Fury Road, Spoiler-Free!

I will be writing a much more in-depth article about this movie later today, which I will link when I'm done. That article will be spoiler-tastic, so be aware of that before clicking. (The spoilerriffic version is available here.)

Having said that, I felt like I should say something about it for the no-spoilers people who haven't seen it.

So here it is..

GO.

FUCKING.

SEE.

IT.

Ahhhhh, that feels better.

So, Fury Road is the best action movie I've seen, maybe ever.

The cinematography is astonishing - it conveys vast expanses of post-apocalyptic landscape with wide, sweeping shots, while keeping the action sequences tight, focused, and personal.

It's utterly relentless in pacing; literally thirty seconds into the movie, a chase starts, and after that point, there is never more than five minutes of the two hour runtime at once where there's no action.

Brace yourself.

The screenwriters did a stellar job in developing character with minimal dialogue, and Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron absolutely knocked it out of the park; both their characters are fully realized, fully voiced, and neither of them has over a hundred lines of dialogue in the entire movie. The smaller characters have in some cases as few as six lines, and yet carry distinct personalities; this is professional-grade screenwriting.

The story is cohesive, intelligent, and compelling - and there is one, which may surprise people not familiar with this franchise.

But nothing matters more, in this movie, than the stunts, and I want to say something here.

CGI is great for fire.

CGI is great for backgrounds or artwork.

CGI is not great for stunts.

The Kennedy / Miller production team just proved that in a defining way.

If your eye looks at a fire effect and sees CGI, it doesn't take you out of the story; you look, realize it's augmented, and go "ok, but there's fire there."

If your eye sees someone catapulted out of the back of a moving vehicle and you detect CGI, your brain rejects the impact of the whole scene.

Doing the stunts for real makes the whole movie have far more dramatic impact, and draws much more visceral response from the audience. When someone falls under the wheels, your whole body clenches in sympathy.

Prepare yourself.

Because nobody, nobody, ever, has done a car chase the way George Miller does car chases.

This movie is twenty minutes of story, character growth, and high-concept discussion of how to regain a foothold for civilization in a world gone insane, and an hour and forty minutes of the most screamingly testicle-or-ovary-as-applicable-shivering car chase ever filmed.

I expect that nobody will ever do it better.

Go see this movie, even if you're not into action movies.

It's worth your $8.