Have the critics lost it? It's action without a story, or character development.

Rating: 6/10 (17 May 2015)

Remember Kill Bill volume 1? Uma Thurman's The Bride/Black Mamba wakes up and starts killing people, but we don't know completely why because all the story and character development is in volume 2.
Remember James Bond: Quantum of Solace? There is a chase in the beginning, but we don't know why, who, or where, and it's never really made clear. I don't remember what happened in that movie.
That's Mad Max: Fury Road. A critic wrote that Action is Character. I disagree. Action is not a substitute for character development, or story-telling. I wanted to know who this new Mad Max was. He was a cop. He lost his wife and kid. That's all that's revealed. We already knew that from 1979's Mad Max, but again that's 1979.
There are decades separating Fury Road from Mad Max, and even Fury Road from Beyond Thunderdome. I don't think using 30 more minutes to establish the setting and the new characters would have hurt.
I wanted to know what brought about the apocalypse. It's never made clear.
I wanted to learn more about the villain, Joe--about the War Boys--about Charlize Theron's Imperator Furiosa--about the wives. I wanted more of their backstory. I wanted to see more of their emotions. Yet they are all one-dimensional. They are who they are. The movie is all about the action and the chase.
In Fury Road, we have a main character, Max, who doesn't say or express all that much, and Charlize Theron's character doesn't grow. I don't get why the critics loved it.
The cars and the action scenes were cool though.