Badland Road To Fury

[Shawnna Franz]

Notto be confused with that other post-apocalyptic Nicholas Hoult movie with 'fury' and 'road' in the title: Bad Land foregoes Mad Max Rockatansky in favour of Michael Shannon (no stranger to madness, if his General Zod or Iceman are anything to go by), playing a recovering alcoholic drying up in a world without water. In that sense, it's more Waterworld than Mad Max, only suffering from the polar opposite of the problem Kevin Costner suffered from in the former. No, not being rubbish, the other problem: lack of water.

Its title and marketing may be cashing in on the much bigger, more well-known Mad Max: Fury Road, but Bad Land (formerly, less derivatively, Young Ones) is far from the Asylum-type rip-off one might expect. The presence of classy actor Michael Shannon at least ensures that, being utterly terrifying even when playing a down-to-Earth dad and farmer. Granted, his dark past at least justifies my being intimidated by the man, even if Hoult is ostensibly the villain of the piece. The About A Boy star is never particularly threatening, but he does a good line in slime, and we can at least savour waiting to see Shannon punch his face in.

It may have the trappings of sci-fi apocalyptica, but Bad Land is a Western, through and through. Those who don't enjoy the genre are unlikely to be won over by Jake Paltrow's own entry, in spite of fine performances from Shannon and Hoult and frequently beautiful cinematography. Bad Land will be completely overshadowed by that other film I keep mentioning, but it doesn't entirely deserve to be. Slow and glacial as it may be, it's classy, intelligent and well-made. The real drought is in story and confidence in marketing the thing.

Some very good points in this, however the little girl and woman is his family from the first film, this film (and the game) are put into the large expanse of time between road warrior and thunder dome.

His mind broken in warrior as he starts to loose grip, fury road and then the game see him in a full blown struggle and finally after years of just surviving you have the end of thunder dome where he is left with nothing but the first glimmer of piece as he finally succeeds in saving an innocent.

I do believe a similar point was all over the forums or maybe that was a game forum haha. Either way, thunder dome is still the last chronological film.

THE PLOUGHBOY

An eh wagon jacked up over an off-road frame and rigged with harpoon and hydaulic-driven plough to tag and drag its victims to an eventual standstill and inevitable harvest. Once a Citadel convoy vehicle the Ploughboy was sold, stolen or salvaged and repurposed as a tractor in the bullet farm plains, tilling the bloodied earth for spent cartridge, cartilage and corpse.

BUICK

Beaten and polished, stripped and shining, straddling an extended rear diff and double rear wheels, the Buick is the standard bearer and personal guard for the Gigahorse and Immortan Joe. A back up crew of trusted war boys hunker close by to supply cover fire from a slew-ring turret and anti-aircraft gun, ever ready to make the leap as reinforcement or retaliation.

MACK

Mack is the Citadel tow truck, the bulldog in charge of sweeping behind the Armada collecting and recycling the spoils of war and loading the car carrier lumbering behind the offensive with precious salvage. Like the rest of the fleet, Mack is a heavy-duty recovery vehicle not immune to the call to arms and hell-bent on hurling harpoons and a hail of bullets at any and all caught unawares on the Fury Road.

PRINCE VALIANT

A fire-breathing valiant charger V8 muscle car of Australian heritage. With paint stripped away by sandstorm and speed and sporting the rusted metal styling of flame over bonnet and guard, the car is a Gastown emissary armed with high-volume flamethrower and Molotov grenades and a crew of three intended for initial assault and high-speed chase.

PLYMOUTH ROCK

The Buzzrds were the basest of the tribes of the Wasteland, hyenas harrying the hunted with spike and shard, swarming in packs, snapping and sawing at anyone foolish enough to venture into the badlands surrounding the last road. Carrion eaters, they waged the war of scrap merchants not mechanics, sought not salvage and rebirth but raw material to consume; Saw steel not sedan, meat not man.

DOOF WAGON

Every army has a little drummer boy to keep the beat and stir the heart and the war boys of the Wasteland are no exception. Here, mounted drummers pound a Taiko beat on huge resonators built of aircon duct, while coma the Doof Warrior, blind and disfigured, slung in a web of bunny and spread-eagled before a stack of speakers, hurtles across the desert landscape on a repurposed 88 M.A.N. missile carrier. The wail of the banshee, the distorted lick and demented driving bass, the call to arms and the baying for blood, all music to the ears and first of the mill. A symphony, a song, a single scream, the soundtrack to the end of civilization. But we go out dancing.

Tom Hardy gives a mixed performance as Max up until a point where things seem to click in place and we see him fully immersed into the role Mel Gibson played in The Road Warrior. Our introduction to his performance is built on the realization that he is damaged and broken. This version of Max may not be what devoted fans are expecting, but by the end of the film Tom Hardy earns every bit of his role as Max.

In the way that the Road Warrior is about the refinery commune and Beyond Thunderdome is about the plane crash survivors, Fury Road concerns itself with a group of women that have become slaves to a tyrant. Charlize Theron is Furiosa, a warrior woman with an expertise for making supply runs by driving a big rig for her boss. After years of serving her boss she decides to rebel and this gets the main plot of the film rolling. Once Immortan Joe realizes one of his best has gone rogue, the war party assembles and the chase is on.

Read more about: Action, Adventure, Charlize Theron, Furiosa, george miller, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Immortan Joe, mad max, mad max fury road, Max Rockatansky, movie review, Nicholas Hoult, post-apocalyptic, Tom Hardy

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