Director: George Miller
Cast: Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Burke, Alyla Browne
Have I Seen It Before: Nope!
Did I Like It: I struggled with it for a good long while, not unlike I struggled with Mad Max Fury Road (2015). I know I am supposed to like it. A lot. I’ve gotten the memo. And yet… The craft of the stunts are pretty great (although my memory is telling me that the CGI here is a little wobblier than its predecessor) but the bombast and supposed hopefulness of the characters always leaves me detached from the proceedings. I’d be absolutely useless in a real apocalypse; I’m pretty useless when they’re depicted on screen.
But still, after a bit of slow going, I found myself oddly charmed by this one. I might be the perfect audience for the series as it continues. Apparently the series doesn’t even care about continuity, so for a long stretch I just assumed Praetorian Jack (Burke) was Mad Max—Burke is more of a dead ringer for a younger Mel Gibson than Tom Hardy ever was—and had fun with it. I guess I was wrong, but I’m not entirely sure Miller cares how I have fun with these movies, as long as I do.
Then there’s the ending, where I really think the film becomes special. Any number of revenge epics—sci-fi or otherwise—come to a head where the protagonist finds the object of their, well, fury. The story can really only go one way from here, but this movie acknowledges that, makes that part of the character’s struggle, and then finds a surprising and just fate for the evil that men do. I’ve honestly been thinking a lot about that ending since walking out of the film. Action movies have a hard time doing that these days.
Oddly enough, with that in mind, I now have a hankering to watch Fury Road again. That’s probably a pretty good endorsement for this, all things being considered.