What are people Thinking!

Rating: 3/10 (15 May 2015)

Looking at all the praise 'Mad Max: Fury Road' has been getting, I am completely and utterly dumbfounded as to how so many people can be so blind. Me and a group of friends went to see this on the basis of so many people, including critics, praising it as a "masterpiece" or an awesome film. Instead, "Mad Max: Fury Road" is a complete and utter disaster and certainly not worth the $12 me and my companions spent. Why you ask? Well, for starters, the film doesn't explain ANYTHINHG to the audience. Yes, obviously we know this takes place in post-apocalyptic world and there's a guy named Max (Tom Hardy) who's trying to help a tough as nails driver named Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) get a group of pretty female slaves away from some bad guy with a skull mask, some sort of breathing apparatus and a deep voice. Sounds kind of cool, except the film does a terrible job explaining a few things, like who the hell is he (His name's Immortan Joe but we only know that from a few times his name is spoken), why are some of his henchmen ghost white, what's with them needing blood, and why should we ultimately care whether our characters prevail against him or not? The film has absolutely no character or story development what so ever and the movie moves so fast that almost nothing sinks in.
For example, other than Max and Furisoa, I don't think I knew any of the characters names in this film, much less develop any incentive to care whether they live or die. Me and my friends didn't feel any emotion from the characters predicament simply because there is no story or anything to care about. All they seem to do is drive around the desert and fight bad guys. That's it! Another fault is the fast-paced visions Max keeps seeing of his family, who apparently died but it's never explained how or why. After a while, the visions become annoying, ridiculous and fail to really add anything to the overall picture. It's possible that the death of his family was explained in the previous films but I only saw bits and pieces of the first one and that was years ago! The filmmakers seem to be operating on the assumption that everyone in the audience saw the previous films and that's an enormous mistake to make. If they wanted to reestablish the character Max, then actually do so by giving us a little background on him. Now, with all that said, the film did have some decent merits. Some of the car chases were pretty cool, admittedly, as were some of the vehicles themselves, many of them looking bad-ass. And the woman used as the models aren't bad to look at either.
As for acting, Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron do a decent job acting wise, though Theron's character seems to dominate the screen more than Max does and the film is named after him, right? These are the only reasons why I'm not giving the film a completely awful rating. But flashy visuals and awesome explosions don't make a movie people. If that were the case, Michael Bay would be heralded as the greatest filmmaker of our time. Yes, I know it's an action film, and you shouldn't go in expecting to see "Citizen Kane". However, you need there to be some character development and plot, even if its an action film folks and especially if the movie takes place in a fantasy or futuristic world to explain what's going on. To really put things in perspective, even the big, cheesy 80's action films with guys like Schwarzenegger, Jean Claude Van Damme, or Steven Seagal had far more character and story development than this did! And I'd also like to state that not only did neither me or my companions like this, but almost no one in the theater did either. After the last scene cut, there was complete and utter silence and I certainly didn't hear anyone praising it as we stepped outside. In fact, I overheard one guy saying if he could turn his Regal card in for cash! Bottom line, I love action films but I can't give thumbs up to a movie that doesn't give us any incentive to care about its story. If you're looking for a decent film, look someplace else and as for all those who are praising it, just how much money did the studio pay you to say those things!