After watching the original Mad Max, I realized that this year marks the tenth anniversary of the fourth and epic Mad Max movie in the Mad Max universe. Mad Max: Fury Road was the first movie I indulged myself into the Mad Max Universe, and at first when I watched this movie, I never quite understood the movie the first time I watched it. Then my brother sat me down and watched the original Mad Max film and watched Fury Road the second time around, I began to realize how tremendously great this movie was in 2015, to the actors involved as well as great action sequences that you'll probably never see now since well, every movie out now is completely useless garbage.
Years after the collapse of civilization, the tyrannical Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Bryne) enslaves apocalypse survivors inside the desert fortress the Citadel. When the warrior Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theoron) leads the despot's five wives in a daring escape, she forges an alliance with Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy). Fortified in the massive, armored truck the War Rig, they try to outrun the ruthless warlord and his henchmen in a deadly high-speed chase through the wasteland.
Around 1987, George Miller had the idea of developing a fourth installment that was "almost a continuous chase". Although Miller developed a lot of the story along with working with Storyboards artists and a lot of them were in the film as you see it on screen, unfortunately 1987 to 1998, the film itself was in a lengthy gestation period or a better word, development hell. Through the course of the 2000's Miller was still thinking about Mad Max 4 but only this time without Mel Gibson, and so, to make a long story short after years of going through constant development crisis and potential actors to play Max, well let’s just say somewhere between 2010 or 2013, Mad Max: Fury Road finally commenced into production let’s just leave it at that. Ten years after the film’s release and I still consider this a perfect action movie of the ages, from the great actors to the story and even the visual effects as well as the action sequences you see when watching this great movie it's just perfect from every part moreover even the greatest action film of the 2010's era, moreover if you want to find statistics on what makes this a great and perfect action film this movie has it all. Now granted I've never seen Mad Max 2 or Beyond the Thunderdome, but I truly believe if you separate this film from those last three films this movie is without a doubt a perfect action movie from beginning to end. Charlize Theoron is without a doubt a great actress for these kinds of action films I mean Atomic Blonde is a great example of that though I would look at her in this film as a pure definition of an action heroine. But there's something about Tom Hardy's performance in this movie that just screams how talented he was in this movie as well as the perfect Mad Max, and even before accepting the role Hardy had lunch with Mel Gibson and Gibson himself gave him his blessing, moreover, said in his own words that Hardy reminded him of his sons. Through the course of the whole movie Hardy starts off as this animalistic anti-hero who barely says anything till like thirty minutes into the movie and although he does speak but you barely hear him on what he's saying but when he finally speaks it's like he's trying to find his words and it's almost like the way when your all by yourself having no one to talk too it would make sense that you barely speak through your time in a hell hole like a Post-Apocalyptic Australia. But really what makes Hardy's performance so great is his body language through the course of the film where you see him as a caged animal and through the course of the first and second act you slowly shreds the animal instinct and becomes a reliable ally but more importantly you see he cares for these wives as well as Charlize Theoron, and even though his lines are only 52 words the greatest acting you can really do is express emotions through the face as well as the body and that's always what makes a great actor. Hugh Keays-Byrne was one of the original villains in the very first Mad Max film, and at the time I didn't know about that fact but years later into Fury Road he does a fantastic job as the main antagonist to both Hardy and Theoron's character, furthermore if you think of just great and memorable villains from Darth Vader to Hannibal Lector Keays-Byrne's portrayal of Immortan Joe is most certainly up there in the best villains category. But what separates Immortan Joe from the other's is simply that is that he stands out with that cool respirator to even his presence on screen, especially scenes when he slowly realizes he's wives have been taken it such a great shot and it explains more words than the voice, speaking of the voice, hell I don't know if that was his voice or not but the way he says his lines are even more greater especially when he tells the crowd "Do not become addicted to water!", now theoretically that's foul in terms of logical sense, but deep down it's a great and memorable line from Byrne's and doesn't have that one line he has a tone of great lines which makes him great in the movie, and that's kind of the reasons why I haven't seen the Furiosa film mainly because Byrne died in 2020, and they had to use a different actor moreover wasn't legendary as Hugh Keays-Byrne was in this movie so, really he stands out as one of the best antagonist in the Mad Max universe. Even the Wives and Nicholas Hoult who plays Nux in the movie are fantastic as well as the other henchmen, and even the War Boys in the movie are fantastic for many reasons they are defiantly committed, and they don't show that they're just in extra no they took their job seriously till the very end. As great of a director George Miller was in bringing his lost franchise back to life, his composer Junkie XL aka Tom Holkenborg does a fantastic job in composing the music and there something about playing heavy metal music combined with epic movie composing is so chilling as well as epic in terms of sitting on the edge of your seat till the final frame is just pure gold as well as great to listen to while you’re driving to work. Ten years ago, I never quite understood or knew what to expect when watching this movie for the very first time, but I still say that this was for certain a perfect action film of the 2010's era and I would highly recommend watching this movie a million times even if you haven't seen any of the original Mad Max films, though I'm looking forward in seeing the other two Mad Max films this year.
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