Dead End: A Dissenting View on Mad Max: Fury Road

The influence of marketing divisions on movies right now is so pervasive that what sometimes passes for reviewing could just as easily have been dreamed up in the boardroom. When The Globe and Mail calls Australian director George Miller's return to the action genre in the new Mad Max: Fury Road "a double-barreled shotgun enema to the senses," is that kind of macho hyperbole (fitting to the genre) giving me an idea of what to expect, or is it choice ad copy to sell it? As for the metaphor, who thinks enemas are very pleasurable to begin with, let alone what you are looking for in a good movie?

I know it's not so much that film critics are eager to line up behind the product driven views of executives. Their taste in formula pictures after all is shockingly bad. But the climate reviewers are now working in is not designed for informed criticism, but instead for a style of consumer reporting. After all, if audiences today are being treated (in the crudest sense) as if they were nothing more than consumers, in that same way some of us are now thought of as 'taxpayers' rather than citizens, there is less need to ask questions as to what art is and why it is. Once when I was reviewing Ron Howard's A Beautiful Mind (2001) for CBC Radio, his adaptation of Sylvia Nassar's fascinating biography of mathematician John Nash, I wanted to describe why the movie was such a failure of imagination by describing how Howard turned Nassar's nuanced take on Nash's life and illness into a banal and conventional redemption story. My producer told me to forget the book and just tell the listening audience whether or not they should go to the film. In other words, leave out the context and just whip out a thumb to go yea or nay. It turned into a huge battle which I eventually won, but over time more episodes of this nature would ultimately cost me my job. And here we're talking about a radio network in the public sector not pressured by advertisers. But the mindset of regarding listeners as consumers was already in place.

Vroom Vroom, Boom Boom – Mad Max: Fury Road

Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron in Mad Max: Fury Road.

Smoke-spewing, diesel-gulping engines spit flame into the desert air and propel the world of Mad Max into perpetual motion: so it has always been, and so it is now with director George Miller’s triumphant return to the saga he invented as an independent Australian filmmaker in the late ‘70s, his dreams dominated by dust and oil and blood. With a budget that far surpasses his original efforts (and the cast to back it up) Fury Road is the realization of that dark dream – an orgy of insanity and fun. Buckle up: it’s a wild ride.

Podcast: Interview with George Miller (1985)

Tina Turner in a scene from George Miller's Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985).

From 1981 to 1989, I was assistant producer and co-host of the radio show On the Arts, at CJRT-FM (today Jazz 91.1) in Toronto. With the late Tom Fulton, who was the show's prime host and producer, we did a half-hour interview program where we talked to writers and artists from all fields. In 1985, I sat down with Australian filmmaker George Miller.

With George Miller celebrating his 73rd birthday earlier this month, it feels timely to revisit this conversation from 1985, which took place as the director was promoting the release of his third Mad Max feature, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. Mad Max (1979) marked Miller's debut as a feature-film director. His other credits include the "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" chapter of Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983), The Witches of Eastwick (1987), Babe (1995) and Babe: Pig in the City (1998). In 2006, he won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature for Happy Feet. In 2015, Mad Max: Fury Road garnered him Oscar nominations for Best Picture and Best Director.

– Kevin Courrier

Here is the full interview with George Miller as it aired on CJRT-FM in 1985.

Improving on Perfection: Mission: Impossible – Fallout

Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Tom Cruise, and Ving Rhames in Mission: Impossible – Fallout. (Photo: Polygon)

Tom Cruise was always instrumental to the Mission: Impossible series, right from the jump, not just as its star but as its primary producer. He collaborated with some of the greats of genre cinema, using the distinct cinematic voices of creators like Brian de Palma, John Woo, JJ Abrams, Brad Bird, and Christopher McQuarrie to create new visions of action-oriented spycraft. Ethan Hunt was his answer to 007, and in crafting this franchise at both the macro and micro scales – he’s involved at every level, from script to stunt choreography – he has made sure to execute it at such a high degree of quality that it’s now James Bond who’s running to catch up with Cruise’s signature straight-backed sprint, and not the other way around. While Daniel Craig’s tenure as 007 hit its lowest point with the regrettable misfire that was SPECTRE, Cruise’s run as Ethan Hunt is approaching its zenith, with 2015's Rogue Nation setting the bar so high, I wasn't sure it could be surpassed. Fans of action cinema miss the latest installment, Mission: Impossible – Fallout, at their peril: it’s the spy thriller honed to its deadliest razor-sharp edge, about as perfect an action movie as you could ask for. I've never been happier to have my skepticism proved wrong.