I will never understand the hype for this movie. It looked great (cinematography) but did nothing else for me on any level. At no point did I ever find it exciting or really enjoy any of the action.
The praise is for
- Insane meticulous practical effects and stunts
- Vivid visuals and precise cinematography that keep the action clear and concise
- Efficient pacing and world-building that uses little exposition to present its setting
- "Show, don't tell" characterizations that give the main characters fully-formed arcs told through their actions and interactions
- A film that uses action as storytelling, without sacrificing story or characters
If there is a word that sums up Mad Max Fury Road, it would be "efficient". Within 15 minutes, we've met the two protagonists, met the villain and gotten a sense of his personality, other characters like Nux and how he fits into this world, gotten a sense of the setting and its weird cultures and customs, and of the movie's tone. All of that delivered with the relentless pacing of one of Fury Road's car chases, with only the barest hint of exposition.
Mad Max Fury Road is efficient, in its plotting and characters and pacing; it's the kind of efficiency usually reserved for lean lower-budget crime thrillers. They say action speaks louder than words, and Fury Road is that maxim in cinematic form, not just in terms of being one hell of an action movie but in how it tells us about the characters and world both through their actions and the action onscreen
And yet it never ceases being a wonderful slice of epic blockbuster spectacle. You can practically envision the storyboards as the action ebbs and flows and the camera frames moments. It's a movie that's practically constant action, one set piece and thrilling beat to the next, and somehow still manages to weaves character arcs and world-building throughout the action.
