[YMS] So I just saw Mad Max: Fury Road and it was a lot of fun. If I were rating this
movie based on how much fun I had I'd be giving it a nine out of ten. But alas, I rate movies
based on what I feel the quality of the film is, so no I'm not docking points because I
had fun watching it, I just genuinely feel as though the movie's a fun seven out of ten.
There were a lot of aspects of the film that were genuinely impressive, the cinematography
was pretty great, the computer generated imagery was used sparingly, there were some parts
that didn't feel visually quite real but for the most part it wasn't enough to take anybody
out of the movie, and most of all it was just fucking fun! It was like if Death Race 3 wasn't
a massive piece of shit. I'm not going to complain that there wasn't really much to
the story, because anybody can tell that the movie wasn't really trying to be heavily story
driven. In all honesty if a movie is going for the cool and fun factor I'd rather have
it be like this one where it doesn't spend an eternity dicking around in between the
cool and fun scenes. In Mad Max: Fury Road the story was just enough so that the cool
and fun scenes didn't feel stupid and pointless. I like how over-the-top and ridiculous it
was and I wouldn't want the movie to be any other way. In fact I hope the next movie goes
even further. Believe it or not I was reminded of Army of Darkness during the fight scene
with the chain and the struggle for the gun. There are a few things that irked me about
the presentation of the movie but they were fairly minimal. There were a few of those
family flashback hallucination shots that were a little cheesy, and yeah I know we're
talking about the same movie where there's a dude on top of the car playing electric
guitar riding to his fucking death, but I think it's important to differentiate between
cheese during something fun and cool, and cheese during something that's supposed to
be dramatic and serious; as someone that does a lot of editing there were a few things that
were distracting and took me out of the film for a bit. When slow footage is sped up to
make it look fast some people just see slow footage sped up to make it look fast. Trust
me it happens more times in this movie than you think. During some of the dialogue, characters
were basically whispering to each other, but they're inside a giant moving vehicle, and
there's no shortage of earblasting engine sounds during scenes where we see the exterior
of the vehicles, but during the serious talk time in the vehicles the volume of the engine
is turned down so low in post that literally that's all I can think about anymore:
[Clip] I was born there. [Clip] Why'd you leave?
[Clip] I didn't. I was taken as a child. Stolen. [YMS] It doesn't destroy the movie, all I'm
saying is that when something's in the environment that's so unironically unnatural, it is a
little distracting. And keeping consistant with what I said earlier, remember that these
serious talk scenes are supposed to be serious, meaning that distractions like those wouldn't
be as much of an issue if they were during the cool and fun scenes. I had the exact same
issue in any movie where the characters are in a supposedly loud club but they don't have
to talk over the music. The worst example I can think of would be from an indie movie
called A Midsummer Night's Rave: [Clip] I know how thirsty aspiring DJ's can
get. [Clip] Thank you [inaudible]
[YMS] The best example I could think of would be from David Fincher's The Social Network:
[Clip] You ever think about that girl? [Clip] What girl?
[Clip] The girl from high school who was with the lacrosse thing.
[Clip] No. [YMS] When a director has that much forethought to
get the actors to shout in a silent room before the audio is added in in post production, it impresses
me enough to be giving the movie extra points. And remember that a perfect ten rating is
not a default that only goes lower if you find issues with the movie, a default rating
for me is five out of ten and then any achievements that a film has to offer bring it higher.
And I've gotta say I was impressed by what the film had to offer. Having seen the first
two Mad Max a long time ago, this one was a lot more entertaining. If there's one thing
I remember about those older ones, it's that they had a much slower pace. That and the
villains were comically homosexual. Should society get enraged over the sexual orientation
or gender of the villains or heroes? No. I honestly wish I could have watched Mad Max:
Fury Road without all of those clickbait websites making a big fuss over the character's genders,
because to me this movie had nothing to do with gender issues at all. You could have
swapped the genders of literally every character except the pregnant one and I wouldn't have
felt any different about the movie. Having a specific gender or sexual orientation being
portrayed in a positive or negative light in a film might affect me more if it was,
hm, I don't know, not set in a post-apocalyptic fantasy world where everyone including the
main character has lost their fucking minds? A group of men or a group of women or a group
of gay people should not be taken as an accurate reflection of society. They're just these
things called "characters", and while it is possible that George Miller wrote this screenplay
with the explicit intent of painting certain genders in certain lights, at no point did
it feel forced and out of place. Why don't we just view people as human beings again?
Oh right, it's because anger sells and the one way to get everybody arguing at each other
over something is to turn it into a gender issue, I forgot. And yes the clickbait websites
are just as guilty as the idiot they were quoting, who by the way never actually saw
the movie before writing it. You realise you can find people saying stupid shit about anything
on the Internet, and that by putting them on a pedestal you're essentially generating
the controversy yourselves? Doesn't matter, money. Gender debates are the new big thing
right now, so we'll jump on literally any opportunity to get you fired up about them
so you'll share the link and give us money. When I have criticisms to make about a film,
I try to keep my criticisms in line with filmmaking and presentation. Have we forgotten how to
do that? Anyway, forgive me for making that last part of my review moreso a review on
other peoples' reviews; overall I really liked Mad Max. I think that seven out of ten is
a reasonable rating to give it. Who knows, I might even bump it up to an eight the next
time I see it. If you watched the trailer and think that looks like a lot of fun, then you'll
probably have a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun. It was like an amusement park ride. It
was like riding the fun coaster in fun land. It was a hot fun sundae. Fun fun, fun fun
fun fun fun. It was fun. Mad Max: Fun Road: fun out of ten. Fun fun fun, fun fun! Fun
fun fun fun fun. Fun! Fun! Fun! Fun! Fun! Fun! Fun! Fun! Fun!
Subtitles by Steven Smith (blha303/suudo)
mark ;_;
wtf laugh