Strong in some areas, weak in others

Rating: 5/10 (14 December 2015)

At first I was going to completely write this movie off, but since I had so many issues with it, I took a step back and asked myself, "is it at least a good action movie" and the answer is yes, which is also where most of the positive points of the film are.
Where the movie shines:
-Amazing visuals (this movie needs to be watched at least once on the big screen, or a really nice widescreen TV at home).
-George Miller lives for practical effects, and this movie didn't disappoint with great crashes/vehicles
-They used CGI only for certain weather scenes which turned out pretty cool (they didn't use CGI too much, and when they did it looked good)
-Charlize Theron does a great job in her role as Furiosa
Where the movie falters:
-Even though Charlize' character was great, she was essentially the main character in the movie which overshadowed Mad Max himself. If they both shared the lead it would have played out a little better
-Mad Max' character, the guy whose name is built right into the movie name plays second fiddle for the majority of the film (and is generally weak sauce for the majority of his screen time)
-Lack of story/plot as well as lack of interesting dialogue. Even Charlize mentioned in an interview there was no plot, just a whiteboard with scribbling details of how the movie should play out. This is why you can summarize the entire movie as the main group of good guys traveling from A > B > C > B > A with a car chases scene that lasts the length of the movie.
-Forgetting your roots. I'm all for reboots, as long as you retain what was good at the core of the originals. Why were they cult classics you need to ask yourself.
I ranked it 5/10 based mainly on visuals and Charlize' performance. If it had a solid story/dialogue and brought back some of the great qualities of the originals while at the same time rebooting the series it could have easily scored a 10/10. Still a great movie to watch once with this understanding of it.