Furiosa

I thought it was an excellent film though definitely a step down in terms of action & pacing from Fury Road. Furiosa is about a half hour longer than FR and I felt that extra runtime towards the end unlike Fury Road which seemed to fly by. The standout action scene for me was the glider attack on the convoy not just in how the action was staged but also showing the audience something we hadn't seen before. A lot of the film feels like stuff recycled/leftover from the previous mad max film/comic/videogame. Even the character of "Praetorian Jack" is basically a recycled Mad Max. That probably sounds like I'm being harsher to the film than I actually feel. I'm glad I got to see it on the cinema screen and I'll get the bluray to sit alongside my copy of Fury Road.

Mel Gibson will always be Max to me. Having seen 'Mad Max 2: Road Warrior' on it's initial big screen release, I was completely blown away! Don't think I ever got to see the original 'Mad Max' on a big screen but certainly caught up with it on VHS. Although not as grandiose, it was equally impressive.. allowing for budget constraints and the technology available for it's day.

I'll refrain from mentioning 'Beyond Thunderdome'. I need to re-watch it in order to give it a fair appraisal.

When 'Fury Road' was announced, my heart sunk a little when there was no mention of Mel involved. ( I know, I know.. "he was too old" but they managed to shoehorn Arnie into 'The Terminator' franchise so they could have done something with the Mel Gibson 'Max' character.. no disrespect to Tom Hardy! ).

As much as I enjoyed 'Fury Road', it was more for the George Miller mental, metal, mayhem madness than anything to do with the Max character. He was essentially only a secondary character anyway.

As for 'Furiosa', I could care less for her backstory. I enjoyed it for the George Miller 'movie making mentalism'. If George is granted the finances to make another.. I'll happily go and see it.

But I miss Max.. Mel's 'Max', not anyone elses 'Max' !!

thumbs up for wanting the real Mad Max ;)

I haven’t seen Fury Road yet (about to watch it now) but I saw Furiosa yesterday and I really enjoyed it. Fantastic costumes and designs.

Hemsworth’s chariot was great and his performance was great fun. The kid playing young Furiosa deserved top billing with Joy and Hemsworth.

I didn’t like the choppy sped up moments in the action scenes. I thought at first there was something wrong with the projector until I remembered it was in Mad Max 2. Why did Miller do it? It makes those moments look silly.

Edit: just watched Fury Road. Another blast and there was a lot less choppy sped up moments (or maybe the were not so noticeable) although the blonde wife being killed was really horrible .

I expected the wives to be just eye candy but they took the time to give them personalities and make them capable survivors. And the Vulavani were great in the fight too. They were very likeable very quickly which them dying really matter.

Would have been a lot more fun with Mel Gibson in it but nothing wrong the way Tom Hardy played it. I remember talk of him being a major prick during filming. Why was a female producer not allowed on the set?

Is Max’s car the same one he had in Road Warrior? That would mean Fury Road takes place before Beyond Thunderdome?

I figured as much about Miller’s attitude to canon and continuity from his comment that Furiosa “maybe takes place after Thunderdome / 45 years after the collapse”.

However nothing in the original three films or in Fury Road contradicts and they seem to have a continuity other than Bruce Spence playing two different but the same pilots.

There's continuity in the original Mad Max series in that it takes place in the same "universe" and it features a guy called Max. Beyond that, there's not much to point a finger at. But there doesn't have to be. It's the world that the audience is coming to these movies to see, not any particular character, or canon, or lore. But Gibson's Max is the same guy in all three movies and we follow him on his adventure through the wasteland. But the three stories are quite different and relatively unconnected, which isn't a bad thing.

Unfortunately though, for the likes of 'Fury Road' and 'Furiosa', it's impossible for me to see them as part of the original series of films with Gibson. To me they are their own breed, as it were. Hardy's Max just isn't Gibson's Max and he could just as easily be called Crazy Carl. I think it would have been better if 'Fury Road' hadn't included Max at all, in fact, and was just a continuation of the post apocalyptic world instead.

It's clear that Miller isn't all that enthused at building any kind of canon for his series and that's great, as far as I'm concerned. Because, almost inevitably, that canon gets muddled and confused, and sometimes completely contradicted. Hello Star Wars/Star Trek.

3 is nowhere near as bad as people claim, it's better than many praised actioners. It's only weak in comparison to it's predecessor.

It's worth watching alone, imho, for Tina

The production and world-building in the third one is brilliant though. Fury Road wouldn't exist without the world building aspect of the wasteland in Beyond Thunderdome, as weakish as the story aspect was.

'Beyond Thunderdome' is a genuinely good film. Its opening is superb, in fact I think it's the best opening of the three original films. The ending is excellent too. Where the third film falls down is when we meet up with the kids. I get what Miller was trying to do with all of that, but it's always just a let down and it brings everything to a crashing halt. However it's, as you say, a hell of a lot better than some of the trash that gets spewed out these days. But that's really not hard considering the poor fare that's on offer a lot of the time.

Personally, I feel that the worst of the original three is the first film. Sure, it's got something going for it in that it was made for tuppence ha'penny and the stunts can be great to look at. But it doesn't really get going until the last 15 minutes and for too long it feels dull. Also, I don't feel like I'm anywhere but the Australian outback in 1979, as opposed to the brilliantly realised post-apocalyptic world in 'Mad Max 2' and 'Beyond Thunderdome'. I get that 'Mad Max' is the epoch of the apocalypse and that not everything has completely fallen apart yet, but it's just not enough. Bottom line is I've always felt the first movie to be a real chore to get through.