Mad Max Fury Road (Gaming)

by Kahzgul, Wednesday, June 01, 2016, 15:13 (3101 days ago) @ Kermit

I don't mind a non-talky movie (La Jeté, or if you want something more people have actually seen, The Insider),

I'm confused. Le Jetee and The Insider are pretty talky. Good ones, though.

I'd consider them thinky, but not too talky. I dunno. Mad Max (the original) wasn't very talky and i loved that one.

La Jetee has a voice-over throughout, and I'd say most films where words are prominent tend to be thinky. I'm perplexed by your taste. I can understand George Miller's universe not being someone's cup of tea. But if you like the original movie, the latest one is a refinement of the first one's strengths. Like you say, the first one wasn't about words either, but it was about movement combined with visuals combined with sound--the new one uses these cinematic elements with a bravura and confidence that makes the first movie look amateurish by comparison.

I agree that those elements were refined in the new movie, absolutely. But the first one had a compelling plot and the new one didn't, plain and simple. If the story of MMFR were worth telling, I'd have liked it a lot more, but it played out like a second grader's effort at a comic book where the first one was a masterpiece of depicting one man's fall from the past and ascension in a new hellscape.

The more I think about MMFR, the more I feel like it should have either told the entire story from the point of view of the guy whose name I cannot ever remember who started as a servant of the Immortan and ended up sacrificing himself to save the others, or from the perspective of one of the women from "the green place" who was trying to save the seeds (but that's a stretch because it would be just as easy to tell a shitty story about them too. In my head there's a real journey there that none of the other characters have that has both personal and world-impacting meaning). MMFR could have delved into both of those stories and made them more meaningful, but instead chose not to and diminished its own impact greatly.

In the end, I think film making should be about telling a story first, and all of the artistry and spectacle, if it doesn't fuel that storytelling, really isn't worth spit.

I definitely expected too much from MMFR. I enjoyed AVP (though I do *not* think it was a good movie) because I expected the story to be a shitty excuse to get aliens and predators to fight each other, and that's exactly what I got. I wouldn't watch it again, though.