He's now a wounded soul of very few words, on the verge of cracking, continuously haunted by visions of those he was unable save in the past. As in the previous films, our reluctant antihero has already given up hope of a new civilization, a lone scavenger driven purely by survival, and Hardy does a marvelous job stepping into the role that made Mel Gibson a worldwide star.
For nearly two hours, Miller takes us on what could be the most insane road movie ever produced, once again setting the former MFP officer and widower in direct opposition to a lawless maniac. As soon as Max explains he exists somewhere between the dead and the living, the Australian-born filmmaker kicks it into high gear, tightly gripping the back of the audience's neck and doesn't let go until the last final minutes. In the opening moments, Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy), seen staring out into a lifeless desert abyss and munching on raw mutant lizard, announces that crazy is the new norm in a wasteland created by the careless pillaging of Earth's natural resources and atomic wars.Īs if finally tired of doing family-friendly fare with tales that followed an optimistic pig and a dancing penguin, Miller opens this brilliantly spectacular motion picture with the loud sounds of engines revving. In Miller's wretchedly dystopic yet action-packed nightmare, those base natures give rise to power-hungry megalomaniacs and madness.
When all four features are watched in sequence, this is merely another glimpse of a society slowly reverting back to greedy, animalistic instincts - a twisted progression of devolution. Thirty years after the last installment in the ' Mad Max' franchise, and another thirty-six since the first that started it all, George Miller returns to his apocalyptic vision of the future in the high-octane bombast that is 'Fury Road.' And like the films which preceded it, this fourth entry in the series is a spectacular display of humanity barely surviving on the brink of extinction.