one film to another.

"Fury Road" had extraordinary chase sequences but zero character development, even for Max, and the heroine Furiosa is "perfect" from the very beginning, and I believe that the real thrill is to see a character evolve a little bit, like Ellen Ripley or Sarah Connor who didn't kick ass from the start.

I know it's supposed to be an action picture, not a character study, but en with less screen-time I was blown away by Tina Turner's role in "Thunderdome", in comparison, Furiosa is two-dimensional...

BEYOND THUNDERDOME
___________

Road Warrior
Mad Max

The Danish Girl

Mad Max: Fury Road

I get why though, the story and character development are really rather thin and uninteresting. After your review I wonder if I tricked myself into believing that the visuals carried so much meaning that they made up for the lack of a proper story.

By the way, in the review you write the following:

the film is only "The General" with bigger stunts though what made Buster Keaton's film appreciable is the fact that he made his own.

The actors in Fury Road also did all or most of those breakneck stunts themselves, some of the effects are digital but none which directly involve the actors as far as I know. (maybe I got your point wrong)

Well, I admire the actors for that and I guess I should rephrase my statement... but still, I don't think the risk factor was as big as with Keaton, it's not like insurance and money investment played by the same rules in the 1920s. Anyway that was more a comment on the thinness of the plot.

At the very least, the film is one of the best action pictures of recent years, I can concede that .. but I think it was overhyped to exaggerated proportions, and that trend of heroes or heroines who're serious and intimidating from the start annoy the hell out of me.

I think the only one who can get away with it is Clint Eastwood and even he plays with his own aura... Ebert (or was it Siskel?) said that it was great to see actors having "fun" playing their part, I don't think that applies for serious movies but action pictures are by definition meant to be exaggerations of the real life, they're not meant to be taken seriously. Theron is a great actress (just saw her in Cider House Rules) but she takes her role far too seriously...  which is to blame on Miller's misdirection.

Now, who am I kidding? The film was unanimously acclaimed, it's in the Top 250... but there's the whole marketing behind... I'm not getting fooled by it, and believe me, as much as I love Scorsese, De Niro and Pacino, if The Irishman sucks, I'll say it.

By the way, it always surprised me how good roads are in Australia even based on these four movies but they were built to last since traveling by car is a nearly sole option for many destinations. No wonder there is such a thing as Australia car culture! 

Making Australian roads look good is about the greatest special effect of the Mad Max movies. Trust me, the roads in Aus are only good once you're outside the major cities. Once you're within 50km of a city you'll be in gridlocked, bumper to bumper traffic with constant roadworks on every major arterial, constantly changing toll roads everywhere, poorly signed freeway offramps, and traffic lights on every intersection. It's far more likely that you'll miss your exit and get lost due to roadworks, or your car will overheat while you're stuck in traffic, than you'll get to fly up a highway at full pace. If you're lucky it'll take 90+minutes to travel 30km around town. That's what really drove Max mad in the first place.

Rob Webster, well that sounds pretty much like Post-Soviet roads. They vary, of course, but most of the problems you've described sound familiar. :)