Chris At The Pictures

Since the original, relatively low-budget Mad Max blasted onto cinema screens in 1979, George Miller’s dirt-smeared and petrol-injected vision of the future has inspired much; it’s influenced film-makers James Cameron and Guillermo Del Toro, given birth to the Borderlands video game series, and set a standard for how the future looked in the following decades. Even in 2015 references still leak into popular culture, even in unlikely places such as The Spongebob Movie, when a disaster heralds the end of the world and jovial Mr. Krabs exclaims ‘Welcome to the apocalypse…I hope you like leather!’ So with superstar Tom Hardy replacing the once unknown Mel Gibson as Max Rockatansky and a far larger budget in tow, has Miller managed to make his influential universe fresh again?

Thankfully, the answer is a heartily bellowed ‘Yes’. Miller has revitalised the formula by throwing the old one under a spike-covered truck before digging it out of the dirt, dusting it down, giving it a fresh coat of paint and revving up the engine once again. Max, given new life by a coarse and world-weary Hardy is still the beacon of calm amongst the crushing insanity of the post-apocalyptic world, whilst the struggle he faces is to help those in need to amend for his past mistakes. Charlize Theron is also magnetic as Furiosa, a shaven-headed badass sporting a monstrous metallic limb that would give even Darth Vader pause for thought.

Furiosa comes head-to-head with Max as she attempts to escort a group of women freed from a life of slavery and forced breeding across the dusty wastes to the fabled ‘green places’. Hot on their trail is a veritable army of psychotic drivers featuring manic ruler Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) and war-boy Nux (Nicholas Hoult). Nux’s wide-eyed ferocity versus Max’s gravel-toned serenity makes for some enjoyable viewing, but Furiosa and her troupe take centre stage, featuring a surprisingly capable Rosie Huntington-Whitely and an unrecognisable Zoë Kravitz.

But the humans aren’t the real stars of Fury Road, those would be the action sequences. There’s no other way to say it: they’re perfect. Every single movement of the monumental vehicular warfare is a piece of expertly controlled chaos. Miller’s approach to action is the anti-Michael Bay: every explosion means something, every character has a discernible motivation, and we root for the right people. Even as jagged wrecks rock the scenery and screaming goons leap from hideously cannibalised cars, you know exactly what’s going on and who’s fighting who. I remember first watching The Raid 2 and wondering how the car chase was achieved without actual loss of life, but Fury Road makes it look like child’s play.

Composer Junkie XL – whose music for 300: Rise of an Empire and Divergent was overly-bombastic and bland as anything – finally comes into his own here, the crashing drums and rumbling bass sounding home sweet home amongst the madness of Miller’s torn landscapes. The cinematography, a frenetic handheld affair punctuated by breath-taking wide shots reaches out and yanks the viewer through the frame in an experience more immersive than any 3D could possibly achieve.

Mad Max: Fury Road shows Fast & Furious how the laws of physics should be broken, explains to Borderlands what crazy really means, and demonstrates that the fourth film in a franchise needn’t run out of steam. Watching it is akin to having your face thrust into a blender while heavy metal screeches in your ears, in the best possible way. Just one question: when do we get a Flaming Guitarist action figure?

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Director Bryan Singer picks up the reins of the X-Men franchise for Days of Future Past, a story that brings together the disparate elements of the franchise into a single narrative. With mankind and mutant-kind on the edge of extinction by an army of machines known as the Sentinels, Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and Magneto (Ian McKellen) join forces in an effort to undo the past and safe the future by sending Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) back into the past to convince the young Xavier (James McAvoy) to help him stop the murder that causes the creation of the Sentinels.

It is remarkable just how much the film benefits from Singer and writer Simon Kinberg’s return. Having been joined at the hip for the first two instalments (arguably the strongest of the franchise), they return to bring the collective elements of all the films back together, simultaneously redeeming some of the flimsier elements, tying up loose ends and paying homage to each and every previous film. Another welcome return to the film is John Ottman as composer: the reprisal of the X-Men 2 theme as the opening credits rolled was all I needed to re-assure me that I was in for a treat. 

Where characters are concerned, we have a whole rogues’ gallery of past and present faces to enjoy. Stewart and McKellen reprise their roles with ease, Jackman is still the definitive Wolverine and James McAvoy was born to play the young Xavier. Whilst some of the newer characters don’t have much in the way of development, their unique abilities make them interesting to watch, especially Quicksilver, who delivers the majority of laughs in the movie. Peter Dinklage, still riding high on his success in Game of Thrones also puts in a fine performance as the suave but suspicious Bolivar Trask. Everyone involved appears to be having the time of their lives, and all give it their best acting chops despite increasingly ridiculous circumstances.

The blend of the past and future storylines is a seamless integration of the best parts of the X-Men story, the 1970’s sections keeping a high level of period detail and the future setting basking in a darkly apocalyptic style. But perhaps the strongest of many brilliant elements of the film is that while it does have its share of loud, effects heavy moments, the climax ditches the bombastic headache that most blockbusters would opt for and instead provides a quieter, more thoughtful finale that manages real moments of genuine emotion and darkness while giving cause for a smile here and there.

X-Men: Days of Future Past is a remarkable achievement in superhero movies, providing terrific entertainment, genuine emotional weight and managing to balance a wide spectrum of characters without sagging under the weight. It gives an entire franchise a clean slate, looks back lovingly at the past whilst opening up a whole host of opportunities for its future.

5 stars