Mad Max: Fury Road, finally made its debut this week and remarkably it’s got very favourable reviews which is surprising in itself considering that a lot of the time, you only really see people bounce up and down for anything Marvel does or if it’s got a shot of Harrison Ford with a zimmerframe next to Chewbacca who hasn’t aged a day.

The last time we saw the Road Warrior was when he was played by that lovely rascal Mel Gibson back between 1979 and 1985, so basically it’s been around 20 years since Max, who clearly is still a tad silly wandered onto the big screen, and of course time has moved on, along with the audience.

So with that in mind, what would this film bring for not only those who love the existing franchise, but those who haven’t got a clue about what Mel was doing back in the desert all that time ago?

In fact perhaps we need to shed some light on what the hell this is all about first and set the scene for what is to come. Well in the starting few minutes of the film, we learn that in the distant future (maybe next Tuesday, who really knows), the world became a desert wasteland and civilisation has collapsed. So basically it’s like Grimsby.

Our sort of maybe hero type guy, the aforementioned Max, who is now played by Tom Hardy, who despite some brave attempts to run away, gets captured by some naughty chaps who happens to be an army of some ugly dude called Immortan Joe, who basically has been going heavy on the baby powder and is now asthmatic. He also likes mummy’s milk as they have a farm with suckers attached to various ladie’s boobs. So nothing wrong there then.

For some reason, Max gets hooked up to a particular creepy white guy called Nux because his blood is good for him, maybe because it has vitamin D in or something. Therefore he becomes “blood bag.” So far, a magical adventure.

He’s a happy camper.

Meanwhile, Joe sends his trusty lady friend warrior Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) in her armoured truck to collect petrol. Furiosa however has other plans and buggers off. It’s not long before Joe discovers what Furiosa has actually done; She nicked his wives, who was being used for breeding. Giggity.

Joe’s a bit pissed and basically calls for pretty much anyone to go with him to get the ladies back. That creepy white guy Nux has it in his head to go help the other creepy white guys because he wants to die a glorious death and takes Max with him, albeit strapped to the hood of his car, to continue supplying blood as you see in the picture above.

Various bits of naughty then ensures.

Now before anything else, there is no way that we could not meant the parts where we witness vehicular warfare take place, as that does compose the majority of the film itself and does it live up what we saw in the trailers? Well, the driving sequences are just unbelievable.

Public transport cuts….they’re a killer….

In that it’s just absolutely awesome for example to see guys banging away on drums while a nutjob is basically attached to a truck by bungee rope playing a guitar which shoots fire out from it.  None of this fails to impress and remarkably a lot of it appears to have been done for real, which makes a massively welcome change from the pure computer generated effects we’ve gotten used to, though of course CGI has it’s part to play at various parts as well.

The cars themselves are just a work of art and everything about how the army appears on screen, basically off their tits, throwing explosive spears and in a few cases, spraying their lips with paint before killing themselves for the glory, just fantastically well done. The fighting, gunplay and tension that builds with each sequence just gets better and better and basically leaves you wanting more.

But the surprise element to this film was the female characters; Imperator Furiosa, especially played well by Charlize Theron, who can kick ass with only one real arm and then there are the wives of Joe, and what the film is, really is the focus was more about their struggle to survive and leave behind basically a life which was just about getting buggered by Joe and wanting something better.

A lot of their actions made sense and as time went on, you could see some personal growth in them. Surprisingly a sort of romance even occurs between the creepy white guy Nux (who himself seems to undergo a big change during the course of the film) and one of the wives which kind of throws what you were expecting from what happened at the beginning out the window.

This change of focus sadly, means that Max seems to get relegated to the background, grunting away and speaking, well….not a lot.

It plays out like he just happened to be there when this was all going down in funky town and now is just along for the ride hoping to make it to the other end. He has his moments for sure, which allow us to see what he’s capable of, but Max pretty much maintains the same behaviour throughout, save for one moment, when he finally tells Furiosa his name.

Other than that, the only times we see Max messed up, is when he is haunted by his dead daughter at random moments which either helps or hinders him at times and it can get rather jarring.

OK, who want’s a game of I spy?

That leads onto perhaps another issue; there are a few things which if you’ve not seen the previous films 20 years ago, you’re going to get lost with some of the plot points, why Max is seeing dead people like that fella off the Sixth Sense and who some of the weirdos are.

That means pretty much you’re going to just have to go with whatever is going on, because let’s be fair, there is more than enough happening on screen to keep you engaged at all times. But nevertheless, some further explanation or exposition on the motivations and why it got this way would have helped newcomers.

So overall, would Mad Max: Fury Road drive you crazy with happiness or drive you straight into a brick wall of misery? Despite the fact that Max himself is not really the focus here and it’s more unexpectedly the other characters who get the time to shine overall, this is something that is worth seeing just for the technical prowess as well as the world that was created and continued here in the 4th instalment of the Mad Max series.

As an addtional bit of news, the future for our dear Max is looking rather rosy overall, and indeed, there is another film already planned; Mad Max: Furiosa.,

This probably means that Charlize Theron as the happy go lucky scamp Imperator Furiosa will be back, possibly again as the main focus. While indeed given the strength of what was on show here, that will be welcome, come on, Let’s actually see a bit more of Max next time eh?