Why You Should See Mad Max This Weekend

I can tell you right now, that I have not seen the new Mad Max movie, so I can't yet recommend it to you personally. What I can say is that based on the reviews of the movie that have already come out, it looks like Mad Max: Fury Road is going to be a fantastic action flick. As of this writing, Mad Max is sitting at an almost unheard of 99% on Rotten Tomatoes, so its pretty safe to assume that it's going to be a great movie. I'm excited about it. But why am I so adamant that you see this movie even when I haven't seen it yet? Let me explain.

In this day and age of cinema its somewhat amazing that Mad Max Fury Road got made at all. This isn't a reboot of the franchise, not really. But instead it's the fourth movie in a franchise that started over thirty years ago. (It helps that the movies are standalone like James Bond, but in a post apocalyptic setting) In fact it even has the same director that made the first three Mad Max movies. In a day and age where everything is getting rebooted, retooled, and reused, its amazing that this didn't end up being a gritty origin story of the character told by a completely different creative team. Instead the original director got to create a fourth installment in their series, and not only that but got to do it on a fairly giant budget, a reported $150 million dollars. To put that into perspective the last Max Max movie (Beyond Thunderdome) made a grand total of 32 million at the box office. Even adjusted for inflation that's only 82 million. But the forth movie was trusted with $150 million. Not only that but it was trusted to have a release date in the middle of May. Right now we are in one of the highest seasons of movie attendance, and Warner Bros is trusting Mad Max to make their summer money for them.

Again I feel like I need to stress, this movie isn't just Warner Bros. hoping to make some fast cash on the name recognition of Mad Max. This is a story by the original man who created the franchise, and something he's been trying to get made since at least 1998.


But perhaps most importantly of all, Mad Max Fury Road is being released with an R rating. See back when the first three films were released, an R rating on a action movie was no big deal. Plenty of the biggest action franchises were easily rated R. But that was thirty years ago. In that time, in an effort to squeeze every possible dollar out of a big name franchise, studios have been pushing their R rated properties toward the much more marketable PG-13. Franchises like Die Hard and Terminator that started as R rated in the 80s have had much more recent installments that were rated PG-13, and very much failed to capture the magic of earlier movies. In fact this exact thing is happening later this year when the fifth Terminator movie will be released with a PG-13 rating.

Warner Bros. could have easily made a PG-13 rating a requirement for funding this Mad Max movie. At this point it almost seems like the expected thing to do. But they didn't they let director George Miller make the movie he wanted to make, even though it would be harder to market, and have a smaller potential audience. And not only that but the backed it with financing, and with a prime slot in the calender.

I can't remember the last time I saw a big budget R rated action movie like this in the summer months. Maybe The Matrix Reloaded? We need to show that this is something that can be financially successful. R rated action movies don't need to be whittled down to PG-13. If a movie needs to be R, then let it be R. Warner Bros. has taken a risk here, one that other studios clearly aren't willing to take. (see the PG-13 Terminator movie coming out a few months later) I'm excited to see Mad Max, because it's clearly the movie that the creator had hoped to be able to make. It wasn't forced to be a watered down version of the original vision just to get made. I want that to be possible again. If a creator has a dream of a rated R film, I don't want them to have to settle for a tamer version of the movie just to get it made.

This is a chance to show studios that a big budget, rated R, summer action movie can be worth investing in. And on top of that, you'll probably get to see a pretty awesome movie as well.