Day seventy-two: Mad Max: Fury Road (May, 20)

WOW

Wowowowowowowowow.

This post could end here, with me babbling infinitely, and it would be accurate of what I saw at the movies today.

These amazing strong colors <3

With all the incredibly high ratings and praising comments, I was still cautious about Mad Max: Fury Road. As I've said already, I'm a bit contrary, so it was against the grain that I would trust this new installment in the Mad Max series, 30 years after the last one. Oh those of little faith.

By the same crazy visionary mind of George Miller, this movie was incredible. For a start, I wasn't able to really take a breath or blink until almost one hour and a half through it. The right use of 3D is a bit responsible for that - also a bigger screen and a good sound system in the theater. 

I was afraid that a bigger budget would mean a big change in the whole series, but no. All the bizarre craziness of the first films is still there, only visually more brutal, beautiful and breathtaking. The location was still South Wales, at Australia. The desert, the crazy character, the cars, the silent really mad Max... with the good addition of a powerful feminine story and strong female characters. Charlize Theron rules it, by the way.

The thing about a dystopian story is its similarity with the present world. One obnoxious and stupid person can rule the world, slaving people, abusing women, controlling the natural resources... and all that is accepted as natural for a lot of people. But it is not, and stories as Blindness do argue against it very accurately. Dystopian fiction does the same, in another kind of environment, with no less significance. 

George Miller did that beautifully in his new Mad Max, raising the tone of his previous movies on the series in order to speak loudly about the world today, in a futurist representation of our present. 

And lets wait for the other three movies, while catching the breath after this one.

MAd Max: Fury Road. Directed by George Miller. With: Charlize Theron,
Tom Hardy, Nicholas Hoult. Writers: George Miller, Brandan McCarthy,
Nico Lathouris. Australia/US, 2015, 120 min., Dolby Digital/Datasat/SDDS/
Dolby Atmos, Color (Cinema).

PS: In the post about Mad Max 2, I said how there were no songs in its soundtrack. This one keeps the musical logic of the series, with only a few songs. But the emphasis in the rock'n roll aspect of this story is finally there, in the ever presence of a guitar in the war front. 

PPS: Today, I started a new experiment :) For a time now, my friend Mel has been talking about Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan's horror trilogy in books The Strain. I've read the prologue last year, and I was so scared that I couldn't continue it. These last days, though, I got curious about the TV adaptation, and tried to read the books again. Knowing more about the story helped me to go beyond the first pages. Thus I decided to try something different: After reading some pages, I watch the episode related to what I've read. There a need for some compromising, because the TV show can go ahead of what I've read. And so, negotiating part by part, I intend to finally go through the whole trilogy. I confess that I'm a bit smug about this idea... Silly me :)

PPPS: Penny Dreadful is back! I'm hoping for an amazing season 2, as good as the first. I've watched the first two episodes of season 2 and it is looking good already: beautiful, heartbreaking, anguished, scary.

PPPPS: I've just seen this pic of Mad Max: Fury Road's  cast in Cannes... Tom Hardy's Max has a high heels boots for the movie, for sure.