journal features

movie review - Mad Max Fury Road

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Toronto, 2015.09.01

This is a distant sequel to the '80s Mad Max movies, which were guns-and-motorbikes romps through a post-apocalyptic Earth. With increasing plot complexity, the earlier movies wended their way through the descent of 20th Century society and the slow emergence of something else.

By the time of this fourth installment, almost all signs of the Before Times are gone, there's just an assumption that all the crap that's still around is part of what you get. The main character is captured early on by a bunch of semi-tribal thugs, led by a degenerate with a severe breathing problem and an unhealthy malignant outlook. Now a slave, our hero has to escape, and during the attempt throws in his lot with a group of women who were also fleeing the tyrant.

I enjoyed the plot, pacing, cinematography, unexpected character development, scenery, sets, and the unplanned conclusion. Recommended. For a decent mid-future dystopian sci-fi piece.

rand()m quote

Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure is of less account.

—John Gardner