Mad Max: Fury Road Screened Last Night And Here’s What People Thought Of It
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If you’re a regular visitor to the site, you’ve probably noticed that we’re rather excited about George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road. It’s been almost thirty years since we saw Mel Gibson fooling with Tina Tuner in Beyond Thunderdome, and before we finally lay eyes on this, Fury Road will have travelled a long, bumpy, metaphorically post-apocalyptic road in its own right. Once envisioned as a trilogy that would film back to back to back, between insane weather conditions, studio interference, and a ballooning budget, we may be lucky that we’re getting anything at all. The film doesn’t open for more than a year, but it recently screened for a select few lucky folks.
We weren’t fortunate enough to be included in the fun, in fact, press was banned from the first screening, but that didn’t stop a few from sneaking in and sharing their thoughts with the world. Still a rough cut—clocking in at just over two hours and missing credits, some sound, and special effects—and though we’ve heard rumors that it could be totally awesome, reviews were mixed.
Action Figure Times writes:
This IS the kind of Mad Max II/The Road Warrior on steroids, go-big-or-go-home, bug-nuts crazy, toss-you-in-the-deep-end mythology and put-it-all-out-there-in-case-we-never-make-another-one Mad Max Fury Road.
This movie feels like thirty years of Miller holding in passion for a world that he built so long ago, exploding on the screen. You, remember the third act of The Road Warrior, the bad-ass truck chase that is still hailed as a masterpiece of filmmaking? You do? Good.
Because that’s what this whole movie pretty much is-and it works! A chase that goes long and deep into the heart of Miller’s post-apocalyptic world, trying to get out of the Wasteland. It opens up and hardly slows down.
The description lines up with what the rumors that we’ve heard, that Fury Road is basically one extended chase scene. Isn’t that what most of us want anyway, crazy stunts and tons wreckage? We heard earlier that when the film went back last year to do reshoots that the purpose was to beef up what was already supposed to be a pretty badass action moment. This is a promising place to start.
Actor and all around filmmaker Kevin Craig West was also in attendance at the screening, and sounds like he rather enjoyed the experience. On his Facebook page, he writes:
Just came from a year in advance screening of Mad Max Fury Road. Weird to not see Gibson as Max but Tom Hardy holds it down just fine. Great action sequences and amazing post-apocalyptic vehicles and costuming with awesome makeup.
Again, that sounds like exactly what we want to hear. Most fans of the franchise will likely have a similar reaction seeing someone besides Gibson in the role of the rough-and-tumble wasteland denizen Max Rockatansky, but we’ve also seen enough of Tom Hardy being badass that if anyone was going to take over the role, we’re glad it was him.
So far, Fury Road is shaping up to be a pretty good time, right? Not so fast. A reader over at Collider saw the film, and the reaction was decidedly less enthusiastic.
Just saw a Mad Max advance screening. I can’t say much about it but let’s just hope they do tons of re-shoots before it’s released next year, or start again from scratch. Also Tom Hardy can’t stop doing the Bane voice. So annoying.
Granted, this is just the opinion of one random person, who is in no way affiliated with the site, but it isn’t good. I’m in the minority who actually enjoys Hardy’s Bane voice—he sounds like an adorable old man and I want him to tell me stories—but even I don’t think it has a place in Fury Road. There are bound to be viewers who fall on both sides, but we were still hoping for overwhelming, undeniable feats of complete and total awesomeness. Either way, we still have more than a year to wait until we can make up our own minds.
In the meantime, there’s a new synopsis for the film that gets into a little more detail about the plot:
Mad Max: Fury Road is the fourth film of George Miller‘s Road Warrior/Mad Max franchise co-written and directed by Miller. The post-apocalyptic action film is set in the furthest reaches of our planet, in a stark desert landscape where humanity is broken, and most everyone is crazed fighting for the necessities of life.
Within this world of fire and blood exist two rebels on the run who just might be able to restore order… There’s Max (played by Tom Hardy from The Dark Knight Rises), a man of action and a man of few words, who seeks peace of mind following the loss of his wife and child in the aftermath of the chaos.
And… Furiosa (played by Charlize Theron from Prometheus), a woman of action and a woman who believes her path to survival may be achieved if she can make it across the desert back to her childhood homeland.
Mad Max: Fury Road opens May 15, 2015, and stars Hardy, Theron, Nicholas Hoult, Zoe Kravitz, Riley Keough, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, and Nathan Jones.
