a review by the Azure-Winged Magpie Imperator Psychiosa!
^{Big thanks to dopey for his help with the pictures and styling and everything!}

(The banner picture up above is from the comic, in case you lot were wondering).

Opening Notes / What’s Going On

[Click here to skip to the film review]

WARNING: SUPER-EPIC FAN-ISM INCOMING

…but first!

Note: This is a very special post, you lot! Know why? It’s The Corvid Review‘s 99^th solo film review! (Though, counting the Marvel roundups we did, we’re at 118 total film reviews right now).

This is where I’ll be signing off for the month (because I messed up and thought Creed 2 was out here in the UK this week and not next week ^{no Golden Ticket either… (o__o✿)} ) and handing things back to the Crow.
(Don’t any of you worry though. I’ll be back!)

He’s got something super-special tucked away under his wing for the Big Centi, so expect something good to show up in the next few days! (Don’t worry. I beat him up so that he’d celebrate something for once). And once it’s done, we’ve got so much coming up! We’ve got reviews and analyses and short stories and authors and a WHOLE BUNCH OF NEW THINGS coming your lot’s way!

Here’s how everything looks right now:

So yeah… we’ve been a busy little team for the two years we’ve been flapping about. And the plan is to get some of those names back around to chuck some posts your way. The last time we had anyone apart from the two of us masterminds (and the Swan(!)) working on posts was during our epic Marvel Cinematic Universe Roundup a few months ago. So… this gonna be good.

AND! How better to rev up all the celebrations (which I totally haven’t already started on^hic!) than to take a good long look at a film that goes…

DADADADADADADA DA DA !!! DADADADADADADA DA DA !!! 
pee-pees on a lizard! 

to

DADADADADADADA DA DA !!! DADADADADADADA DA DA !!! 
donates blood like a good citizen! 

to

DADADADADADADA DA DA !!! DADADADADADADA DA DA !!! 
breaks the “Patriarchy” ^{go girls woohoo!} 

…right?!

And what film is this? Why it’s only…

MAD MAX
FURY ROAD

Can you wait?! I can’t wait. Let’s just jump right into this…

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Mad World

WARNING: This section contains MINOR spoilers.
🔥 (ಠ ◡ ಠ^✿) 🎸 ^{vroom! vroom!} 🔥

Oh…

What a day!

What a lovely day!

Right. So! This one snuck up on me.

I’d only watched the original Mad Maxes (Maxi? Maxwells?) like a looong time ago, and I liked ’em. And then this one comes around and is supposed to be an upgraded reboot of them? Well, sign me up! I love me some post-apocalyptic bikey-fighty films! And wait… what’s this?! Tom Hardy‘s in this one instead of Mel Gibson? Well… well well well… Is this a bad thing? Is this a good thing? What could I have to say about that?

I like me some Tom Hardy. That’s all.

So… what am I expecting? Sand. I’m expecting sand. Petrol cars and bikes. We gotta have them. And… violence. We need a big ol’ dose of violence to get everything all tied together with a little bow on top.

So. RIGHT. I know what I want. But… what am I forgetting?! Right! That’s it!
DADADADADADADA DA DA !!! DADADADADADADA DA DA !!! 

Mad Max & the Other People

In the Great Big Future Toilet Bowl that Max lives in, he stops to take a bathroom break and ends up getting chased by these weird skinny malnourished Kratos-looking teens. And then he… gets… nicked.
Well… that was something I totally saw coming… ^{(◔__◔✿)…}

BUTWAIT! He escapes! Aaand… he gets nicked again. ^{come on, Max!}

He gets turned into a blood bag (no really) for this skinny Kratos kid named Hank McCoy/Beast Nux (Nicholas Hoult) and that’s really anyone cares about that (so far).

No one really cares about what’s going on with him (at least he doesn’t get burn-marked like an oink-oink) because what’s more important is that Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron)’s getting ready to go get some gaz-gaz for the local warboss Immortan Joe (Hugh “Toecutter” Keays-Byrne)’s kingdom(?) ^{is this a kingdom?!}

BUT! Guess what?! She doesn’t just go off to get Joe his gaz-gaz like the plan shoulda gone. She takes off with Joe’s ENTIRE harem of wives (okay, it’s like five girls, but still… ENTIRE HAREM). And Joe doesn’t like this. Oh no no no he don’t (like… no shit).

So he goes WAR! while she’s like IMMA GTFO. And everyone else’s like FUCK YEAH!

And then…

DADADADADADADA DA DA !!! DADADADADADADA DA DA !!! 

(ಠ ◡ ಠ^✿) ^{witness this!}

Magpie the Oink-Rig! Crow the Malnourished-Kratos-cars! Shit jus’ hit the dirt!

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Mad Thoughts

So here’s the thing about Fury Road: it’s really just two huge chase scenes one after the other.

Yup. Two chase scenes. That’s the whole film. The first is where Joe and his buddies and his creepy cronies chase Furiosa (and Max!) because of the missing wives, and then there’s the other one that I’m not going to talk about because I promised no big spoilers up above.

And that’s what really makes this film good. But let me explain…

Fury Road has a pretty big story, but that’s mostly left in the worldbuilding stage. We find out very little about our characters (like, seriously little). We get some bits and bobs about Max, and a little more about Furiosa. But what’s important is the chase.

I like how the film lets the world just be the… world. It’s the kind of background where you can just go and fill in the blanks yourself. No fuss. I like how we just get as much about Furiosa as we need and nothing more. I like how we don’t know who the fuck Max is apart from a total badass who’s got the whole “brooding damaged tortured hero” thing going on. I mean… people barely talk in this film. Even Joe, who chats the most. All Joe does is shout out instructions and yell about how great he is and what he’s gonna do like guys with tiny ding-dongs always do (more on that in a mo). The wives barely talk. Nux babbles a bit, but he’s basically a tot in the head, so fuck what he says.

And yeah. That’s it. The film tells you: HERE’S THE STORY. And you get it. The film tells you: NOW I’M GOING TO SHOW YOU WHAT HAPPENS. And you watch it.

Heck. You could watch this in a different language without subtitles and still get what the film’s doing.

To get the REALLY obvious out of the way first: this film looks and sounds AMAZING.

The film’s like 90% YELLOW and 10% DARK/DEEP BLUE. And while that sounds like it might be a bit annoying looking at how Hollywood likes light blue and orange for EVERYTHING, I was fucking excited to see a film go so balls to the wall with its moving pictures. The film is big and BOLD and wants you to know it. Everything in the film kinda makes all the weird shit happening in it feel… normal. No one stepped back and thought “ehhh… is this all a bit much?” They just stuffed it (like a pinata!) full of the biggest baddest things and just rolled with it. (They even found a way to get the guitarist in on the punchy-punchy!)

Just listen to the OST. You’ll get what I mean.

Now I mentioned something about the patriarchy and tiny ding-dongs up there.
So let me ‘splain some knowledge.

Remember how I complained about something-something “STRONG FEMALE CHARACTERS“ in my not-roast of The Girl in the Spider’s Web? Well here’s the thing I was kinda getting at: Furiosa is a GOOD character. And that’s what we need.

Furiosa is big and bad and kicks buckets of ass. And yes. She is a she. And the film doesn’t even look at that as something weird. Not even tiny-penis Joe shouts about how this is a big deal. And y’know what’s weird about that?! What’s even weirder about that is that this is a world where Joe keeps SEX SLAVES who are just there because he wants babbies. And she’s such a big part of Fury Road that the whole thing might’ve been called FURIOSA SAVES THE DAY!

AND THAT’S HOW YOU DO IT RIGHT.

See… Hollywood’s forcing these stupid “STRONG FEMALE CHARACTERS“ who aren’t really what they say on the tin. What we end up getting are gender swaps (which are fine compared to the next type) and Super Sues just to keep a buncha idiots who yell about everything online happy. But what we DON’T get are actual good characters.

See… Furiosa doesn’t have to be compared to a dude to make her look good unlike the new Lisbet, or the Ghostbusters team from the 2016 remake/boot/whatever (I really need to find and re-upload the Crow’s rant about that film), or the hundreds and hundreds of lazy-ass fucking “characters“ that the suits in Hollywood are shitting out to show off they’re “in with the times yo!”. The problem is that the suits are making crap characters to make a buncha idiots online who just yell and slap “FEMINISM“ onto everything happy because the suits can’t be bothered to work any, and these idiots are stupid enough to fall for it.

You want feminism and a good film? This is it. THIS is how its done. And in a film that SOUNDS like it’s all manly-manly-manly. Boom! Gotcha!

And it’s not just Furiosa. Some of the wives even get in on the “fuck these assholes. Let’s fuck ’em up!” And Max is just kinda there for the ride. Fury Road doesn’t give a shit about these idiots. It just tries to be the best thing it can be. And if it does care about them, it’s trying to teach them some.

I just hate how all these people who sound fancy-pantsy end up making films lazy. I mean, sure, there’s been a lot of good films where women aren’t just treated like the bottom scraps off the barrel in the last few years and such, but that’s not because of these idiots. It’s because of film-makers going out and making good movies because they can and because the times are changing (which is not what these idiots are responsible for because they only showed up after all this was already happening).

</end rant>

This is a film with a pretty BIGSTRONG patriarchy. Joe and his lot are slave-drivers and the only girl we see out and about is Furiosa. I mean… I’d like to know why that is, and that’s the only bit about the film I’d like to have gotten a bit more of an explanation for. But let’s put it this way: we don’t see any girls or ladies who aren’t locked up minus Fury-queen, and Joe looks like a right twat of a tyrant. So… patriarchy.

And fuck a petrol tank with a candle… this film smashes it! (Can’t believe I fucking just wrote that. Ew. Only I’ll know how I cringed). But yeah… this is a film that can puff its tits out and strut around like a fabulous bird and say with a loud voice that it did it. No other film has far as I know, and not this hard or this completely (like, seriously… they “rip” that patriarchy right off the face of this world!).

I mean… has any film outside of Z-film schlock even tried something like this? I don’t think so.

But the fun’s in the chase. There’s a few twists and bumps on the way. There’s dust and dirt and a tree and some swampy bits. But the whole film only takes a few minutes to let everyone (you and the characters) catch a bit of breath before…

DADADADADADADA DA DA !!! DADADADADADADA DA DA !!!

Seriously… this film just doesn’t let up. It just keeps going like it’s a six year old tot on cocaine and happy pills and a shit-ton of candy. And every time it peaks and makes you think you went and lost your breath, it gives you a few seconds to calm down. (Sometimes it gives you minutes after some big shit goes down). And then it picks right back up. But when we get past “half time”, these little breath-breaks start getting shorter and shorter and shorter until the finish line shows up and everyone slams the pedal to the fucking floor.

And even though it ends all nice and calming down and everything, your brain’s still going to be stuck with the echoing noises of all that…

DADADADADADADA DA DA !!! DADADADADADADA DA DA !!!

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Brilliant fucking film. Go watch it now.

It’s recommended and all that.

Mad Ratings

THE AZURE-WINGED MAGPIE: 9/10

THE CROW: 7.5/10

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Here’s the official poster: