Month: May 2015

Released: May 2015

Director: George Miller

Run Time: 121 Minutes

Rated R

Cast:
Tom Hardy: Max
Charlize Theron: Furiosa
Nicholas Hoult: Nux
Hugh Keays-Byrne: Immortan Joe
Zoe Kravitz: Toast The Knowing
Rosie Huntington-Whiteley: The Splendind Angharad
Riley Keough: Capable
Abbey Lee: The Dag
Courtney Eaton: The Fragile

Oh, Mad Max, how we have missed you.  In 1979, a small post-apocalyptic science fiction film was released in Australia to critical acclaim.  The movie starred the up-and-coming Mel Gibson in his break-out role as Max Rockatansky.  The rest of the world didn’t get to know Max until Mad Max 2 was released.  People over here in the states were rather confused about a sequel to a movie that they had never seen, so the film was re-named The Road Warrior for the rest of the world.  It was The Road Warrior that really made the character as popular as he is.  While both movies were incredibly directed by George Miller, it was the second movie that took the world by storm.  So, why was Mad Max so popular?  It was a myriad of reasons.  The characters, the cars, the stunts and the action were above and beyond anything that we had ever seen.  For a movie like Mad Max to come out of Australia when it did wasn’t particularly usual, but George Miller captured lightening in a bottle, essentially.  Mad Max was very well-received, but the sequel garnered the most attention.  The Road Warrior took the best parts of the first movie and took it to another level.  The final car chase at the end of the movie has never been topped, until now.  Yes, there was a third movie.  The less said about Thunderdome, the better.  This year, we got ourselves a new Mad Max film: Fury Road.

Fury Road opens as we witness Max getting chased down and captured by a clan of cutthroat bandits.  Attempting to fight his way to freedom, Max is locked up in a cage.  Later, we see the clan’s leader, Immortan Joe ordering his Imperator Furiosa to take his war truck to the towns of Gas Town and Bullet Town to restock on supplies.  Little does he know that Furiosa took something of his with her, something that he values almost more than anything: His five “brides” that he kidnapped at some point and used them as breeders.  So, they convinced Furiosa to help them escape.  Witnessing his war rig take a sudden detour has Immortan Joe going on the warpath, gathering all his soldiers to chase down Furiosa and retrieve his brides.  The story isn’t bad, but it is kind of thin, but then, the Mad Max movies really weren’t about the story.  No, these movies were about Max’s world, the characters, the action, the stunts, and the cars.  Despite not having the strongest story, the world of Mad Max is actually a very compelling one.  It’s set in the year 2060 after multiple global catastrophes, including a nuclear war, have reduced the world to ruin.  Civilization has collapsed and anarchy rules the wastelands.  In the midst of all that insanity, the survivors are doing whatever they can to survive.  It’s very interesting in how it’s all presented.  You have tons of different clans and tribes that control different areas including canyons and towns.

In a previous post, I addressed a particular controversy about a certain group of men who claim to be “men’s rights activists.”  They claim that Mad Max: Fury Road is loaded with feminist propaganda.  They couldn’t be further from the truth if they had tried.  Yes, George Miller hired feminist Eva Ensler of The Vagina Monologues as a consultant for the film, but her input couldn’t have been more valuable.  See, there’s a couple of scenes in the film in which some women are chained to a wall as a resource for their breast milk.  While it is strange, it highlights the particular economy of the world that Mad Max inhabits.  This is a world in which civilization has collapsed, so anything goes.  If not handled properly, scenes like that would really come across as offensive.  Thankfully, George Miller is smarter than that.  Here’s another thing: the women in this movie are strong.  From Furiosa to the brides, Mad Max: Fury Road is as much a movie for women as it is for men.  Charlize Theron demonstrates why she is one of the finest actresses in Hollywood.  She nearly steals the show from Tom Hardy, who is no slouch either.  The character of Furiosa is definitely tough, but she is also vulnerable.  She comes across as a real human being.  The ladies who portray the brides are fantastic.  The characters had the nerve to ask Furiosa to help them escape.  The relationship between these characters is palpable and authentic.  The men are equally fantastic.  Tom Hardy steps into the shoes of Max and is absolutely fantastic.  Hardy is one of my favorite actors in the industry.  He is so versatile that he disappears into the characters that he plays.  Nicholas Hoult plays the lackey, Nux, who appears to some….problems.  He’s absolutely nuts, but as the movie goes on, we seem him change.  For all Mad Max fans, the man who played Toe Cutter in the original film returns as Immortan Joe: Hugh Keays-Byrne.  His presence in Fury Road is very menacing.  His clear armor and face mask really make the character stand out as one of the more interesting villains I’ve seen.  He’s clearly a tyrant, and it’s hard to see any kind of saving grace, considering how he treats women.  Seeing the women fight back in this movie is refreshing.

You remember the fantastic car chase/battle at the end of The Road Warrior?  Take that and set a movie around it, and you have Mad Max: Fury Road.  While the film DOES slow down a little bit at certain points, this is mostly a balls-to-the-wall action flick.  It is absolutely insane.  The opening sequence with Max trying to escape is nuts.  Then there’s the chase across the desert which ends up going through a massive storm.  That is a sight to behold with tornadoes, lightening and cars just ramming each other.  It’s one of the craziest sequences I’ve ever seen.  Aside from the storm sequence, CGI is used at a minimum in Fury Road.  George Miller prefers the use of actual cars and stunts as opposed to excessive CG animation.  That makes for a more interesting and exciting experience, because you know what you are seeing is the real deal.  Yeah, you’ve got big explosions and gun fights, but the real big spectacles are the car chases.  Holy. Shit.  The cars themselves are absolutely nuts.  There’s one car that doubles as a giant battle-drum of sorts with a guitarist that uses a guitar that shoots fire.  Yes, a guitar flamethrower.  Most of this stuff is done without a green screen.  This is a high-octane, adrenaline-pumping thrill-ride.  This was the action movie I was waiting for.  The music by Junkie XL is incredible.  There’s a lot of orchestral stuff mixed in with guitar-work and some techno, which feeds the experience.  As soon as I got home from the movie, I got the soundtrack, and it’s worth owning.

It took George Miller ten years to get this beast of a movie out into theaters, but he did it.  Mad Max: Fury Road is the best action movie this side of The Raid, and is right up there with The Road Warrior.  I know people didn’t like the idea of seeing a Mad Max without Mel Gibson, and while I certainly would have like to see him in a small role, Fury Road is absolutely one of the best movies I’ve seen this year.  If you have to choose between seeing Avengers: Age of Ultron and Mad Max: Fury Road, see Mad Max.  It’s a better movie in every aspect.  It’s not perfect, as some of the CG that is used is obvious, but that’s just a drop in the bucket compared to the rest of the film.  This is an experience that can be shared by both men AND women.  The women will get strong female characters that can hold their own with the men, and the men will have the bad-ass cars, explosions and fights to go along with it.  Hollywood, take note:  THIS is how you make a compelling action movie.  Tom Hardy has signed on for three more films starting with Mad Max: The Wastelands.  It’s great to see the character make a strong comeback after 30 years.  I will be in line to see more Mad Max movies, especially of Mr. Miller insists on directing them.  Honestly, I can’t recommend this movie enough.  For action junkies, Mad Max: Fury Road will satisfy you, guaranteed.  For Mad Max fans: The same.  Movies like Mad Max: Fury Road really aren’t made anymore, and in an industry that’s basically been overrun by over-hyped superhero movies, it is refreshing to see a movie that is essentially back to basics.  Go see this movie, I can’t stress that enough.  It is pure cinematic magic at its finest.  Mad Max: Fury Road easily gets a 9.5/10.  What a lovely day, indeed.

Fantastic 4 Trailer – 2005

Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer – 2007

Director: Tim Story

Run Time: Fantastic 4: 106 Minutes, Rise of the Silver Surfer: 92 Minutes

Rated PG-13

Cast:
Ioan Gruffudd: Mr. Fantastic/Reed Richards
Chris Evans: Johnny Storm/The Human Torch
Jessica Alba: Sue Storm/The Invisible Woman
Michael Chiklis: Ben Grimm/The Thing
Julian McMahon: Victor Von Doom/Dr. Doom
Kerry Washington: Alicia Masters
Andre Brauer: General Hager
Doug Jones: The Silver Surfer
Laurence Fishburne: The Silver Surfer(voice)

During the first decade of the new century, we saw a lot of movies based on comic books by Marvel and DC Comics.  One of the first movies that really kick-started a new craze for comic book movies was X-Men.  It proved again, that when you have film-makers that actually care about a film franchise, they can create something amazing.  Spider-Man would show up two years later and take the world by storm.  So, we’ve got a few successful films that showed that comic book movies can be a viable genre in film.  Unfortunately, we’ve also seen some not-so-good films like Daredevil and Ghost Rider.  One of the franchises that Marvel wanted on the big screen was another of its flagship superhero stories:  The Fantastic 4.  Featuring a unique cast of characters like the super-intelligent Reed Richards, the beautiful Sue Storm, the hot-headed Johnny Storm, and tough guy Ben Grimm, it was essentially a family of superheroes.  The Fantastic 4 comics also gave us one of the most unique and iconic villains ever: Dr. Doom.  Doom has inspired many villains including Darth Vader.  I figured since Fox is releasing a brand new film based on the Fantastic 4, I would re-visit Fox’s previous attempts.  I’m going to be reviewing both of them together, so this may be a little long-winded.

The first film opens as Reed Richards and Ben Grimm visit Victor Von Doom to get financed for their mission to space.  Why?  They’ve discovered that a cloud of something-something may have evolved life on earth, and another cloud of the same something-something is on its way.  So, they make their way on to one of Doom’s space stations with Sue and Johnny Storm in tow.  Instead of having 7 hours before the cloud arrives, Reed discovers that they only have minutes, so he tries to warn Doom to close the shutters so they can be protected.  Doesn’t work and the cloud slams into the station hitting each member with a massive dose of interstellar radiation.  They wake up on Earth to find that they have developed unique powers.  Reed Richards can stretch like rubber, Sue can be invisible and generate force fields.  Johnny can generate and control fire.  Ben Grimm gets the worst of it physically as he’s transformed into a gigantic….Thing with superhuman strength.  Doom himself ends up getting his body reinforced with super strong metal and can absorb electrical power.  Reed Richards tries to find a way to make them all normal again when Doom goes insane.  Story-wise, this is an origin story, and it’s not actually half-bad.   We get introduced to interesting characters with unique personalities.  One of the things that drives this movie are the relationships between the characters.  The situations can be pretty amusing.  But that’s also the problem:  Somebody somewhere decided that it would be a good idea to make the Fantastic 4 into a sit-com of sorts.  Yeah, the family dynamics generate some laughs, but the whole movie seems centered around that instead of dealing with the real threat: Doom.  The fact is is that we really don’t get a whole lot of background into these characters and where come from, especially Dr. Doom.

The acting is okay for the most part, and everybody seems to well-cast.  Ioan Gruffudd is well-cast as the awkward yet, intelligent Reed Richards.  Michael Chiklis is fantastic(ha,ha!)as Ben.  Chris Evans almost steals the show.  Given that Evans would later become Captain America, it’s awesome to see him play The Human Torch.  The only exception here is Julian McMahon as Doom.  I just don’t buy Julian as the villain.  He comes across as a mustache-twirling dingbat.  The character doesn’t even get the iconic suit until towards the end of the movie, and even then it’s just the mask and the hood, not the armor.  Some of the action in the movie, while spectacular, seems strangely accidental.  There’s a scene on a bridge where we see Ben Grimm trying to keep a guy from committing suicide, and ends up causing a MASSIVE traffic accident.  It’s fun to watch, but it really seems put in there just to showcase what these guys can do.  After the whole ordeal, everybody’s cheering the four “superheroes.”  It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.  Then we start seeing Doom start to lose it when he discovers that his board of directors have turned their backs on him and he feels betrayed by Richards.  It isn’t until the last 20 minutes of the film that it starts to feel like a superhero movie.  You finally have the four go up against Doom in a fairly awesome spectacle.  Tim Story isn’t an action director and it shows, even though he does his best.

Rise of the Silver Surfer doesn’t fare much better.  After Doom has been defeated, Reed and Sue are gearing up to get married when they get a visit from General Hager, who’s team discovered an unusual object that may have been the catalyst for some of the strange weather patterns that have circled the globe.  They discover that this being is an alien who is silver and rides a surfboard earning him the name, Silver Surfer.  It turns out that when this guy shows, eight days later, the planet dies.  Why?  Because of who the Surfer serves: Galactus.  The Sufer was introduced in a Fantastic 4comic series, so it makes sense that he would show in a F4 movie.  Here’s the problem:  Everything here is strung together by a weak string of coincidences.  Even Doom himself comes back because of the energy that the Surfer emits.  Silver Surfer is a little better than the previous movie in that it doesn’t waste time introducing the main characters.  We know who they are, so we can expect some shenanigans.  The whole sit-com aspect of the film seems to have been scaled back, and it works.  While the first movie felt more like a sit-com, Silver Surfer feels more like a proper superhero movie.  Oh, make no mistake, it’s still got some pretty silly stuff, such as when Johnny encounters the Surfer and his molecules are screwed up in such a way that he can switch powers with the others.  This does make for some amusing situations.

The casting still works, but they still brought Julian McMahon in as Dr. Doom.  I don’t get it, he’s not threatening enough, and last I checked Doom wasn’t able to manipulate electricity like Electro.  He’s still the mustache-twirling dingbat that he was the first time around, and they still have him unmasked.  WHY?!  Part of why Doom was such an iconic character was because of his outfit.  It was very intimidating and very practical.  There’s a lot more action this time around, and it seems to have improved.  Bigger explosions, decent visual effects, and the Surfer himself is spectacular.  They got him right.  Laurence Fishburne lends his voice to the character giving him a more powerful presence.  He actually gets a pretty decent amount of screen time.  There’s a problem, though: When you introduce the Silver Surfer, you’ve got to bring in the other guy:  Galactus.  When I first heard that they were making Rise of the Silver Surfer, I was excited to see if they did Galactus properly.  They didn’t.  They done f**ked it up.  Instead of the enormous humanoid creature from the beginning of time, we get a giant…..cloud.  Yep, a giant cloud of mass destruction.  That has to be one of the most embarrassing decisions by a film studio.  It pissed everyone off, myself included.  I don’t consider myself a reader of those particular comics, but I do know that Galactus was NOT a cloud.  Also, there’s the subplot of Dr. Doom trying to take control of the Surfer’s board, granting him ultimate power.  You would think that with the end of the world merely hours away that he would use that power to help end the threat.  Nope.  Dr. Doom is selfish and completely single-minded.

So, yeah, these movies definitely have issues, but you know what, they’re not horrible movies.  What Silver Surfer did with Galactus is pretty unforgivable, but I still had fun with it.  I think Tim Story’s heart was in the right place, but he just wasn’t the right guy to do these movies.  You need a director that has experience doing action, and Tim Story doesn’t have that experience.  The writing is pretty awful too, despite some pretty funny scenes.  While I definitely think these movies are disappointing, I had a much better time with the Fantastic 4 movies than I did with Avengers: Age of Ultron.  Yes, you read that right.  They didn’t really overstay their welcome.  Age of Ultron did.  That was a movie that ran out of steam half-way through.  I’m not prepared to call these movie good, but they aren’t that bad either.  The first film gets a 7/10, and Silver Surfer gets a 7.5/10.  Unfortunately, the movies didn’t do well enough to justify a stand-alone Silver Surfer film.  That project is currently in development hell, and with the reboot of Fantastic 4 on the way, Silver Surfer’s future remains in doubt.