I thought Fury Road was amazing, one of the best films I've seen in years. I don't understand the paranoid people that think it's a vehicle for feminist infiltration or promotion. Calm the hell down.
People seem to have a lot of problems with Furiosa being the co-lead in this film despite it being called "Mad Max". Well I hate to break it to you, but "Mad Max" is a franchise. It'd be unreasonable for executives to produce and market a film of this magnitude with a property as risky as Mad Max with full confidence in audiences to realise it is set in the Mad Max universe without it being called "Mad Max".
If you have a problem with it being called "Mad Max" despite the titular Max not being the focus for the entirety of the film, you might as well shit on any Star Wars product that doesn't prominently feature a war happening amongst the stars.
UberGott said:
Complaints about Max himself being a secondary character strike me as likely coming from people who haven't watched The Road Warrior in a while (or ever). He was ALWAYS on the sidelines, trying to avoid getting involved in the squabbles of either side, and his involvement here isn't much different than it was in the film everyone remembers as "the good one". He was a bit more prominent in Beyond Thunderdome, but... I haven't watched Beyond Thunderdome in about 15 years. There's a reason for that.
Ogoid said:
Well, I have precious little interest in this installment, but as someone who regularly re-watches Road Warrior, I can't agree with this assessment.
From the time the movie starts, we watch Max fighting and scavenging, finding his way into Papagallo's compound; when he leaves it, we leave it with him - twice. While he does share the spotlight with other characters on the oil tanker and in the compound, the focus of the story is him - his reluctant but ultimate acceptance of his own lost humanity and empathy for his fellow man.
Ehh, I both agree and disagree. Max isn't so much the central character (apart from the first film) as he is the audience's surrogate. What I mean by this is that the plot does not revolve around him, he's just the wrench in the machine that disrupts the status quo. He's the guy the audience relates to, but his story is rather minor compared to the other characters he encounters. Yeah his wife and kid died, but that's not particularly extraordinary in a world where Lord Humungus, Master Blaster and Aunty Entity exist.
But even then, I find the argument that Max is a secondary character in Fury Road to be uncompelling. The story is told through his experiences, the only scenes where he is not present are those that introduce Furiosa's character (whose actions are the basis of the plot of the film) and cutaways to the villains. We learn about Furiosa's
character through Max's encounters with her. Max is as secondary a character in Fury Road as Ripley is in Aliens.
Also, Furiosa's a badass. I could watch a whole film about her, easily.