Movie Review: Mad Max: Fury Road

Taking one look at the theatrical poster for Mad Max: Fury Road, gives you all the suggestion you need that this won’t be what you expect.

The titular character is masked, facing off screen, his eyes fixed on something entirely different, and partially eclipsed by a shaven headed, badass woman in war paint. She’s close to us, her eyes fixed just beside us, right here with the problem at hand. There is a lot of meaning in that arrangement, as you'll soon see.

The post-apocalyptic genre has seen an awful lot of come and go over the decades, with sizzling hits and staggering failures throughout, all because it’s a polarizing genre. Not everyone gets or enjoys it, and some just can’t stand the bleakness of the concept. Sure, it’s bleak, morbid even, seeing the future of a destroyed world and the barren folk who still live there. For those with a taste for adventures taking place after the world as we know it, you pretty much can’t beat Mad Max: Fury Road. 

More so than any other film in recent years, Mad Max: Fury Road lives up to its title. Usually the words after the colon in a film title seem to be chosen entire at random, like they just chucked a bunch of words like ‘Redemption’ and ‘Revelations’ into a bingo machine and just had at it.

In Mad Max, you better believe there’s a road. And damn is it fucking furious. Right from the ass-kicking opening, our titular hero being captured by crazed white painted desert marauders, you can’t be ready for the chaos that will ensue, as before you know it, you’re thrust along on a 2 hour non-stop, high speed car chase through the wastelands of the world that once was. 

Max has been captured by the foot soldiers of Immortan Joe, the god-like leader of his own personality cult filling an entire city. Immortan Joe holds the thousands under him in rapturous worship, controlling all the water and all the power in the known region. Organizing cargo runs that control the supply of bullets and gas with sister cities across the wastelands, Joe is master of all he surveys, most of all leading the white painted Warboys who serve his wishes with an obsessed zealotism.

Setting his latest tanker full of supplies off on a run across the wastes, Joe basks in the idolatry from his audience, unaware that what he holds most dear is being smuggled out from under his nose by his most trusted of soldiers, the one armed sharp shooter Furiosa.

When Furiosa turns off the planned course in her tanker, taking the precious cargo contained within, the enraged Joe gathers a force unlike the world has ever seen to reclaim his property. The poor-fortuned Max, currently being used as a living blood bag to a sickened warboy, is dragged along, and strapped to the helm of one of a thousand revving cars, trucks and crazed automobile monstrosities that blast out to give chase after Furiosa. From that point on, all you can do is hold on for the ride.

There are great characters at play through the action, and they’re a huge part of what makes the film so enjoyable. Furiosa, the driving (badum-tish) force behind the heroes, is as strong a character as you’ll see on screen today. A brutal woman with a shattered past, a killer shot, and a Mean-Machine style mechanical arm, it’s tough to take your eyes off her. 

The villains of the piece are works of art in themselves. Immortan Joe himself is the echo of a military general crossed with a spiritual leader, bearing a booming voice and a horrific breathing apparatus rigged to his face. He’s a great villain, not just for his silver tongue and commanding screen presence, but because he leads the forces of the wastelands at every turn personally, he’s a constant threat at the heels of the heroes, not a distant enemy, and it makes him a far more enjoyable villain.

Another fascinating personality at play amidst the chase is Nux, one of Immortan Joe’s warboys. Young, feisty, and desperate to please his beloved Joe by any means, Nux drives a flaming classic car armed with explosives and a death wish. Nux is a wonderful alternate viewpoint to see the events of the film through. So different from the cold, determined logic of Furiosa, Nux is impulsive, obsessive and blinded by worship. The travels of Nux through the story is one of the films highlights.

Lost amidst the races and flames and fire blasting guitar players suspended from trucks? Max himself is there too. It’s easy to forget the unfortunate man strapped to the front of Nux’s car. 

Max is an interesting spin on the classic action hero. He’s not as good a driver as Nux, he’s not as skilled a shot as Furiosa. He has no personal vendetta against Joe, he doesn’t know where he’s going, and he’s just along for the ride. He barely grunts a few lines of dialogue through the entire film. Thrust through the storyline set into motion by Furiosa, and contested between her goal and her enemies, Max is a lost soul who we can watch the crazed proceedings through, who never overshadows the rest of the cast. The titular hero is not the most interesting character, so in a remarkably wise writing choice, isn't hamfisted into being main focus. 

The closest thing I can compare Mad Max: Fury Road to, is a great anime film. The old ones, the ultra-violent, apocalyptic worlds populated by the most crazed, disfigured villains you’ve ever seen. Watching Mad Max put me back in the place of unique excitement I first found watching Violence Jack or MD Geist as a kid, that crazy, wild fun that you almost don’t believe you’re seeing for a moment. From start to finish, it’s larger than life, it’s noisy and wild, and It. Does. Not. Stop.

Movie Review: Age of Ultron

When I was 7, my dad gave me a pile of his old comics from when he was a kid. I had Captain Britain, The Defenders, and Dan Dare amongst many others, and I had a lot of favorites. The character that leapt off the page at me though, the character that stuck with me ever since; was the philosophical, maniacal robotic arch nemesis of the Avengers, Ultron.

You can imagine how excited I was when Ultron was revealed as the antagonist in the sequel to Marvel’s immensely successful The Avengers. When his actor was revealed as James Spader, with his gravelly southern voice, I was at first skeptical. I was expecting the announcement to be of an actor with a famously recognizable voice, like Malcolm McDowell.

The moment I saw that first trailer, all my fears were put to rest. Spader’s commanding drawl is so perfectly condescending, intellectually superior, even bored sounding, it fit the character wonderfully.

From that moment on, going into this one, I was excited.

I was not disappointed.

With every step forward into Marvel’s Cinematic Universe, it feels more like the spirit of the comics. From the very beginning, we see the Avengers working together as a coordinated team battling their old enemies Hydra. It’s fluid, and fun and incredibly put together visually. Each member seems to have been developed since the last film, both in the way they function within the team, interacting with their fellow members, and how they act on a personal basis. We see a little more of everyone here, more personal scenes, more fight scenes, more everything.

Most of all, this is a character based movie. It’s wall to wall action, sure, but everyone has their moment of drama, and the dialogue is well written for pretty much every personality involved. It isn’t just Iron Man starring the Avengers anymore, every character has screen time on and off the field of combat. 

Not an easy feat, considering they are juggling five popular main characters, and some major satellite characters too. While Downey Jr’s Stark is still the funniest character in the film, with comebacks and dialogue so sharp and well delivered it almost seems improvised, there’s also great moments from the supporting cast, Don Cheadle’s War Machine standing out in his scenes by far. Conspicuously absent amongst the ensemble are fan favorites (and eternal girlbait) Agent Coulson and Loki, however.

There’s great scenes of casual interplay between the Avengers. The snappy dialogue in hectic combat is even better in casual situations, with great scenes of macho competition, honest flirtation, and scientific ambition. It’s difficult not to love each of the Avengers, with even the less focal ones getting great scenes here.

No time is wasted on early exposition, or introducing characters we already know. The setup is here and ready from point one, and it doesn’t take long for the main plot to kick in after the brilliant opening scene. During a celebratory party in the Avenger’s tower, the first form of the titular villain shows himself. 

At first I was taken aback by the frank quirkiness of Ultron’s dialogue. There’s no technobabble or stereotypical ‘robot character’ dialogue, he’s very human. He’s cocky, even funny. I realized that the character, a product of alien technology mixed with Tony Stark’s automated Iron Army program, has taken on some of Stark’s personality traits, and shares his cynical, comical side. It works. Ultron is an enjoyable villain to watch, he talks like Stark, with his constant megalomania and superiority turned up to eleven. His first scene, analyzing the simple flaws in the existence of the world as we see it, is just brilliant.

By instantaneous access to all the worlds information, Ultron goes from birth to master plan in a matter of minutes, so it all kicks off pretty soon from there on, with a globetrotting series of events pursuing Ultron across the world. The story is kinetic, never staying in one place for long. The Avengers are dragged through a series of trials, facing more new enemies in the Maximoff twins, not named as such here but better known to comic fans as Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch. These two are more enjoyable than I expected, having never been a fan of either before. With some acceptable neutral Slavic accents, they form the basis of Ultron’s cadre of main antagonists. Quicksilver snatching arrows out of the air with his super speed and Scarlet Witch bending the minds of our heroes to show them their worst fears. With a team of heroes as powerful as the Avengers, turning them against one another has long been the classic way to deliver a challenge.

Quicksilver’s inclusion will inevitably be compared to the characters recent appearance in X-Men: Days of Future past, and I have to say, regardless of some fun visual gags, he isn’t half as exciting here. In DOFP, we saw incredible use of the characters super speed in a variety of ways, Age of Ultron’s Quicksilver is just not up to that standard, although he is well performed and enjoyable to watch.

The twin’s inevitable heel/face turn is one of the movies short order points, in my opinion, a little brief, and they are awfully quick to ally with a character that was revealed in a prior monologue to be the source of a lifetime of constant fear and oppression for the two. Also, without the twins as sidekicks, Ultron is the lone antagonist for most of the films runtime, and as great a villain as he is, there’s something video-gamey about the Avengers battling an endless supply of identical robot drones. These large scale battle scenes, all inclusive of almost every character, are a visual masterpiece, certainly, but they don’t have the urgency or intensity necessary in a lot of the situations. We know any member of the Avengers will defeat a hundred of these enemies in a scene like this, so there’s no genuine threat there. The real joy in the films battle scenes come from other sources, like the brilliant punch up between a pissed off Hulk and the long awaited Iron Man Hulk-Buster armour. This one is fantastic. Hulk is his absolute finest here, made genuinely scary by showing us that he isn’t just the strongest thing on the battlefield, but that he’s fast too. Iron Man attempting to stop the rampaging green menace whilst simultaneously trying to protect the undefended city and the populace around them is just great, and will be the main event of the film for many viewers.

The Hulk has a lot of character development here, and along with Black Widow and Hawkeye, forms the Avengers that we see a much more intimate side of. An emerging romance and personal secrets  are introduced that we hadn’t previously seen, and it serves to remind there’s a lot more going on here than just saving the world. 

Speaking of which, the exact peril the world is in, isn’t as clear as it perhaps could have been. Exactly what Ultron’s plan was I felt wasn’t all that obvious until the films finale. It feels at times like the storyline is moving to a time limit we aren’t really seeing. It doesn’t make it any less fun, but the real feeling of tension generated by threat through the second act just wasn’t there.

The film’s final act introduces a major hero in the form of one of the comic’s most mysterious, enigmatic characters. If you’ve made it this far without knowing who that is, I don’t want to spoil it for you. I’ll say he’s played beautifully, with just the right edge of childlike wonder and enlightened gravity that the character needs, by a brilliant British actor who has long deserved a role so big. One perfectly played moment in his first scene had the whole audience cheering, and you’ll know it when you see it.

Age of Ultron may not be the epic entry in the MCU it could have been. It serves to develop characters and move the whole story forward rather than end anything or bring it all together, but it’s sharply written, well put together, and has some truly enjoyable performances by characters both old and new. There’s so much going on in the MCU, with developments in this film leading to at least 4 separate future films, and it’s hard not to want to get involved in all of them. It’s just like reading the comics, you can’t read only one, there's too much fun to be had by diving right into the whole world.

Comic Review: Rage of Ultron

Marvel thought they were clever with last year’s wildly disappointing bait and switch event Age of Ultron, a time travel story that featured almost none of the titular character, but will likely go on to disappoint plenty new comic fans seeking to get in on the new movie of the same name.

It was undoubtedly time for a story that went back to the basics of one of the best villains Marvel has ever created.

The Avengers, Earth’s mightiest (and most profitable) superhero team, only have one true arch-nemesis, and Ultron is a character that deserves great stories, not cash in crossovers. Marvel’s OGN print, a run of one-shot hardback format graphic novels, have just released the story that Age of Ultron should have been. 

A dark and futuristic action packed story, filled with the brooding intensity of the father-son struggle that makes Ultron so interesting, Rage of Ultron chronicles the events following a grand defeat of the titular villain in a climactic battle. After nearly leveling New York in the battle, the Avengers think they’ve seen the last of the cybernetic terror when he is rocketed into space trapped in a broken Quinjet.  Hank Pym, Ultron’s creator and father, has become self-loathing and depressed over his relationship with his son. He desperately wishes to find love and worth in that which he has created, but in Ultron he finds only anger and hate. In his distress, he finds himself driven to create a weapon that can nullify cybernetic brainwaves, snuffing out Artificial Intelligence in a genocidal instant. This in turn forces the whole team to consider the worth of artificial life as true, or disposable. The Vision, Ultron’s own creation and therefore Pym’s grandson, is distraught that Pym can take android life so casually, and tension rises between these two founding members. It brings into question the concept of just how powerful Pym is when dealing with artificial life. He can create it, and just as easily he has the power to snuff it out, and seems prepared to do so.

Far off on the moon of Titan, serial misogynist and satellite Avengers member Starfox is drinking with a horde of beauties when a Quinjet crashes into the surface of the moon, and begins burrowing towards the world’s hyper advanced technological core. In minutes, Titan’s finest are overcome by Ultron’s power, sending Starfox hurtling across the solar system to Earth In search of help. 

Still amidst the repercussions of their argument, the Avengers are threatened with the arrival of the most powerful incarnation of the robotic villain ever seen, an entire planet repurposed and possessed to suit his apocalyptic intentions. Planet Ultron looms down over Earth, ready to begin the systematic conversion of all life in the universe to become one with Ultron. 

As huge as the scale of the story is, Rage of Ultron is chiefly a character driven story. It explores the fascinating relationship between father and son that exists between Pym and Ultron, and the conflicting love and resentment the two bear one another. The tenuous relationship that both share with The Vision is touched upon, as Vision is forced to compare himself to both Pym and Ultron and find he can truly identify with neither.

Although a short story, it has some truly brilliant moments, and is more worth your time than the ten issue adventures of a time travelling Wolverine that Age of Ultron turned out to be. Pym’s descent into hatred is believable, and Ultron’s voice is as brilliantly malevolent and utterly condescending as ever. The reveal of planet Ultron is a damn fine panel, and the use of the new Avengers team over the classic we’re growing tired of is a nice touch. We see the hard headed female Thor throwing her weight around at the discussion table, and Captain America’s new identity as Sam Wilson, previously the Falcon, giving the orders as the incumbent leader of the team. In the tradition of Ultron only being able to be defeated by characters he’s never encountered before (with the notable exception of Scarlet Witch, whose power is by definition improbable), an interesting development occurs when Ultron is faced with an entirely new power, but I won’t spoil that surprise.

The finale is maybe less grand than it could have been, and we’re left with some glaring unanswered questions regarding the resolution, but the ending is emotional. It isn’t a triumph of good over evil, it’s about an entity who was born of anger and hate attempting to understand itself. Right from the beginning, as Pym reminds Ultron that regardless of all the atrocities Ultron has committed, that he still loves his son, is pretty powerful stuff.

Whether you’re looking to remind yourself who the real daddy is when it comes to Avengers villains, or if you’re wanting to get acquainted with him for the first time in anticipation of the film, Rage of Ultron is the book to pick up. Just try not to read all his dialogue in James Spader’s voice.

Movie Review: Furious 7

I haven't seen a Fast and the Furious movie since the first one.
It was in a tiny cinema in Truro, Cornwall with my two best friends, and if I recall, we were the only people in the entire audience.
I remember it being a semi-straight action story about an undercover cop busting a badass street racing crew by becoming a badass street racer himself. I remember seeing posters for the sequels roll by year after year, and assuming every one was basically the same.
I was not prepared for the wholly different monster that the Fast and Furious series has become in the last decade.

From the first scene, I realized it had clearly been a while since I'd seen a real action movie.
The villainous Deckard Shaw is introduced, musing about the concept of revenge from a hospital window where his brother lies broken from some previous encounter with Vin Diesel and his assembled crew. Now Vin Diesel's character does have a name, but when your real name is Vin Diesel, why bother? Upon leaving his reverie, we're treated to a slow motion walk-though as Shaw leaves the hospital, that he's apparently torn apart single-handedly, using nothing but cockney wit and hand held mines that produce explosions larger than C4. He slips into his fabulous Maserati, as the hospital collapses in the background, and declares his intent to tear apart the lives of our heroes.

From this point onward, I can honestly say the series lives up to its name. Vin Diesel and his crew, who are almost entirely new to me as a returning viewer, are an incredibly likable bunch of characters.
It's an easygoing beginning establishing the relative status-quo the characters have been living in since the last movie, with the old hero Brian starting a happy family, and Vin himself trying to rebuild his relationship with the ever sulking Letty, who at some point in the series appears to have lost her memory.
We see vignettes of every day life for these guys, with Brian playing with his son, or Vin taking his wife to a race competition in the desert to prove to her that her memory loss hasn't disable her driving skills. We're taught the cinematography style awfully quick in this scene, where you're either looking at intense close ups of bouncing bikini-clad behinds on soaking dancing girls, the shining curves of a supercar worth more than your house, or Vin Diesel giving a slow frown just off camera.
It all looks incredible, the camera work is amazing, and it's a close to mechanophilliac pornography as you could ever find in a mainstream cinema.

The film does not waste its time with exposition, however. As soon as we know what's up, just enough to get by, Shaw thunders into the setup, blowing up Vin's house (essentially making it look like any other in East LA) and broadcasting his dark warnings known to the crew.
This is the flow that the Expendables wanted to have so badly.
Within minutes, we're back in a tight revenge story, and then the story takes another left turn when a sharp suited G-Man played by Kurt Russel shows up to introduce a new subplot.
Soon enough, Vin and his whole crew are assembled to not only rescue a world class black-hat hacker from an extremist mercenary group, they have to steal state of the art cyber technology back, and use it to find and defeat the malevolent British Bastard who's blowing up their houses.
If you put the action side by side with the Expendables, by the time the crew are flying out the back of a plane over enemy territory in their supercars, we'd still be seeing Stallone and Rourke groan dialogue at each other like two half melted action men.

We're introduced to the most intense federal employee ever when Dwayne Johnson appears, playing the particular flavor of agent who doesn't play by the rules, wears a tiny muscle shirt to cover his massive bulging biceps, and wears a .50 caliber magnum on his hip, probably for dealing with all the stampeding rhinos in Los Angeles. Dwayne hams it up full force in this role, flexing, peacocking and dropping one liners that come straight out of an 80's Van Damme movie. It's like a look back at the old Rock again, and it's brilliant.

With the crew out on their cyber terrorism adventure, the film begins to follow a rhythm. Cobble together a plan, look damn fine doing it, bullets start flying, and then Shaw shows up out of the blue with a new gun or a better car and another huge fight starts. It's silly, the set-up and the plain insanity of the action are so huge that it just makes you angry and excited at the same time. We're introduced to more villains in the form of Shaw's new friends, Minibosses who come in Asian kung-fu fighting and African Mercenary flavors.
The notorious hacker the team rescue is quickly recruited, and when she turns out to be a gorgeous English girl, she becomes motivator for some of the films funniest dialogue as Ludacris and Tyreese Gibson squabble to impress her. The play between these two is actually great, and I was surprised at how good Ludacris was in the whole role.

 The action moves to a global scale, chasing bad guys and the illusive technical macguffin to the most stylized version of Abu Dhabi you've seen since Sex and the City 2 (I can't be the only person to see both these films). You've got your insane high speed battle scene, with the Italian Job style formation of supercars chasing a military primed bus with miniguns in the sides, and you've got your tuxedos and evening gown rumble in the heights of a penthouse atop one of the Etihad Towers. In fact, why only one of them when you can drive your bulletproof car between them?

After a wild ride of foreign affairs, hacking, and Michelle Rodriguez fighting Ronda Rousey in evening gowns (surely the second best thing we could watch the two of them do), everything comes back together in LA for the finale, where Vin and his crew plan to set a trap for Shaw and his men with some fascinatingly nonsensical technological requirements, involving a lot of tearing ass around surface streets in their cars. It's huge, it's crazy. They juggle so many characters and events in this sequence it's a recipe for a cinematic nightmare. With four different vehicles carrying seven different characters, some crossing between vehicles, evading an attack chopper and a super drone armed with rockets, a final climactic showdown between Vin and Shaw, on foot chases all held to a technobabble time limit, and still having time to have Dwayne Johnson bust out of hospital in a stolen ambulance wielding a minigun... you'd think you'd be watching a complete clusterfuck, but somehow, it all works flawlessly. There's no confusion, you know where everyone is, and you know whats going down in every scene. That shows an effort in screenwriting, direction, and editing that came together flawlessly.

It's very hard not to like Furious 7 in almost every way. It's a return to action in a powerful, energetic way. No one will be winning any awards, but the acting is tight, and it fits the feel. If I had to change anything, it would be to make the villains as fun and enjoyable as the heroes. As they are, they're stock. British special forces, African warlord, Asian-Non-Specific-Martial-Arts. I'd also have loved to see Michelle Rodriguez enjoy her character as the rest of the cast get to enjoy theirs. The subplot of her memory loss makes her maudlin and subdued in almost every scene, and I would have liked to have seen as much energy and wisecracking from her as the rest of the crew. She's a powerful female presence and there's a gap left with her being so quiet.

The film closes down on an inevitably poignant note. It's sad that a film so full of fun and playfulness had it's face changed by the tragic loss of its long time star, Paul Walker. The final scenes are a goodbye from the film's stars both in character and out. One last ride on an empty California highway forms the end of the film that Paul sadly never lived to see.

You don't have to have seen the last 6 to have a massive time seeing Furious 7. There's a reason this series has proven to be Universal's most profitable of all time. It's loud, it's exciting, it's heartfelt and the whole thing is a return to a time when action movies really needed nothing more than just that.