Mad Furiosa: Fury Road

Rating: 7/10 (16 May 2015)

I saw the movie this evening and thought it was good, but not as good as Mel Gibson in The Road Warrior from 1981.
I would only rate Fury Road a 7.0, not the high 8's like it is now.
I thought the following.........
1) This was more about Imperator Furiosa and her fight against the tyrannical Immortan Joe. She was the main character in this movie, Max was the supporting character. The real title of this movie should have been Mad Furiosa: Fury Road.
2) I grew up during the original three Mad Max movies. I intimately know The Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome, and are in my top 10 films of all time. Was this supposed to be a reboot? Or was it supposed to be a sequel? 3) For the younger crowd who didn't see the first three movies, how are they supposed to know who Max is? There was little to no development of his character. We don't know why he is out there in the wasteland. We don't know his history and what happened to his family from the likes of Toecutter.
4) In Mad Max and The Road Warrior, Max's Ford Falcon XB GT Police Interceptor was a major "character" in those films. However, in Fury Road, the car had very little screen time as it was flipped over in the first 3 minutes. Then we only saw it repaired and painted in a silver color in certain shots as the War Boys were chasing Furiosa.
5) I thought Immortan Joe was very interesting and was a better character than The Humungus, although very memorable, in The Road Warrior. Hugh-Keays Byrne was an excellent choice. That face and the mask leaves a psychological impression. In case people don't know, Keays-Byrne played Toecutter in the 1979 Mad Max film.
6) For me, part of the appeal of the first three movies was the unmistakable heavy Aussie accents by everyone in the films.........excluding Aunty Entity (Tina Turner) and Master (Angelo Rossito) in Thunderdome. In Fury Road, everyone had a non-specific "British" accent. It was kind of a hodgepodge or a hybrid of Aussie meets British accents. British and Aussie accents are distinctly different. Tom Hardy does not sound Australian. Charlize Theron sounded like her normal American self, except for when she said "Gayzzolyne", trying to sound Aussie.
7) Perhaps the most memorable bad guy character in the Road Warrior was Wez (Vernon Wells) with the Mohawk and ass-less chaps. He has lots of screen time and had that cinematic dominance on screen. Rictus Erectus (Nathan Jones) did not seem like a dominant bad guy character in this movie. He is just huge. Jones is 6'11" and 350+ pounds of pure muscle.
8) What kind of dust storm was that supposed to be? Not like anything I've ever seen. Maybe it was a nuclear dust storm? 9) Finally......the chase scenes and the cars. Just as good, if not better than the first three Mad Max movies.
That is all.............