A movie about the wasteland, and not trying to be anything more than that!

Rating: 10/10 (23 May 2015)

Never mind the linear story telling; it's mostly void of the ingenious plot twists that's expected from movies with such high acclaim nowadays. George Miller proves with this flick that amazing story telling isn't confined within the (now classic) Nolanesque formula; the plot definitely isn't a psyche-driven, non- linear, intricate and obsessive- compulsive piece of narration.
It is FAR simpler than that. It's as simple and textbook as it can get: the brides, who are simply MacGuffin elements, are being liberated by Furiosa (Theron) on their demand, which causes a ruthless warlord named Immortan Joe (Keays-Byrne), along with his troops and allied warlords, to chase these renegades down. Max, on the other hand, just stumbles upon the whole thing. This time, it's not a personal vendetta nor a quest, but just a mad, grunting man of a few words' sheer will to survive. He just tags along.
In a way, he is what Kalidor (aka. Conan) was to Red Sonja (1985). Essentialy it's the female protagonist's main story, but a previously featured strong protagonist takes on the supporting role in favor of a new one. A plot-centric standpoint would call this movie Imperator Furiosa instead of Mad Max, but it would just be wrong. What would otherwise sound like a bitter critique of the plot that I have written up until now is actually COMPLETELY okay when it comes to this movie, because it works! It just WORKS!
The movie is ALL ABOUT creating a setting, a realm, a reality, and conveying the story through that reality. It's all about storytelling through world building. It's the small, minute details that have been sprinkled here and there within the movie that complete this setting and constantly feed the lore, and that's all that matters. The name "Mad Max" at this point is not much different from putting the Cthulhu label on any Lovecraft short story from the 1920's. "Mad Max" is just a brand name to remind the viewer that this post-apocalyptic flick is not any other, but it's that of the Mad Max universe.
It's a documentary in that sense. An immense setting is being conveyed not through footage that runs hours on end, but through a selection of events, to give an impression and depth to the setting in the short run-time of a standard movie. Documentaries about the savanna would feature clips of a cheetah chasing a gazelle, rather than 500 hours of idle footage, or repeated failures of the cheetah to catch its pray. This movie has 480 hours of footage, most of it comprising of probably not so impressive chase scenes and failed stunt attempts.
The amount of details adding to the universe conveyed throughout the movie is immense. There are hints of a more "globalized" setting to this post-apocalyptic wasteland compared to the prior movies, for instance, truly radiating the feeling that the world has decayed even further than before; the Buzzard tribe, in their spiked vehicles, appear to speak Russian among each other for instance. Immortan Joe's car and the The War Rig are both left-hand drives. Finally, the "salt flats" are probably parts of the ocean dried up (and over time flattened), possibly creating a land bridge to Asia.
The collective madness experienced at this point of the earth's decay is successfully demonstrated: The "open-mouth screaming scene" of Immortan Joe while holding a semi-crooked body of Angharad gave me chills, and while I was trying to wrap my head around it, a premature cesarean section dead-birth scene hit me like a brick. By the time I was watching the "swamp people" walking on sticks as if from a Dali painting, I had completely accepted the distribution of water (extremely valuable resource) among the common people through the most wasteful and inefficient method ever.
Then there was the Doof Warrior, which defied every logic (the resources used to bring that monstrous vehicle along), but was an "in your face" approach in presenting the constructed cultures of the setting. The different clothing choices among the tribes, the whole "witness me!" ordeal; whoever came up with these elements, kudos, you deserved every single penny you've earned off this film.