Mad Max: Fury Road - 10 Reasons It’ll Be The Best Film Of 2015
The big screen belongs to the Mad one.
In a year of Star Wars and Avengers, could it be an unsuspecting new entry in a long-running franchise that wins out? Consider, for a moment, the back story to Mad Max: Fury Road. Not the on-screen back story, but the off-screen trials and tribulations of bringing a fourth Mad Max movie to fruition. Fury Road, you see, is not a case of a franchise trying to cash in on old glory (see Indy 4). It's not a case of rebooting a tired property for another chance (like Ninja Turtles). It's not even an intentional change of direction like the last Transformers sequel. No, Mad Max: Fury Road is the ultimate cautionary tale of development hell. The idea of a fourth Mad Max movie has been around, literally, for decades. Casting was talked about in the early 90s before progress stalled, but by the late 90s, talks were underway again. And then just when it seemed like a deal was locked, the U.S. invaded Iraq, filming abroad was a dangerous idea (Namibia had been the planned location), and Mel Gibson eventually aged out. So another decade passed without progress, but then production got underway again, this time in Australia before the unthinkable happened and the dessert bloomed, forcing another location change back to Namibia. That is an incredible string of bad luck, but there is light at the end of the tunnel, as George Miller's fourth Max film is due to hit theatres in May. And at least that long gestation proves that the film definitely isn't a cynical cash-in. For that reason and more, there's reason to be confident it could be the year's best.