When the buzz on Mad Max:Fury Road is "pure cinema", any skeptical person might be skeptical. Finding so many elements up my taste alley (boundless desert highway eaten up by maniacs, post-apocalyptic sci-fi, burnt out motors), I had to wonder why I didn't fan out on the series sooner. I imagined Fury Road, at best, ingeniously rehashing the cult-ish pleasures of the originals. I did not imagine Fury Road might feel transcendent - one of the best action movies I've seen in a long time, the best sci-fi (and fantasy) I've seen in a long time, for being just about one of the best films in general that I've seen in a long time. 

For wonks of all stripes, Fury Road is a bounty of auteur gifts; restlessly roving camerawork that delves and burrows, spatially and temporally exact action sequences, diagetic guitar riffs, acrobatics (Miller has a fondness for marionettes vectoring through space - see Babe 2). The deliciously deranged world comes alive through detailed production that shows not only how lovingly but how logically the framework is constructed, an atypical touch in the genre. A high paced spectacular (the bus can't stop) demanding such economical and primarily visual storytelling seems like the least an action director should do. Miller achieves a level of subtle characterization and narrative consistency that maybe more directors could aspire to.

In a nod to the earlier films, death is sudden and brutal. Miller dangles safety in front of his characters only to snatch life away - a move taken from the horror movie book of twists -  with nary a time for a tear. Used judiciously, each death is designed to unsettle the audience as a film like Avengers, where every kill is supernatural and effortless, cannot. Furiosa could easily have become a caricature of evisceration, but instead Charlize Theron inflects every scene with a desperation and determination that signals real danger.

Regarding complaints of co-opted bad-assery, the film is highly sympathetic to women and a thorough textual viewing will reveal a case for feminism has already been made. However, the director is first and foremost, driven to portray necessity in a world of scarcity. And while Miller's Ripley is securely cast as the central bad-ass, the casualties of environmental disaster extend to Everyone - each character unique in their coping mechanisms. Survival is universal. 

Let's not forget, that the first scenes show Max brutally caged and violated for his very lifeblood. Tom Hardy (the most handsome yet most repellant actor I have ever seen and love to hate), plays Max as an outsider sidelined by survival instincts. His ticks, grunts, and nervous eyes, remind me of Mel Gibson in iconic mode, skitchy, and not at all the relatively straight kid that was Gibson in the first Mad Max films. This feral dramatization is one that I didn't expect, extending the subtext of Max's journey, contextualizing Max's trauma against Immortan Joe's ideology of the masculine sublime.

Thematically then...

"We don't need another hero
We don't need to know the way home
All we want is life beyond
The Thunderdome"