The Gaming Den

Hiram McDaniels wrote:Mad Max Fury Road: seconded. That movie is fucking goddamn shitbastard amazing in every way, and everyone who isn't a fuck-brained MRA loves it.

Absolutely agree.

Is it wrong that I am beginning to look askance at people expressing vague dissatisfaction with the movie in other online communities? I find myself wondering if they're dog-whistling MRA bullshit.

violence in the media wrote:

Hiram McDaniels wrote:Mad Max Fury Road: seconded. That movie is fucking goddamn shitbastard amazing in every way, and everyone who isn't a fuck-brained MRA loves it.

Absolutely agree.

Is it wrong that I am beginning to look askance at people expressing vague dissatisfaction with the movie in other online communities? I find myself wondering if they're dog-whistling MRA bullshit.

Oddly... not really. In general, there is no accounting for taste and good people like bad movies and vice versa and all that. But... Fury Road is like watching The Road Warrior and Aliens at the same time. There's a campaign by really horrible and stupid people to try to get it shouted down, so if someone doesn't like it in a public forum the chances of them having an honest and reasonable opinion that they didn't like the film vs. the chances of them being an extremely terrible person just aren't very good.

I would accept someone saying they didn't like it because "After my adrenal glands dried up I found myself vomiting uncontrollably and had to leave the theater" or "the unexpected deaths of characters was sufficiently gut wrenching that I felt sad to the point of discomfort, like watching Old Yeller." But to say that they were somehow disappointed by Fury Road just doesn't pass the smell test.

-Username17

Yeah, that's pretty much what I've been thinking. Especially when the comments are about how it "isn't really a Mad Max movie, since he's playing the sidekick" or there's the preemptive deflection that their wife was even more unimpressed with the movie than they were.

I know someone who said they had a hard time just letting go and going with the over-the-top nature of it. Of course, they still liked it, just not as much as everyone else.

violence in the media wrote:Especially when the comments are about how it "isn't really a Mad Max movie, since he's playing the sidekick"

Sexism is certainly behind a lot of the criticisms, but I also suspect that a distressing number of people have serious misconceptions about what the old Mad Max films were like in the first place. The Mad Max films are one of the many cases where a trendsetter is cool in part because it is just barely deep enough to do double duty as a deconstruction of the power fantasies it helped inspire. The lone bad ass in a world with no desk jobs is wank fodder for teenagers and goofy survivalist types the world over and back in film club I found that my peers who mostly knew Mad Max second hand through "California Love" and sundry imitators were deeply disappointed by The Road Warrior. That's because at heart Mad Max is a deeply reactionary character. He's a good man who has been reduced to a 1,000 yard stare and a jacket by a cruel and violent world. His true victories aren't a matter of personal glory, they're a matter of rediscovering the personal responsibility that separates him from the real maniacs in the series. The movies don't sit well with people who unabashedly cheer for Dirty Harry.

Should one rewatch the old films before watching the new one?

It'd be fun but by no means necessary. There's a shit load of call backs, Easter eggs and cameos but the movie stands on its own just fine.

Where, chronologically, does Fury Road take place in the series? Between 1&2, or between 2&3?

Game On,
fbmf

From what I've heard, the director is saying that it's not connected at all to the previous Mad Maxes, but then again, that's authorial intent and who cares about that?

It's like Prometheus all over again.

fbmf wrote:Where, chronologically, does Fury Road take place in the series? Between 1&2, or between 2&3?

Game On,
fbmf

After 3, if you put a gun to his head and force him to give a chronology. Otherwise, it doesn't really matter.

The Mad Max movies are a wasteland legends being told long after the fact by people who are far removed from the events.

Shrapnel wrote:http://www.kungfury.com/

Seconded.

Here it is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS5P_LAqiVg

I laughed at that so hard I have a sore throat now.

Leress wrote:

Shrapnel wrote:http://www.kungfury.com/

Seconded.

Here it is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS5P_LAqiVg

It became a bit too unrealistic for me when dinosaurs with no feathers showed up.

I had a few things I was disappointed with Fury Road. Mostly that there are so many interesting characters that I wanted to learn more about, and that the camera was too shaky in a lot of scenes.

That being said, for an action movie there were a lot more interesting characters that I cared about than what is typical. I wish people would stop with the shakycam crap, I haven't done a rigorous survey but I don't know one person that likes that...

Was sad I couldn't see it again this week, wasn't in the budget.

Shaky Cam was good in Evil Dead 2. In almost all other movies, it is terrible.

-Username17

I think Cloverfield was the apex of terrible shakycam. It gave my girlfriend at the time motion sickness that made it hard for her to watch in the theatre.

Kung Fury could be multiple different movies. Its rapidly changing plot threads were part of the joke (brought home at the end when they conclude the first plot thread as though it were the emotional core of the film after having completely ignored it since its introduction), but each of those plot threads could individually be its own crazy, over-the-top 80s movie. You could have a Kung Fury and Triceracop buddy cop movie and a Kung Fury in Tron-esque cyberspace with Hackerman movie and a Kung Fury in the viking age with romance with Barbariana or Katana or whoever movie and a Kung Fury vs. Hitler's kung fu Nazi army movie, and all you would have to do for any of these is give a bit more screentime to the plot and characters vaguely alluded to in the Kung Fury movie they actually made.

Although the Kung Fury vs. Hitler movie would mostly just be a rehash of what they've already done here. Unlike the other plot threads, Hitler was actually established as an antagonist early on, had a plot tie-in with Kung Fury's backstory, and reaching and defeating Hitler remained Kung Fury's goal for the entire film, so Kung Fury vs. Hitler would mostly just be the movie we actually got with a bit less random digressions into five-minute scenes that could be entire movies and a bit more build-up of Hitler's plan and Nazi minions.

They were planning on making it a feature length film if the Kickstarter reached $1 million, but alas, twas not meant to be (they raised just over $630,000, which actually exceeded their original $200,000 goal).

FrankTrollman wrote: I would accept someone saying they didn't like it because "After my adrenal glands dried up I found myself vomiting uncontrollably and had to leave the theater" or "the unexpected deaths of characters was sufficiently gut wrenching that I felt sad to the point of discomfort, like watching Old Yeller." But to say that they were somehow disappointed by Fury Road just doesn't pass the smell test.

-Username17

Yeah...if you're the type of person who wants to see a Mad Max movie in the theater, I don't see anyway that you could feasibly be disappointed by the film as a whole; unless you feel threatened by the idea of women with agency or something.

To be honest, I try to avoid the movie industry hype machine so I can be pleasantly surprised when I go to the theater. Initially I wasn't very excited by Mad Max: Fury road because I thought it was just going to be another soulless reboot of a beloved childhood memory...all the way up until I saw the word's "A George Miller Film" on the screen, at which point an erection exploded from my pants like a magic beanstalk and has not subsided since (seriously doctor...what do I do about a movie induced priapism? It's freaking me out.).

violence in the media wrote:Yeah, that's pretty much what I've been thinking. Especially when the comments are about how it "isn't really a Mad Max movie, since he's playing the sidekick" or there's the preemptive deflection that their wife was even more unimpressed with the movie than they were.

Mad Max works better as an ancillary character, or a catalyst. We don't need his story because we already know it. Mad Max movies are about the wasteland that he wanders, the people he encounters, and about Max rediscovering little bits of his humanity along the way.

hyzmarca wrote: The Mad Max movies are a wasteland legends being told long after the fact by people who are far removed from the events.

Oh that's good. I like that.

I saw Fury Road with my brother and sister-in-law yesterday, and it was indeed as awesomazing as every here says it is. It is perhaps the most adrenaline-fueled movie I've ever seen.

I really liked the character of the War Boy who join's Max's party.

I just watched Fury Road this afternoon and was thrilled. I totally get why people wanted a good car chase game in the IMHO section.

My friend was focused on the guitar guy in the movie. That was, among some of the other crazy things, the person he spoke about the most. Mad Max aside DBZ Abridged continues to make DBZ into something entertaining to watch.

MGuy wrote:DBZ Abridged continues to make DBZ into something entertaining to watch.

It's amazing how they've come along. From silly gags to...sometimes silly gags, but their jokes have gotten less gags and more snappy writing. With some badass stuff in there, too.

I enjoyed that Kung Fury short, but I think that Danger 5 did the "faux-retro 80s mash up played for laughs" thing rather better. The Oldboy fight scene was fun, though.