Mad Max: Fury Road

Chain Smoker

It's way more complicated than just doubling the budget. Fury Road's decent box office performance has largely came from outside the US, that's worth a lot less as the amount the studio actually gets from ticket sales is considerably higher within the US than just about anywhere else. China isn't necessarily a slam dunk either, they tend to love the absolute worst of the worst when it comes to blockbusters, that's generally largely attributed to things like Transformers being more translatable (as one would assume Mad Max also would be) but maybe they just like sh*t.

I would say on the grounds of its current box office performance alone, it doesn't warrant the risk of a sequel. However, due to the OVERWHELMINGLY positive reception from the majority of people who have seen it, the odds are quite firmly stacked in favour of Fury Road making a very healthy profit in the long term and a nice level of fan generated hype for a sequel; that really should push them to make a sequel now when it's easiest to get it in motion. I could see something like a condition that the next one has to be PG-13 though, which would suck.

...have I even said anything in this post?!


One thing I've honestly been very confused by is how a film can have such positive word of mouth praise but fail to show significant returns on that in its box office performance.

BMMachine

its amazing how good this is compared to other blockbusters yet not getting nearly as much in tickets sold. I dunno, I just think peoples standards are far lower

Unearthly

I don't think its marketing was that good. Avengers, San Andreas, and the upcoming Jurassic World seemed to be everywhere, but for Mad Max, I can only remember the odd poster here and there.

Reggie.

Unearthly wrote: »

I don't think its marketing was that good. Avengers, San Andreas, and the upcoming Jurassic World seemed to be everywhere, but for Mad Max, I can only remember the odd poster here and there.

They really are pushing the jurassic world film anyways

.ak

Unearthly wrote: »

I don't think its marketing was that good. Avengers, San Andreas, and the upcoming Jurassic World seemed to be everywhere, but for Mad Max, I can only remember the odd poster here and there.

Yeah, although the trailer was everywhere. Maybe they felt a more intelligent advertising campaign would hit better.

I can see it hitting 400m soon enough.

Looper007

Unearthly wrote: »

I don't think its marketing was that good. Avengers, San Andreas, and the upcoming Jurassic World seemed to be everywhere, but for Mad Max, I can only remember the odd poster here and there.

Well the simple fact those films you mentioned, all the family could go and see them. MMFR is 15 so that's the kids all cut out of it so that's why it wasn't promoted as well as those films. If the film was cut down to a 12 it would have made double the gross its made already.

Looper007

Chain Smoker wrote: »

It's way more complicated than just doubling the budget. Fury Road's decent box office performance has largely came from outside the US, that's worth a lot less as the amount the studio actually gets from ticket sales is considerably higher within the US than just about anywhere else. China isn't necessarily a slam dunk either, they tend to love the absolute worst of the worst when it comes to blockbusters, that's generally largely attributed to things like Transformers being more translatable (as one would assume Mad Max also would be) but maybe they just like sh*t.

I would say on the grounds of its current box office performance alone, it doesn't warrant the risk of a sequel. However, due to the OVERWHELMINGLY positive reception from the majority of people who have seen it, the odds are quite firmly stacked in favour of Fury Road making a very healthy profit in the long term and a nice level of fan generated hype for a sequel; that really should push them to make a sequel now when it's easiest to get it in motion. I could see something like a condition that the next one has to be PG-13 though, which would suck.

...have I even said anything in this post?!


One thing I've honestly been very confused by is how a film can have such positive word of mouth praise but fail to show significant returns on that in its box office performance.

I think it make a ton of money there seen as they barely speak in the film.

BuilderPlumber

Chain Smoker wrote: »

It's way more complicated than just doubling the budget. Fury Road's decent box office performance has largely came from outside the US, that's worth a lot less as the amount the studio actually gets from ticket sales is considerably higher within the US than just about anywhere else. China isn't necessarily a slam dunk either, they tend to love the absolute worst of the worst when it comes to blockbusters, that's generally largely attributed to things like Transformers being more translatable (as one would assume Mad Max also would be) but maybe they just like sh*t.

I would say on the grounds of its current box office performance alone, it doesn't warrant the risk of a sequel. However, due to the OVERWHELMINGLY positive reception from the majority of people who have seen it, the odds are quite firmly stacked in favour of Fury Road making a very healthy profit in the long term and a nice level of fan generated hype for a sequel; that really should push them to make a sequel now when it's easiest to get it in motion. I could see something like a condition that the next one has to be PG-13 though, which would suck.

...have I even said anything in this post?!


One thing I've honestly been very confused by is how a film can have such positive word of mouth praise but fail to show significant returns on that in its box office performance.

I know that a lot of people do not go to the cinema as much as before and do wait for the DVD release which will be in a couple of months I am sure. In the days of the first Mad Max, videos were rare and am too young to remember what their availability was. Ditto for Mad Max 2. Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome was a mid 1980s films so, going on late 1980s early 1990s memories, I'd say that the VHS tape would be available to rent in 1986 a year after and to buy in 1987/88, 2 years after. This meant one was much more likely to go to see such films in the cinema if they really liked them. Now, many can wait a couple of months to own or rent it, not to mention all the streaming services one can subscribe to. Mad Max Fury Road will make millions upon millions for sure and more people will want to own this than most of the other films this year.

Like Mad Max Fury Road, Jurassic World will probably also do well at the box office and will repeat the same trend when it comes to rental and ownership options. I am unsure if it is best to place a film in the summer or winter? I think Mad Max was placed in the best place for it. I remember with some of the Bond movies, they changed their screening to the winter after one or two were up against the likes of Batman in the summer. But Casino Royale was a summer success. This summer is full of great or potentially great movies: Mad Max, Avengers, San Andreas, Hitman: Agent 47, Terminator Genysis, etc. Some of these will be excellent (Mad Max), some may be grand but nothing special and some may be poor but ALL will get their fans out in force. The new Bond, SPECTRE, plays it safe by being in the winter and will likely do very well due to the reputation of the excellent Skyfall and avoiding the summer hits, and it is good to have something to look forward to this winter since we are not getting any Love/Hate.

ArtyM

Just went to see the film tonight.
Just me and two couples in the whole theatre (yeah, I went to a movie on my own on a Saturday night!)
WOW
What a movie.
Actually found myself, on more than one occasion, with my popcorn stuffed hand paused in mid air as I was so caught up in the action/mayhem.
Can't remember enjoying a show that much in a very long time.
Pretty sure I will go again.

Reggie.

Must get my ass in gear and go again

e_e

Gonna try to see it again this week. Jurassic World can wait.

Reggie.

e_e wrote: »

Gonna try to see it again this week. Jurassic World can wait.

Just sitting in the cinema now waiting to see jurrasic

.ak

e_e wrote: »

Gonna try to see it again this week. Jurassic World can wait.

Best decision you'll ever make!

Well then....that was class
Best movie I have watched in a long time
Miller nailed the setting and the characters
Brilliant

bodhi085

Went to see both Jurassic world and mad max yesterday. I was very disappointed in mad max. It just seemed like one big car chase. Barely any screen time of max imho. The action and stunts were superb I have to say and can't fault it as a great action film,but just something was missing. I grew up watching mad max and still love mad max 2 as my favourite,but my expectations and excitement on a new one had me looking forward to this one for a while,and I feel like it was a Charlize theron movie with max as support role.
As for Jurassic world..well that didn't disappoint me as it was the one I thought would be just so so.

bodhi085

bodhi085 wrote: »

Went to see both Jurassic world and mad max yesterday. I was very disappointed in mad max. It just seemed like one big car chase. Barely any screen time of max imho. The action and stunts were superb I have to say and can't fault it as a great action film,but just something was missing. I grew up watching mad max and still love mad max 2 as my favourite,but my expectations and excitement on a new one had me looking forward to this one for a while,and I feel like it was a Charlize theron movie with max as support role.
As for Jurassic world..well that didn't disappoint me as it was the one I thought would be just so so.

Mad Max should be portrayed as a mysterious man, gone mad and trusting nobody. I thought Tom Hardy. / miller got it spot on. He doesnt need much dialog thats the the point IMO. And it was good to see a female kick some ass along side him.

.ak

Well for me that's the beauty of the movie. Why do we need that extra something in action movies? Why can't it just be action, in it's purest form? No stupid character development, no stupid dialogue, no convoluted story arcs... I mean, it's Mad Max 4, why would we need Max's character developed any further? I love the fact that it seems like Furiosa is the main character, and really it's the 'world' that steals the show. Max is just another character in a crazy world.

ScumLord

Decent action film, nothing all that special.

Mantis Toboggan

Must say this film just wasn't for me.

Decent action throughout for large parts but mostly I was trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

The orchestra music which seemed never ending just done my head in.

Pity as I had convinced the girl to see it but she hasn't spoken to me since :mad:

Fysh

Having rewatched the original trilogy over the last few weeks I have to say I'm confused as to how people can see Fury Road as a radical departure from it. The opening/intro is almost identical to the Road Warrior opening, and in terms of structure Fury Road is basically a massively scaled up version of the chase at the end of Beyond Thunderdome, with each film in the series proggressively scaling up the size and dementedness of the road/chase scenes.

As for Max's character, it's been clear since Road Warrior that he's a nomadic folk legend in the film's world. There doesn't need to be a load of character development for him because he's a chaotic catalyst for change barrelling around the outback. So long as we get character development for the people he meets (and we get this in Fury Road just as we did in Road Warrior and to a lesser extent in Beyond Thunderdome) it's fine.

These days, I want my action films to get on with the fun stuff. Crank, District 13, The Raid, Dredd and Fury Road all fit into that category. Fury Road impressed me because it did that while also managing to introduce some very cleverly economical character development and themes at the same time, and was utterly confident about establishing its own identity away from the generic look that's increasingly common in action films recently.

BuilderPlumber

Fysh wrote: »

Having rewatched the original trilogy over the last few weeks I have to say I'm confused as to how people can see Fury Road as a radical departure from it. The opening/intro is almost identical to the Road Warrior opening, and in terms of structure Fury Road is basically a massively scaled up version of the chase at the end of Beyond Thunderdome, with each film in the series proggressively scaling up the size and dementedness of the road/chase scenes.

As for Max's character, it's been clear since Road Warrior that he's a nomadic folk legend in the film's world. There doesn't need to be a load of character development for him because he's a chaotic catalyst for change barrelling around the outback. So long as we get character development for the people he meets (and we get this in Fury Road just as we did in Road Warrior and to a lesser extent in Beyond Thunderdome) it's fine.

These days, I want my action films to get on with the fun stuff. Crank, District 13, The Raid, Dredd and Fury Road all fit into that category. Fury Road impressed me because it did that while also managing to introduce some very cleverly economical character development and themes at the same time, and was utterly confident about establishing its own identity away from the generic look that's increasingly common in action films recently.

I agree with all this. Fury Road is similar to the previous two Mad Max films. Of the 4, the original is obviously the most different because it is set in the last days of the world as we know it. Mad Max 2 introduced the postwar world we tend to associate with the franchise and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome and Fury Road proceed similarly. The same mission of getting a group of people safely to a better place while confronting warlord bikers is replicated in the second, third and fourth films. But a different theme is given too: in the first film, we see the world as we know it begin to break down and crime out of control whereas in the second, it is all about a normal group of people adapting to the newly established postwar world where government and society has just broken down. In the third, the theme focuses on new communities: one of which has discovered a new fuel source, has developed barter based trade and has a set of laws to settle disputes and the other is a group of children and young adults who have vague memories of the old world and believe it to be still there. The fourth focuses on water as a resources and we see much more of how the postwar world affects people's health and we also see a 'rich/poor divide' based on access to resources.

ScumLord

Fysh wrote: »

These days, I want my action films to get on with the fun stuff. Crank, District 13, The Raid, Dredd and Fury Road all fit into that category.

I just find most action and sci fi bland and half arsed. There's often little attempt to really make a world that makes sense. As a post apocalyptic film Mad Max doesn't really work. The world has ended but we still have many of the creature comforts of the modern world like the ability to make overly complicated clothes the ability to make hot rods which are going to require serious amount of power and consumables.

I don't mind action films I just like them to put in some effort into something other than the action sequences. I just can't turn off for these films anymore. But some films that are purely action based can create a believable world for themselves that makes sense. Films like district 13, dredd and starship troopers put an effort into the background noise that creates a believable world. I'll accept I've gotten awful picky as I get older, films have to put in a real effort to pass muster with me. Mad Max was too much style over substance for me.

Free Hat

I enjoyed this immensely. The fact it avoided all the cliches usually associated with films of this genre and just got on with being an adrenaline filled action movie was a huge plus.

You can pick holes with some aspects of it for sure but to me it was like listening to a heavy metal album. You just sit back and appreciate the power and energy of it without getting bogged down in the meaning of the lyrics.

Mezcita

Two hour car chase.

Wheeeeeeee.

BuilderPlumber

ScumLord wrote: »

As a post apocalyptic film Mad Max doesn't really work. The world has ended but we still have many of the creature comforts of the modern world like the ability to make overly complicated clothes the ability to make hot rods which are going to require serious amount of power and consumables.

It depends on when the film is set. Clearly, the theme was that an elite violent group confiscated all the good things for themselves leaving the poor people down below the Citadel with nothing. The world has not completely ended and it is clear that some people have access to resources.

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome is a film set further out in the post WW3 years where it is assumed oil is gone or almost gone. But here as with all the films, we do see a rich/poor divide which always makes sense as the strong deny the weak.

The world depicted in the first Mad Max film was depicting the last days of the world as we know it. The second like the fourth was representing the early days following the collapse of the world as we know it. It is really very much akin to Iraq, Syria or Libya in many ways and the bad guys in these films remind me of ISIS, etc. Beyond Thunderdome was the only film that hinted that the war was actually nuclear and the final nuclear acts of the war may not have taken place until after the second and fourth films. I would think Beyond Thunderdome is the last chronologically and films 2 and 4 are somewhere between the first and Beyond Thunderdome.

ThisRegard

Free Hat wrote: »

I enjoyed this immensely. The fact it avoided all the cliches usually associated with films of this genre and just got on with being an adrenaline filled action movie was a huge plus.

You can pick holes with some aspects of it for sure but to me it was like listening to a heavy metal album. You just sit back and appreciate the power and energy of it without getting bogged down in the meaning of the lyrics.

Absolutely, I thoroughly enjoyed the relentlesssness and noise of it, it never let up which I appreciate some don't like. I'm not one to rewatch movies but I will this one. The guitar guy fitting in with the soundtrack is genius.

ScumLord

BuilderPlumber wrote: »

It is really very much akin to Iraq, Syria or Libya in many ways and the bad guys in these films remind me of ISIS,

The difference there is ISIS can still import all the resources they need from the evil west. In a post apocalyptic world pretty much everything would disappear rapidly (look how quickly a supermarket empties, they have to bring stuff in by the pallet every week and restock daily) with no way of making new stuff. How do you make a welding rod in a post apocalyptic world? You can't really run a decent welder off a normal generator either. The cars in the film where too nice and well made to be post apocalyptic.

ThisRegard wrote: »

Absolutely, I thoroughly enjoyed the relentlesssness and noise of it, it never let up which I appreciate some don't like. I'm not one to rewatch movies but I will this one. The guitar guy fitting in with the soundtrack is genius.

When I saw that first it kind of automatically annoyed me, but it was cool.

I didn't hate the film. I enjoyed it, but it wasn't a great film in my opinion. It was just a bit OTT for my liking. It went to far into the realm of fantasy and lost some of it's grit in the process.

Looper007

Buddy Holly wrote: »

Must say this film just wasn't for me.

Decent action throughout for large parts but mostly I was trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

The orchestra music which seemed never ending just done my head in.

Pity as I had convinced the girl to see it but she hasn't spoken to me since :mad:

Maybe she didn't like the fact you didn't like it :pac:

Looper007

ScumLord wrote: »

I didn't hate the film. I enjoyed it, but it wasn't a great film in my opinion. It was just a bit OTT for my liking. It went to far into the realm of fantasy and lost some of it's grit in the process.

And that's why we love Mad Max films they are so OTT at times, no other franchise comes close to how bizarre it gets.

BuilderPlumber

Looper007 wrote: »

And that's why we love Mad Max films they are so OTT at times, no other franchise comes close to how bizarre it gets.

True. This is part of the appeal of Mad Max films. The world in the films is OTT and bizarre but often believable too. The deliberate non-mention of specifics in the backstory of why Max's world looks the way it does gives a lot of room to explain things. There are hints in the second film that not all of the post apocalypse world is as bad as what we see.

A theme of the last 3 Mad Max films is hope. In these 3 films, Max helps a group to achieve something better and society does improve for the good people in each. The first film is the most different and harder to classify what type of world exists here.