I gotta admit that I haven't seen the original low budget Mad Max movies in a long looong time. The trailer for this new one caught my eye... it looks like some kind of post apocalyptic cirque du soleiu. Hard not to get a little jazzed when seeing it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_4nzm9ICuoSo I was cautiously optimistic. I read a little bit about it and was surprised to realize this "reboot" is being directed by the same dude who directed the first three (George Miller). What a strange career that guy has had. He does those low budget "Mad Max" movies... follows it up with "Witches of Eastwick" and "Lorenzo's Oil"... hmmm, ok... Then does the two "Babe" (with the cute pig) kid movies followed by the two "Happy Feet (dancing penguin)" movies... Wait, what?.... then back to Max Max. Strange career.
So apparently this movie is some kind of hybrid sequel/reboot/spiritual re-imagination of the original two. He had wanted to do it for years with Mel Gibson reprising his role and inevitably (for age/scandal reasons) decided to re-cast with Tom Hardy. Kinda going the James Bond route with it.
Fascinated to learn that the main baddie in this one:
Is played by the same actor who played the the main baddie in the original:
... Though as a different character. So yeah... sort of a spiritual re-imagination of the first two movies.
The early reviews are in. So far on Metacritic based on 21 reviews it has a 88/100:
http://www.metacritic.com/movie/mad-max-fury-road ... I expect it has to drop a bit, because 88 is insanely high. For context, generally only oscar contenders like Selma (89), Birdman (88), Whiplash (88) score that high. American Sniper and "Theory of Everything" both got a 72. Generally you don't see action films score anywhere near that. "The Dark Knight" scored an 82. Movies like The Avengers score in the 60s. I would have expected this to be something like the movie "300" which scored a 51... so the rave reviews are a bit surprising.
So far on Rotten Tomatoes it has a 98% based on 54 reviews.
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/mad_max_fury_road/ The only "rotten" review gave it 2 out of 5 stars and commented, "Noisy, explosive and visually spectacular but depressingly hollow"... so it's good to know the worst-case scenario here is "visually spectacular". Best-case scenario?... respected critics like Richard Roeper are calling it one of the best action movies ever.
I'm pumped to see it.