Hollywood does it again

Rating: 1/10 (28 May 2015)

Being new to the world of "Mad Max", I went in to the theatre with an open mind, only knowing to expect cars and explosions, which I briefly saw from snippets of trailers.
In the end, that's all I got, just explosions, cars, violence and no story whatsoever. Due to the fact that action sequences drag on for such an inexplicable amount of time, there's no room to breathe and incorporate morsels of a plot together. The 'plot' (if that's what you want to call it) and introduction to this world is so vague that it seems that the filmmakers just wanted to skim over the "unimportant" aspects of a film like a good plot and interesting characters and just get straight to the "high octane" action which QUICKLY loses its novelty and thrill. Good choice there, mates. This film is so bad that you can't even spoil it.
There's not much that I can praise about the film other than the nice (and insane) visuals; the use of vibrant blue and orange tones and the barren landscapes. It's difficult to even pick out anything good about the cast; Tom Hardy, who plays the titular character, has such a small role and just mumbles his way throughout the film, so unsure of himself. Speaking of mumbling, "Mad Max" is meant to be set in Australia yet there's an overwhelming earful of British and American accents, that are all painfully and conspicuously 'dubbed' in the ADR process of the movie (and even then, some of the dialogue is just unintelligible). Again, the focal point of the film seems to be the action sequences which go on for almost an hour straight, if I can remember correctly (though I don't want to remember anything about "Mad Max" at all).
Smaller aspects of the film are difficult to just gloss over and ignore, such as the fact that characters endure tough and dangerous road trips for days without food or water and still have the strength to fight, speak, stand, leap from car to car etc. This film is praised for its likely representation of a post-apocalyptic world yet there are just no tinges of realism to be found here.
It saddens me that audiences are responding to "Mad Max: Fury Road" so positively and enthusiastically, with a current 8.7 rating on IMDb and 98% score on Rotten Tomatoes (as of late May 2015). Are films so bad nowadays that the average moviegoer is just rendered completely susceptible and hypersensitive to mindless 'high-octane' action and plots that are barely held together by underdeveloped characters? For anyone serious about good-quality films, avoid "Mad Max" as best as you can, even if it means you have to drive far out into the Australian outback to isolate yourself from another one of Hollywood's 'finest'.