Mad Max: Fury Road Blu-Ray Review

Synopsis: “Years after the collapse of civilization, the tyrannical Immortan Joe enslaves apocalypse survivors inside the desert fortress the Citadel. When the warrior Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) leads the despot’s five wives in a daring escape, she forges an alliance with Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy), a loner and former captive. Fortified in the massive, armored truck the War Rig, they try to outrun the ruthless warlord and his henchmen in a deadly high-speed chase through the Wasteland.”

Review: “Fury Road is an operatic, unwieldy, barreling mess of crashes, burns and explosions heretofore unseen in the cinematic world. Each moment is a movement, sped on by guzzling fuel, bloody death and raw emotional horsepower that puts the pedal to the metal and burns nitrous like Fast and the Furious wishes it could. Mad Max: Fury Road is what Wild Wild West dreamed it could have been, Days of Thunder with the lightning and the storm turned up to 12 and — well, it has to be said — Miller’s 1979 Mad Max on some dastardly combination of hallucinogens and amphetamines.” [Full Review]

Features: Plenty. The Mad Max: Fury Road Blu-Ray dishes out a number of must-watch special features including “Mad Max Fury on Four Wheels”, “Maximum Fury: Filming Fury Road”, “The Road Warriors: Max and Furiosa”, “The Tools of the Wasteland”, “The Five Wives: So Shiny, So Chrome”, “Crash & Smash” and a few deleted scenes.

“Mad Max Fury on Four Wheels” breaks down the wheels and gears of Fury Road’s vehicles, paying respect to the extraordinary detail of George Miller‘s roaring vision. Even at a quick glance, the sublime vehicular craftsmanship can’t go unnoticed. As actress Rosie Huntington-Whiteley states, “The vehicles almost deserve their own title at the end of the film” and seeing how much work went into the design of these vehicular monstrosities, you’d be plain wrong to disagree. Miller himself saw the vehicles as “almost an extension of the costumes” and from Imperator Furiosa’s cathedral-like War Rig to the infamous Doof Wagon – an ungodly amalgamation of 64 speakers planted on an old rocket-launching truck – there is life to this product design that eludes most movies, modern or otherwise. As Miller says, “Just because it’s a wasteland doesn’t mean that people can’t make beautiful things.” The 30-odd minute feature is indispensable for any Fury Road enthusiast.

“All the crashes are real crashes, all the cars are real cars, all the stunts are real stunts.” “Maximum Fury: Filming Fury Road” rips a gaping hole in the intricate design of Fury Road, revealing the sheer magnitude of the shoot and the simply awesome production at play. From the thousands of pages of storyboards lining the production walls to the insistence on doing things in camera and only employing CG to enhance rather than create shots, Mad Max: Fury Road is that rare film whose making is as intensely interesting as it is. As Miller expresses, “This is a very kinetic movie”. So too was the shoot. Insight into the execution of the “polecats” (headed up by former Cirque de Solo artists) and the Rock Riders (Miller employed the “best BMX bikers in Australia”) are complimented by actor testimonials, such as Nicholas Hoult talking about getting a rare case of “the chills” whilst beholding the spectacle on set or Tom Hardy revealing just how scared he was of his own polecat stunt. The actors deserve their dues, but it’s the stuntmen here who hold the record for boldness, with stunt coordinator Guy Norris shooting for a car flip record, achieved through basically curb-stomping the sand. Upon digesting this feature, you’ll believe it’s a true wonder more bones weren’t broken.

“The Road Warriors: Max and Furiosa” takes a moment to discuss the performances in a movie where most attention has (deservedly) been paid to spectacle. From where lead actor Tom Hardy’s standing, “You’re not really in a movie, you’re in George’s head” and it was an inkling of an idea in George’s head that lead him to cast Hardy in the role. Claiming that Hardy possessed the same wildness that Mel Gibson had 30 years ago, he compares the two actors by pinpointing emotional similarities: “They’re both very masculine but with a softness; they’re capable of gentleness as well”. With his gruff man-with-no-name act, Hardy put to bed the once staunch idea that Max could not stand without Mel. Miller choose Theron as his female anti-heroine because of the juxtaposition of her feminine beauty with an all-encompassing badassness. After all, it was Theron herself who suggested Furiosa lose the hair.Witness! “The Tools of the Wasteland” lays bear the repurposing and recycling of a world descended into junk. Says Miller, “One of the big problems with post-apocalyptic movies is to make the world look like a junkyard and it doesn’t stand up to human behavior. Even early man, without any resources, can make beautiful paintings.” And beauty, though caked in dirt, there was aplenty. An array of producers and artists discuss the challenges of making a world from leftover bits of the former world. This artistic philosophy applied to the film’s vehicles as well as the props, costumes and weapons, including the “thundersticks” which were crafted from spare bike tires and materials resembling human skin. For those needing all things Doof, “Tools of the Wasteland” reveals the construction of the doof guitar; a DIY stringed instrument made from car parts, trumpet parts, bed pan, violin parts and, obviously, a flame thrower.

“The Five Wives: So Shiny, So Chrome” tells the story of the quartet of princesses of Miller’s post-apocalyptic world. Breeding stock to provide Immortan with an heir, the five girls are the hope for a future and the impetus for the events of the film. Rosie Huntington-Whiteley talks about the underlying feminist quality of the film while the rest of the cast laments the harsh shooting conditions where they wore nothing and were exposed to the blistering heat and freezing cold on a daily basis for over six months. According to them, this heightened their emotional state because of the nothingness that surrounded them; “I think everything after this film will be too easy”

The five minute “Crash & Smash” reel exposes the awesome extent of the film’s practical effects, all sans CGI.E

Three extended scene shows the extent of the population’s desperation with a woman abandoning her child to become a milker, Victus and Immortan Joe leading the troops into battle and Max and Co. leading the charge “home”.

The one blight of the release is that this first Blu-Ray does not included the black and white silent version that various movie sites (such as Screen Rant) previously reported would be included. George Miller went on record saying that the B&W silent cut was his “favorite” version of the high-octane action flick.

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