Mad Max: Fury Road - Review Thread

Given this ecstatic reception, it may seem ludicrous to suggest that, awesome though Fury Road clearly is, it could have been a whole lot better. Nonetheless, after recently seeing the film a second time, I’m more convinced than ever that it’s missing one absolutely crucial element: Mel Gibson.

That may not sound like an especially contrarian viewpoint. It probably isn’t, in a general sense. I haven’t seen a lot of people express relief that Gibson was replaced by Tom Hardy (unless they now despise Gibson so much, based on his offscreen behavior, that they don’t ever want to see him act again). On the other hand, neither have I read many reviews that consider Gibson’s absence a serious liability. For the most part, it seems to have been shrugged off as irrelevant—Charlize Theron’s Imperator Furiosa is the movie’s true hero, and Max spends much of the film as a human IV stand, so who cares, really? Sure, it might have been preferable to have Gibson reprise his signature role, but the film doesn’t need him.

Such indifference strikes me as a failure of imagination. Admittedly, when you’ve got a great movie staring you in the face, it’s difficult to conceive of a hypothetical version that’s even better. So let’s try it from the opposite angle, using another popular 2015 sequel: Creed. Sylvester Stallone would never have allowed this, but imagine that Creed had been made exactly as it exists, except with a different actor in the role of Rocky Balboa. Make it any actor you like—someone you think might be a superb Rocky. Would the movie still work? Possibly. Might it even be terrific? Sure. But would it command the same emotional response, founded upon decades of accumulated affection for the series and for its former protagonist, as the Creed we actually have? Not a chance in hell.