HUGE Disappointment

Rating: 4/10 (15 May 2015)

I am an enormous fan of the Mad Max series. I grew up on The Road Warrior and have watched it countless times. Screened the new Fury Road film last night and felt like my heart was ripped out of my chest. I couldn't believe how cartoonish this film looked. After all of the talk about how much practical work went into this film and with George Miller saying in an interview that he views it as an "analog film" I was very much looking forward to him revisiting the world that he created.
It couldn't be further from the truth folks. Yes, there are some really impressive practical stunts at work here. However, they are intercut with some of the phoniest looking green screen work I've seen. Practically every motorcycle jump crash or tumble would start off practical and then would be interrupted two seconds later by the same guy in front of a green screen, to highlight the middle moment of the stunt.
Another important note is that a majority of the interior moments of the car chase are all green screen and are all badly done to a very distracting degree. Why this was done, I do not know. Usually it's done for continuity purposes and to save time. However, they're in the middle of the desert and the scenes inside the vehicles where this terrible green screen was taking place were at times of calm reflection where nothing was happening and only a few words were spoken... Very bizarre choice in direction.
In my personal opinion, here's the breakdown of the good and the bad to be aware of when going into this film, in order to adjust expectations for die-hard fans of the Mad Max trilogy.
THE GOOD:

Costuming looks great. Wonderful attention to detail. - The "war boys" are wonderfully performed and developed as characters. - Obviously the vehicles look great. - The music during the intense moments of battle is appropriately powerful. - The conceptualization of the various characters is very compelling.

THE BAD:

I didn't care for and wasn't rooting for any of the characters except for the "war boys" as they are the only even remotely developed characters in the story. And I'm not looking for heaps of background, but there was practically nothing divulged on anyone else that was worth a spit. - Furiosa's CGI arm/stump is not done well. It just doesn't look real at all when her robotic arm is not in place. - The only moments that attempt any kind of feeling are painfully saccharin, exposition heavy and accompanied by very melodramatic musical queues. - HUGE amounts of distracting green screen. - Very poorly done dubbing of all of the characters throughout the entire film. Don't know why this was done, but it was distracting and was sound mixed so that no matter how far anyone was from the camera, everyone sounded like they were two feet away from you at any given point. Very bizarre choice in direction. - Tom Hardy was lifeless in the role. He didn't carry any of the charisma or charm that the original character had. - An almost constant barrage of flashbacks for the Max character. Terribly cheesy and supremely invasive flashes of Max's daughter asking Max why he let her die. Ugh! Just super-cheesy bad. - Too many of those terribly corny shots where the exploded debris is perfectly and digitally choreographed so that important pieces of scrap metal fly right into the middle of the screen.

Ultimately, I found myself crushed beneath the weight of a joyless movie experience that I would liken to the fallout of watching Prometheus and the Star Wars prequels.
If you pretend that the other films don't exist and if you're OK with all of the bad points I pulled out above, then you'll be at the very least entertained. The film wasn't boring, just not half as well executed as the trailers would have one believing and hoping for.