My father’s birthday was today and, after being subjected to the traditional song from a full café at lunch, he decided that we should go see this new film. He and I had read the rave reviews and promising ratings so we decided to give it a shot! After the sort of reviews “Ex Machina” had received and how spectacular that film was, we had high hopes and expectations. We were about fifteen minutes into the film before we found our hopes in a ditch, covered in petrol, and on fire.
I’m a major fan of dystopian and sci-fi stories. “Blade Runner,” “Brave New World,” “1984,” you name it. If it’s dystopian, there will likely be something I can appreciate about it. The same held true for “Mad Max.” The concept is that the world was destroyed by at least one war, leaving the landscape barren, the people infertile, and everything ruled by essentially twenty year old Texans with Anglo-Australian accents. If everything were reduced to dust storms and toxic wastelands with some radioactivity thrown in for spice, I can definitely understand how the survivors would either be part of or subjugated by groups of vicious scavengers. As we saw with Afghanistan, if a war is brutal enough to kill off the majority of an adult male population (Afghanistan was left with the age of 14 for their average male after the US helped them kick the Soviets out), it leaves behind a country populated by angry boys with little guidance and lots of testosterone pumping into their systems as they hit the climax of their reproductive frenzy in their late teens and twenties. They are susceptible to whatever radical ideology promises glory and power because our base instinct is to gain those things and become alpha males.
With that in mind, I could appreciate “Mad Max” because it appeared that the old generation was essentially gone and one of the remaining men had become a warlord who used a corruption of Viking mythology blended with modern, stereotypically American violent and consumerist culture to create an army of followers who worshiped him like a prophet or god. The art style followed suit as did some of the more ridiculous aspects of the movie, such as the heavy metal guitar player strapped to a moving platform of concert-grade speakers who was meant to pump up the young fighters. The film established fairly early on how everyone’s lives revolved around procuring gasoline and water, which was also appropriate considering how without cars there is no viable way of traversing a massive wasteland and, well, water is self-explanatory.
After the world building and art style there is nothing worth observing in the film. There was no story! The reviews we read praised the film to the stars because it was a film with almost nonstop action and how there was so little dialogue to interfere with the violence. Well, guess what? There’s a reason why the plot pyramid was developed. You cannot have a story consist only of climactic events because it get’s boring after a while. I’m sorry, but nonstop action is not a good thing! Sure the special effects were cool, but after fifteen straight minutes of action not even ten minutes after the movie started I was considering leaving. To top it off, the film tried to cash in on sex appeal by creating the archetypal damsel in distress situation with a gaggle of scantily clad runaway “breeding” slaves. The first time you see the fugitive women they are washing themselves, despite how precious water is and how no one else in the film appears to have even heard the word “bath.” Naturally, they are also wearing little more than bandages over their more *ahem* ostentatious parts.
When I saw that, I thought to myself Okay, I can understand the outfits because they were essentially sex slaves and would have been dressed by the warlord to appear as sexualized as he pleased. They’ll get more clothes in the next scene.
They didn’t get more clothes. At all. Ever.
There was little character development too. Almost none whatsoever in fact. The film actually had a handful of decent actors in it and one quite good actress who never got a chance to act. The plot, what little there was anyhow, also had enough holes in it to make swiss cheese reconsider its reputation. The only thing that kept me there was the thought It got such great reviews that it must get better, right? Heh heh. Wrong, boy.
The thing is that I’m not even a professional film critic and I could tell that the film was awful. I’ve made a study of dystopian fiction on my own and I’m inundated with literature because I’m an English major, plus I’m a film student and know how to analyze a visual shot. I was doing my absolute best to find worth in this film, yet time and again I saw nothing that I hadn’t seen before that someone else had done better in one way or another. Heck, “The Scorpion King” and “300” had better stories than this and both of those were historically inaccurate and at least mildly racist.
Which all begs the question “Why did this get such great reviews from the critics?” The audience on average enjoyed the film less, though they still gave it a 90% approval rating too. The critics are my usual go-to indicator of a film’s quality. Before this I’d only ever been led astray by them twice: Once for “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes,” which got a 92% despite being a boring and predictable film, and “Dracula Untold,” which got a 23% despite some decent acting, a great if understated vampire villain, some interesting cinematography, and just a touch of accurate historical references to boot. Even so, “Dracula” should have still been rated below a 70% and “Apes” should have been below an 85% if I were to be generous. “Mad Max” should not have even risen past a 50%. I get that things go wonky sometimes in popular culture, which is why I generally depend upon the critics. It is their job to look at a film from an objective, artistic standard and assess the piece’s cultural worth. I’ve been a little surprised by the critics before, but they really dropped the ball on this one.
It’s not hard to make an action flick with a good story and interesting characters. I never thought I’d praise superhero movies before the new “Batman” and Marvel Studios films, but those are prime examples of action-based popcorn movies with some serious themes and conflicted characters while the stories aren’t especially original. Christopher Booker determined that there are only seven basic plots to begin with, so one cannot expect too much originality from anything to begin with. What makes a story good is how it’s told, the emotions it conveys, and how the characters grab your attention. It comes down to how humanity is presented.
On the other hand, look at “Zombieland.” That was just a film that had a bunch of fun with killing zombies and making fun of the whole sub-genre. It didn’t pretend to be anything more than it was, yet still paced itself well and even had a scene that was a little touching. If a comedy about knocking off zombies can be good then “Mad Max” has no excuse for the atrocity that it has plastered across the big screen.
Song of the Week: The moment I left the theatre this song started playing through my head, probably just for the line in the third verse. You’ll probably know it when you see it. Anyhow, this is a good oldie. Enjoy!
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