| Alyssa Toomey 15. Mai 2015 – 09:12
After much anticipation, George Miller‘s Mad Max: Fury Road is finally here, premiering at the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday to a widely positive reception.
Starring Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy, the film is a reboot of the 1979 flick, in which Mel Gibson appeared as the titular character. Zoë Kravitz, Nicholas Hoult, Riley Keough, Rosie Huntington-Whitely and Megan Gale also star in the post-apocalyptic action movie.
Currently, the film has a 99 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and according to The Hollywood Reporter the Cannes audience spontaneously erupted into applause three separate times during the premiere.
But, what do critics have to say about the film, which Miller has described as an “almost a continuous chase” from the previous sci-fi flick? Let’s take a look:
WATCH: Check out the trailer for Mad Max: Fury Road
Roger Ebert praised Miller for his expertise in directing the reboot: “From its very first scenes, Fury Road vibrates with the energy of a veteran filmmaker working at the top of his game, pushing us forward without the cheap special effects or paper-thin characters that have so often defined the modern summer blockbuster. Miller hasn’t just returned with a new installment in a money-making franchise. The man who re-wrote the rules of the post-apocalyptic action genre has returned to show a generation of filmmakers how they’ve been stumbling in their attempts to follow in his footsteps.”
Likewise, Rolling Stone‘s Peter Travers called the movie a “breathtaking reboot” in addition to applauding Theron’s performance: “Hardy and Theron make a dynamite team, but this is Theron’s show. She’s a knockout in a sensational performance that blends grit and gravity and becomes the film’s bruised heart and soul. The feminist core may surprise fanboys, but it lifts the film far above the testosterone herd.”
VIDEO: Wait, there’s more sneak peeks of Mad Max: Fury Road
New York Times‘ A.O. Scott also praised Miller for the script and the film’s sound storyline: “Viewers raised on the more baroque, digitally enabled forms of blockbuster spectacle are likely to admire the relative simplicity of “Fury Road,” while aficionados of the traditional slam-bang methods will revel in its coherence. Even in the most chaotic fights and collisions, everything makes sense. This is not a matter of realism — come on, now — but of imaginative discipline. And Mr. Miller demonstrates that great action filmmaking is not only a matter of physics but of ethics as well. There is cause and effect; there are choices and consequences.”
Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan said the film will leave you “speechless”: “Hardy, the villainous Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, is especially good at these feral roles, and Theron is his match here. The real star of Mad Max: Fury Road, however, is filmmaker Miller, who dreamed the mighty dream that is this film for more than a decade before being able to bring it to life. It has been worth the wait.”
Similarly, The Hollywood Reporter‘s Todd McCarthy praised ever aspect of the movie. “The first two Max features ran barely 90 minutes, and it takes guts and real confidence to dare push a straight chase film with very little dialogue to two hours. But Miller has pulled it off by coming up with innumerable new elements to keep the action compelling: the pitiless mindset of a brutish society; bending poles sticking up from vehicles that allow marauders atop them to be lowered into enemy trucks for hand-to-hand combat; an insane heavy metal guitarist affixed to one of the Citadel’s rigs, whose raucous wailing and flame-throwing ability perfectly express this world’s extremity; and a central woman, missing one arm, who’s as tough-minded as any man but also retains a special link to a remote society of women she intends to find.”
Will you be heading to theaters to see Mad Max this weekend? Tell us in the comments!
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