Fury Road

T and I finally went to see the new Mad Max movie (Fury Road) the other night.  Fury Road was not nearly as good as the gloriously futuristic Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, from 1981.  Fury Road fell short because it has a few of the corn-ball, Disneyesque elements that ruined Beyond Thunderdome for me.  

OK, I realize I am probably losing my audience right now.  Yes, this is a 63 year old woman writing a review of a post apocalyptic action movie.  Let me ask you to keep an open mind for a few moments, though. I am trying to figure out WHY I liked Fury Road.  If you have any sense of the absurd at all, the fact that a 63 year old woman can like a movie like this is weird enough that it justifies further consideration.

• It was fun, fast paced, and loud
• I like it when the bad guys get blown up
• The bad guys looked like neo-nazi skin heads, making it even more satisfying to see them get blown up
• The skinheads go into battle with a heavy metal music war-vehicle featuring skin head drummers on back and a headbanger guitar player tied to the front playing a huge red electric guitar
• The skin head army is motivated to fight and die in battle by their leader's exhortation that dying in battle is the price they must pay for entrance into paradise, Valhalla (giving even Vikings a bad name!). 

Gotta love all that!  Most compelling for me, Fury Road includes a story line wherein women are trying to help each other.  Women are trying to be heroic.  It alluded to actual female culture (a rarity in any kind of movie) and there was no great romance.  Post apocalyptic, indeed!

Fury Road's good guys included women of various ages, including multiple gray haired women. I liked that, too; although they most certainly did not develop the characters for the old women.  Come on, it is a pop culture movie and it is NEVER going to get it right or be great art.  But at least they acknowledged the older women as courageous and worthy human beings. They also put them on motorcycles and gave them guns. That's new.