Update: I bought the DVD, borrowed the office projector, and had a little screening myself. I’m glad we didn’t see it in IMAX 3D. That would have been pretty intense.
I found them… mediocre.
Bah
Actually, I found them howlingly hilarious. My wife is looking at me funny.
Something I only caught after watching Road Warrior and Fury Road on successive nights: Max’s grunts in Fury Road echo the Feral Kid’s grunts in Road Warrior. And one of the War Boys refers to Max as feral as well.
It would have been awesome if Tom Hardy’s character was the feral kid, grown up, instead of Max.
“Mad Feral Kid: Fury Road”
Doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, but otherwise I agree with you.
I thought, at the end of Road Warrior, the feral kid said he became mayor of the town they eventually ended up founding.
Even with all of the rave reviews and massive buzz in the world, Mad Max: Fury Road made less money worldwide than the 2D Snow White and the Huntsman in 2012. It made less than Prometheus and Tron: Legacy worldwide as well. Now you can argue that two out of three of those films are getting sequels, but I don’t think anyone is foaming at the mouth for Prometheus 2, and The Huntsman was basically greenlit before Snow White came out. Said Chris Hemsworth/Emily Blunt/Jessica Chastain/Charlize Theron fantasy is basically going to be sold as its own thing with little connection to the Kristen Stewart original. As much as we all loved it and as well as it did in America, the fact remains that Mad Max: Fury Road was not that big of a hit.
Great article, thanks mok!
Prometheus is probably the only film mentioned in that article that Max should be compared to since they are both rated R. Losing all of those kids is a huge loss of revenue. Losing China doesn’t help matters. Max earned a ton of goodwill, while Prometheus was a solid bomb. Marketing may have also been an issue. I’m not sure how it could have been improved, but it did look like a long and potentially dumb car chase from the previews - that was even a huge worry on these boards. Just keep the budget down (funny how $150 million is now low) and it is a sure thing.
I love the movie and actually wouldn’t be too sad if it never gets a sequel. I also think it’s going to do well on DVD/Blu-ray, and even if it’s not going to top the charts for a month, it’ll do fine in the long run. It’s still being shown in a few smaller theaters over here. (German DVD/Blu-ray release is next week.)
That said, I have no idea what kind of expectation Warner Bros. had, of course. Mad Max is a rather old franchise; its iconic setting has had a huge influence, but, in terms of business, Star Wars it never was. $400m plus retail/streaming income isn’t too shabby, but maybe they were hoping to tap into the Fast & Furious audience (crazy car action) and go beyond $700m.
Well, if the rumors are right, Miller may be too busy to make a sequel anyway.
Seems like the article is a little premature. He mentioned Bourne and Shawshank as home video successes, notes offhand that Fury Road is #1 on the BluRay sales, and then pretty much ignores the rest of that vital angle in favor of talking about box office alone. It just seems like so muck click-bait to capitalize on the release of the movie to home sales.
I would watch a Prometheus sequel.
But how about a Prometheus prequel?
At some point the prequel would be taking place in current time, given Prometheus is a prequel.
At some point it would take place way before current times, since the aliens in Prometheus apparently seeded life on our planet.
I think a movie that was just the two-hour planning meeting for the seeding of Earth would probably be a better movie than Prometheus.
Wouldn’t a Prometheus prequel be Aliens vs. Predator?
I can’t offer you a 2 hour movie about seeding life on Earth, but I can give you a 1:42 long album about seeding human life on planet earth.
And it is most certainly better than Prometheus.
Oh god, let’s not go there. Prometheus wasn’t very good, but at least it had ambition. The AvP movies just squandered two very interesting legacies in the worst kind of cash-in way.