Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga 4K UHD (2024)

[emailking]

Originally Posted by emailking

I'll be watching this in the box set over my vacation and will let you know what I think on 8/21. I'll try to write a separate review for this one since I liked it so much.

As promised, I am ready to tell you what I think. I watched all 5 of these on my vacation. I believe I saw Road Warrior before but am not sure if I ever did. I had seen Fury Road and Furiosa before. I definitely had not seen the original movie or Beyond Thunderdome. Unfortunately, I wasn't too big on the first 3 movies. The original Mad Max is not what I was expecting, I thought it was going to be what I understood as the Road Warrior movie. It's barely apocalyptic. I thought it was kind of boring and also hard to follow, and an hour into it I needed chatgpt to catch me up to speed on what was going on. Fortunately all of the other movies I was able to follow just fine. Road Warrior is better but not by much. The last 15 minutes are pretty exciting but it's a long time getting to that. I think that chase sequence gets oversized in people's minds when they think back on this, it's a slow burn to that point. Thunderdome is another improvement, and I did like the middle sequence with the kids, even if it was something of a "wtf" and out of place in a Mad Max movie. But things are fully apocalyptic in this one. Fury Road and Furiosa I guess are best taken as spiritual since Hardy's "Max" character does not give the same vibes as Gibson's Max. But Fury Road and Furiosa are at least good movies and things I can see myself watching again. I'll say a little bit more about them.

I think Fury Road is a huge step up from the previous movies. Furiosa (name only mentioned once I think) is a compelling character and Theron kills it. I actually care what happens to her, and

[Show spoiler]could feel her pain when she realizes the "green place" is gone. (And this hit even harder now having seen it and her backstory in Furiosa)

. I do think for some people it is a bit inaccurate to describe it as 2 hours of straight action. There is a lot of buildup to the first chase, and a long interlude before the second. But this is compelling viewing, and the chase sequences are extremely cool and do go on for a long time but they're also less than half of the run time. I really like the pole guys and the flame guitar! The specials talk a lot about those. The other women she ferries were also compelling characters. The men helping them felt more like throwaway characters and one of them did not need to be "Max".

Furiosa is definitely the best movie. So each Mad Max is better than the previous. Furiosa is the reason I wanted to get the box set. It's a little weird seeing Anya Taylor-Joy both big and small but other than that everything works really well. We get to see her whole backstory and it helps us to understand that she's a captive in some sense during Fury Road. Taylor-Joy's performance is not as raw or compelling as Theron but still pretty good. The opening shows really well how tough and resourceful Furiosa is. She did not make an easy capture at all. And I thought it was so cool, when she realizes she's not going to be able to get back on her own, how she was able to hide in plain sight as a boy for years. As the movie goes on it becomes about the interplay between the citadel and gas town and the bullet farm. I thought this dynamic was pretty cool. And the whole time Furiosa is gaming out how she's going to get revenge on Chris Hemsworth's character (Thor). The movie is a little long so I think it could be improved by being about 20 minutes shorter but I don't know what I would cut, but it did start to feel like a slog, at least in this second viewing. But it's very good regardless.

So the horrible outgassing I had on 4-5 discs ended up not being an issue. The first one affected was Beyond Thunderdome which froze. All I had to do was wipe it off with a microfiber cloth and it was fine. I then immediately did the rest of the discs that were affected, then all played fine. Unfortunately, everything is HDR10 except for Furiosa which was thankfully in Dolby Vision. I know some of these were earlier UHD releases before DV was commonplace. Furiosa and Fury Road looked really good. The first 3 movies I think were acceptable. I did not watch the black and chrome editions of Furiosa & Fury Road as black and white is not my thing, but I skipped around them and they looked pretty good. Furiosa also has red in it sometimes I noticed. Obviously I used headphones for sound and the sound was incredible especially for Furiosa and Fury Road. Obviously there are a ton of cool vehicle sounds and explosions in all of the movies.

Got a mother load of specials on these. All specials are 1080P even those on UHD discs, though the ones relating to the early movies appear to be SD (or worse) upscaled. The Road Warrior UHD has an intro from the director and then like a half hour making of on it. The Furiosa disc has a bunch of specials on that movie. Mostly 10 minute featurettes, these are all pretty good. Lots from Miller and Taylor-Joy and Hemsworth, special effects and etc. The bonus special features blu-ray (fortunately region free) has all of the Fury Road specials, another handful of 10-15 minute featurettes, along with a few (pretty unremarkable) deleted scenes. Then there is a 2.5 hour documentary on the making of the original Mad Max and on its legacy. Wow that was long. I had it on in the background while I did other things. I won't lie this was a lot better than the movie! And it did make me feel like I should give that movie another chance, now that I understand it better. So I might do that. I'll probably rewatch Fury Road & Furiosa down the line as well since those are really good. I won't recommend the set since in hindsight I would just buy 2 movies, though I also sort of like that I have them all. If you're a fan of all the movies though it's a good package with pretty good UHDs and a ton of special features.