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I'm glad I'm not alone in hating Mad Max. When the credits rolled I was left wondering what the plot even was. It felt like nothing more than an excuse to blow

by dawnerd 10y ago

I'm glad I'm not alone in hating Mad Max. When the credits rolled I was left wondering what the plot even was. It felt like nothing more than an excuse to blow stuff up and chase around cars. Absolutely no idea how it got such high marks.

TheGRS 10y ago
I feel a little silly needing to defend it, but the plot is pretty simple IMO. Max himself is more of an observer of the plot than an central character, which is a little confusing, but everything else is a pretty straight-forward hero story. What didn't you understand specifically?
- dawnerd 10y ago
  That's the thing, I don't know what I was missing. I'm usually a perfect audience for sit back and enjoy the ride kind of movies but in this one, I just didn't connect at all.
Crespyl 10y ago
> excuse to blow stuff up and chase around cars. Is that such a bad thing? It had a guy playing electric guitar on top of a giant flamethrower, because that's the kind of movie it was. Maybe not for everyone, but I thought it managed to do what it was trying to.
- pmoriarty 10y ago
  "It had a guy playing electric guitar on top of a giant flamethrower" I'm reminded of the movie Idiocracy.
pmoriarty 10y ago
It got such high marks because mainstream audiences love action and violence. This is crystal clear if you consider the content of blockbusters, excluding dramas and comedies. They're virtually all filled with action and violence. That's what most audiences want.
groby_b 10y ago
The movie is all about subtext. There's a really blatant subtext: about guys blowing shit up, exploiting women, and in general driving the world into total destruction. On its face, it's an exercise in radical feminism. Except, it isn't. Below that, there is the layer showing that women are equally capable of destruction, and that they in fact need to rely on that destruction to reach "the green place". And that's flipped on its head again, because that war machine runs on a mixture of fuel and mother's milk. Max is pretty much annointed with it when he uses mother's milk to wash the blood of his face, after a selfless act. There's a huge "war turned into a nurturing thing" there. It's echoed by the fact that part of Furiosa's body is partially mechanized. (Her replacement arm) Which leads up to what I think is the final message, where the realization strikes that there is no separate, women-only feminist utopia. There is no "women peaceful, men violent" dichotomy. Instead, the world is finally improved by the women reintegrating themselves into the world they left, but on their own terms. It's pretty much a post-modernist deconstruction of war movies and feminism at the same time. It's incredibly heavy-handed about it - all those things have about the subtlety of a hand grenade as a can opener - but it tackled a topic that was important and little talked about. That is why it was a good movie. If that message doesn't speak to you, I'm not surprised you didn't like it. You were not the target audience. (Neither were people who like chase-and-blow-stuff-up movies, and they were vocal about the fact they didn't like it) That doesn't necessarily make it a good movie, but if one liked both the subtext and blowing things up, they had a great time watching it.

by dawnerd 10y ago

TheGRS 10y ago

I feel a little silly needing to defend it, but the plot is pretty simple IMO. Max himself is more of an observer of the plot than an central character, which is a little confusing, but everything else is a pretty straight-forward hero story. What didn't you understand specifically?

dawnerd 10y ago
That's the thing, I don't know what I was missing. I'm usually a perfect audience for sit back and enjoy the ride kind of movies but in this one, I just didn't connect at all.

Crespyl 10y ago

> excuse to blow stuff up and chase around cars. Is that such a bad thing? It had a guy playing electric guitar on top of a giant flamethrower, because that's the kind of movie it was. Maybe not for everyone, but I thought it managed to do what it was trying to.

pmoriarty 10y ago
"It had a guy playing electric guitar on top of a giant flamethrower" I'm reminded of the movie Idiocracy.

pmoriarty 10y ago

It got such high marks because mainstream audiences love action and violence. This is crystal clear if you consider the content of blockbusters, excluding dramas and comedies. They're virtually all filled with action and violence. That's what most audiences want.

groby_b 10y ago

The movie is all about subtext. There's a really blatant subtext: about guys blowing shit up, exploiting women, and in general driving the world into total destruction. On its face, it's an exercise in radical feminism. Except, it isn't. Below that, there is the layer showing that women are equally capable of destruction, and that they in fact need to rely on that destruction to reach "the green place". And that's flipped on its head again, because that war machine runs on a mixture of fuel and mother's milk. Max is pretty much annointed with it when he uses mother's milk to wash the blood of his face, after a selfless act. There's a huge "war turned into a nurturing thing" there. It's echoed by the fact that part of Furiosa's body is partially mechanized. (Her replacement arm) Which leads up to what I think is the final message, where the realization strikes that there is no separate, women-only feminist utopia. There is no "women peaceful, men violent" dichotomy. Instead, the world is finally improved by the women reintegrating themselves into the world they left, but on their own terms. It's pretty much a post-modernist deconstruction of war movies and feminism at the same time. It's incredibly heavy-handed about it - all those things have about the subtlety of a hand grenade as a can opener - but it tackled a topic that was important and little talked about. That is why it was a good movie. If that message doesn't speak to you, I'm not surprised you didn't like it. You were not the target audience. (Neither were people who like chase-and-blow-stuff-up movies, and they were vocal about the fact they didn't like it) That doesn't necessarily make it a good movie, but if one liked both the subtext and blowing things up, they had a great time watching it.