This is what passes for a great movie nowadays?

Rating: 1/10 (3 June 2015)

It's hard to believe that the same talented director who made the influential cult action classic The Road Warrior had anything to do with this disaster.
Road Warrior was raw, gritty, violent and uncompromising, and this movie is the exact opposite. It's like Road Warrior for kids who need constant action in their movies.
This is the movie. The good guys get into a fight with the bad guys, outrun them, they break down in their vehicle and fix it. Rinse and repeat. The second half of the movie is the first half again just done faster.
The Road Warrior may have been a simple premise but it made you feel something, even with it's opening narration before any action was even shown. And the supporting characters were given just enough time for each of them to be likable or relatable.
In this movie there is absolutely nothing and no one to care about. We're supposed to care about the characters because... well we should. George Miller just wants us to, and in one of the most cringe worthy moments Charlize Theron's character breaks down while dramatic music plays to try desperately to make us care.
Tom Hardy is pathetic as Max. One of the dullest leading men I've seen in a long time. There's not one single moment throughout the entire movie where he comes anywhere near reaching the same level of charisma Mel Gibson did in the role. Gibson made more of an impression just eating a tin of dog food. I'm still confused as to what accent Hardy was even trying to do.
I was amazed that Max has now become a cartoon character as well. Gibson's Max was a semi-realistic tough guy who hurt, bled, and nearly died several times. Now he survives car crashes and tornadoes with ease?
In the previous movies, fuel and guns and bullets were rare. Not anymore. It doesn't even seem Post-Apocalyptic. There's no sense of desperation anymore and everything is too glossy looking. And the main villain's super model looking wives with their perfect skin are about as convincing as apocalyptic survivors as Hardy's Australian accent is. They're so boring and one-dimensional, George Miller could have combined them all into one character and you wouldn't miss anyone.
Some of the green screen is very obvious and fake looking, and the CGI sandstorm is laughably bad. It wouldn't look out of place in a Pixar movie. In the previous movies, there was occasionally a sped up frame rate that gave a nice homage to the silent era. Now,Miller has gone full Looney Toons and sped up the majority of the action, making many of the real stunts redundant. They're too fast to fully enjoy.
There's no tension, no real struggle, or any real dirt and grit that Road Warrior had. Everything George Miller got right with that masterpiece he gets completely wrong here.