FURIOSA

saw the newest trailer at the theater yesterday and it went hard in a way watching it on my tv or phone could not approximate

cinema's back!

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/what-george-miller-has-learned-in-forty-five-years-of-making-mad-max-movies

Great interview, got me hot to see the movie more than any trailer ever could.

Didn't make me want to watch Furiosa but did make me want to watch The Road Warrior on mute (he mentions editing it like a silent movie).

Yeah that was a fantastic read! Miller is very thoughtful and self aware not only cinema, but its craft, and is thoroughly honest and humble in how both have changed over the years, with the ultimate goal of audience pleasure in mind. Brilliant.

Few movies I've ever seen exhibit that breathless and intense first rush coupled with the depth that offers satisfaction through repeated viewings than Fury Road. It's like The Downward Spiral that way for me, and I love how he talks about how intentional it all was both in the backstory and lore, but also in the technical challenges of editing and presentation. The baby with the bathwater part when discussing the issues the guitarist character had with the initial screening was a perfect example. Simply adjusting some of the sound editing fixed the issue, whereas other directors less confident in their craft and movie making instincts might have cut the character entirely.

Tickets acquired for tomorrow afternoon. Kids' last day of school was today, so this'll be a grand way to kick off summer.

Urgent and necessary Fury Road rewatch complete. Bring the fuck on for tomorrow.

Also watching it tomorrow night, late showing too!

i have to see my brother's one act play tonight, and feel like I'm going to beeline to the movies right after....

The reviews are almost all really glowing, and the ones I've read that are a bit more middling or apprehensive still make it sound really good, and don't seem to be judging it as its own film but judging it based upon the Fury Road model of pacing and action.

i'm going in coooooooooold.

10:30 baby

And coming out hot

i kept wanting to rewatch all of the Maxes going in like I did with Fury Road but my brain kept saying "nah man, it'll be more exciting to just go in fresh ,then rewatch everything after'. hope I'm right.

i predict I will see this 5+ times in the theatre

my friends couldn't get it together to make plans around seeing this so i just bought myself a ticket for a 9am imax showing on monday... hope i make it lol

9am? I'm surprised that's even an option. Certainly gonna wake you up!

lmao I did that with Fury Road. booked myself like a 10 or 11 am film and it totally made the rest of my day

First show tomorrow near me is 9:30 AM.

almost tempted to hate it so I can yell MEDIOCRE! at the end

lmao

i am seeing it sunday with my boys. broken foot so no trek into town to the imax for me but happy to support the sad old local picturehouse

No spoilers but I thought this was entirely satisfying and by the end it really lands with an impact. Bit slow and expository in the early going, at least by Mad Max standard, but it keeps inexorably shifting gears and builds quite grippingly. Hemsworth and Taylor-Joy both terrific.

Yup, just got out, awesome and a half, see it immediately etc

I am IN THE THEATRE

I enjoyed it a lot, but it suffers from the comparison to Fury Road. It goes bigger in several ways, but everything that's bigger about it makes it lesser. In particular, the action sequences are even more insane in concept, but that requires much more conspicuous CGI in execution, which blunts the impact. By the end, I was envying the fraction of this movie's audience that'll see it without having seen FR first. Because by normal contemporary action movie standards, it's great.

I really liked Chris Hemsworth's performance too. The character seems to be patterned on Lord Humungus from Road Warrior somewhat--a meathead S&M cult leader, trailed by a meek flunky who acts as sort of a spokesman. But Dementus has a playful, childlike quality that Hemsworth seemed to be having a lot of fun with.

Yeah some amazing lines to deliver, and how he delivers them is part of the fun.

It's funny that they had to ugly him up. He's just too dang handsome otherwise.

They give you a real good look at his fake nose right away. I thought it suited him pretty well, actually

;_;

Loved it.

I feel like there's one visual that will stick with me and I think you all know what it is

Not as focussed as fury road, but beyond that, it was more of the same and that same was pretty bloody fantastic. The long action scene so good it kinda makes you wish the whole movie was just that.

I dunno about that one visual! It was a bit too on the nose for my liking!

Oh and after watching The Fall Guy it was SOOOOOO GOOOOD to hear an ocker aussie accent done right. Kinda made me cringe everytime Ana spoke, taking me straight outa that homely Australian blanket that I had been tucked into by the surrounding dialogue

Second viewing in one hour

Thank God for AMC A-List lol

I really really loved this, it really surprised me because I think I like it even better than Fury Road, love the increased set of characters, love how grotesque and nasty it got (I'm gaining confidence that mainstream culture isn't going to soften too much). Praying Miller can make more of these, really astonishing that he's kicking it so hard

The 150-min length made me pause.

Fortunately it’s backloaded with action, the only time I felt any drag was in the first hour. By the end I wanted more.

the first half hour is one of my favorite sequences in the entire franchise.

after two viewings, I'd rank Furiosa as follows:

Fury Road > 2 > Furiosa > 1 > 3

the only real drawback in this movie is that part of the reason so many of the sequences in Fury Road were so exciting, besides the fantastic staging/practical effects, was that you were palpably rooting for Furiosa's escape and the vanquishing of Immortan Joe, so like, the moments that are purely Immortan Joe-Dementus warring don't have the same impact as the battle scenes where you're seeing the formation of Imperator Furiosa as a byproduct of these battles, such as the sequence where the second in command gets offed and she basically takes over due to sheer survival instinct, then tries to hijack the war machine.

likewise, the typical drawback of any prequel, when you know who bites it and who doesn't sheerly based on who was and wasn't in Fury Road, it blunts impact of battle sequences a little bit. that and you're kind of locked in, design wise, so it's probably the first Mad Max film that didn't really have any significant advancement in the costuming design, vehicular design, tribe makeups, etc.

however....I still enjoyed it a ton, esp on second viewing. particularly, as stated upthread, Dementus's dialogue. he's a remarkably brutal warlord, colossally terrible leader - the only difference between him and Immortan Joe is that Joe knows how to weaponize his brutality to gain subservience whereas Dementus can't conceal the loathing he has for his own soldiers, including killing them intentionally in battle to gain a tactical advantage, which causes him to lose his second-in-command. it does kinda seem funny to me that the first War Machine seems significantly more advanced than the one in Fury Road, with the bobbyknocker and the arms that can lift vehicles off of the ground. maybe they didn't have the leftover parts for that.

1 being 4th seems criminally wrong considering how much I love the original Mad Max but that's more a compliment than anything

Kinda made me cringe everytime Ana spoke, taking me straight outa that homely Australian blanket that I had been tucked into by the surrounding dialogue

tbf she had to kinda match the way Charlize spoke

No I totally get it. Good write up too

Keep wondering if nipples guy is going to become a meme

this was great obviously. didn’t have quite the same relentless pace as fury road but i felt more invested in furiosa’s story more than any of the previous maxes, despite knowing what was going to happen. hemsworth was fun as a madman, was great to see our old friends immortan joe and rictus erectus again (was rictus’s brother scrotus in the first as well? been a while since i watched), and the doof warrior, all too briefly

The organic mechanic too!

and the guy who becomes the head of gastown following the downfall in this movie!

I appreciated Dementus’s attempts to quirk up his brand. I’m the Red Dementus, that’s why my beard has this red dye in it.
You don’t want to see the Dark Dementus!

one day you too can become a history man

Haha i loved that moment. And shes just like nah history man i’m good thanks

The feral bugged out eyes Furiosa gets when she pushes her vehicle to a ridiculous speed at the end is great

Thought it was fabulous, unsurprisingly, given Fury Road is in my top few favourite films easily. Less frenetically iconic than Fury Road (fewer hyperspeed moments, colours less saturated and unnatural), more space for the characters to breathe. But still so many gasping wtf moments of just outrageous visual genius. Plotwise it was as ‘thin’ as Fury Road, but it was emotionally very different, maybe richer. Furiosa is the most well-drawn character in any of the films apart from maybe the first, but she’s also the only one since the first to now have any kind of backstory. Both very similar and very different to Fury Road. Would like to see on the big screen again.

Lady and gentlemans

Furious: A Cinema Max Saga

Heh Ned

I sometimes wonder what the theater going experience is like now for people who go 4-8 times per month — cancellations, audiences, etc etc

(But that’s another thread, of course)

are you wondering about people who go that few times?

lol the movie was like $18 a ticket and i took my 18 and 20 yr old kids and they bought poison treats. so if they pulled Raymond's situation without a refund i would have been uh pretty agitatious. Agitatious Hunt3r is my madmax avatar name.

otoh furiosa was in like 3 or 4 screens of the multiplex and our seats were like, (p)leather recliners? which is fucked up and that's not what i want anyway and the entire main room (80-100 seats? dunno) was empty but for us, i think there were people in the upstairs luxury suite or something they had and... wtf. i tried hard, focused on enjoying the movie and i did, though i'll think hard about doing that again.

ha can you tell i'm not cinema guy

“ Agitatious Hunt3r” is a nickname that should come with a land trident or something

Raymond and anyone else interested: I can't emphasize enough the lack of stress at a screening before noon or on weekday afternoons. If your job and family permit it, do it! I watch at least four movies a month and have never dealt with lines or kids.

we always do mornings on weekends in our downtown cineplex, problem-free to date (touch wood)

and you can have lunch afterwards!

i resented it at first (not exactly a morning person) but now i like it

I go to about 20 movies a month and the only significant problem I’ve had this year was the only time I went outside of my regular clutch of 9 cinemas, to see Furiosa at the proper IMAX. It was the first time I’ve ever pre-bought tickets for a non-festival screening, and had to queue outdoors for half an hour while they sold walk-up tickets to the Science Center that contains the screen, and then exchange the tickets for another day, because the gate for separate entry was unstaffed.

Are you all having the experience of big multiplexes with like 2-3 people working the whole place? At least at the Regal theaters I go to, they’re like ghost towns. (AMC was even worse, but they’ve closed all the AMCs around us.)

yeah. we’re down by a bunch of theaters because the handful of large theaters around town were owned by Carmike, who got bought by AMC, who then later shuttered almost all of them. staffing was abysmal before they did

yeah the local Regal started only opening the bar in the lobby on weekends and Thursdays, usually only two lines open.

AMC I've only ever seen 2-3 people working concessions at the one near my house, but the one at Disney Springs is fairly busy for obv reasons. there's another even lower-traffic AMC whose managers are trying to cut costs so much that they ignore the pre-orders that they advertise through the app, have one guy take the order and make the food, and wait for people to show up asking where the fuck their food is. went there twice, same thing both times - angry line of pre-ordered food people, two people in the actual line. and the line of new customers getting helped first.

Hemsworth pronounces big words as if he just learned them. It works!

― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, May 31, 2024 1:53 PM bookmarkflaglink

and the character even has a guy on staff whose job is to help him out with the big words!

saw this today and really liked it. I wasn't really enthused going in, kinda BECAUSE i love Fury Road so much. i think i was like, "best case, this is a not-as-good Fury Road and i don't really need that to exist." but i was pleasantly surprised to find it was its own thing --- MUCH plottier, surely about fifty times as much dialogue and shuttling between distinct locales rather than primarily focused on The Road itself. it's more of an "adventure" movie, though only in comparison with Fury Road could i be tempted to say it's not an "action" movie.

that is ---- Fury Road is this distilled, minimalist-story, maximalist-execution thing, taking its emotional payoffs to an elemental level. this didn't have anything that knocked my socks off like the conclusion of Nux's arc or the agony of Furiosa halfway through Fury Road, but it's a phenomenal yarn with a compelling lead performance and another incredible showcase of wacky characters, design details, and complications that could ensue in a car chase. the long run time flew by.

I have been thinking about this in terms of Furiosa omens that she is going to wreak havoc in the last act. teddy bears, scarfs, arms left dangling