By Kai Granaas

Mad Max: Fury Road was the action film sensation of 2015, striking early in the summer season. #76 in IMDB’s fan-based top 250 films, 98% on Rotten Tomatoes and 89% on Metacritic, Mad Max: Fury Road is gloriously overrated.

Overrated films are subjects of contention, splitting people into two groups who don’t think the other group quite understands. With this film, the fact that Mad Max: Fury Road is overrated is inherently a good thing (as opposed to The Dark Knight being overrated leading to an irritating stream of ‘gritty' superhero movies).

The negatives - and why they are good.

The dialogue is mostly surface-level; but it gets the messages across.

The characters do not have depth; but they’re simple.

The action is constant; but it has spatial continuity.

The most important positive.

It has style.

('But what about the feminism! It must have depth with feminist subtext!' I have a problem with calling this film feminist: it doesn't help. I like to think Charlize Theron would agree, seeing as she said "People keep saying ‘strong women,’ but we are actually just women.". The women in the film act like rational human beings fleeing from danger and standing up for themselves. Behaving like people, gender irrelevant.)

The negatives would be enough to kill any film, but these caveats fill the gaps. The negative aspects of the film all add up to a single positive purpose: simplicity. Combine that with style, and suddenly you have something more than the sum of its parts. Tom Hardy's character says virtually nothing during the whole film, but Hardy plays him with conviction. This can be said of all the other actors - they all act with conviction. The style is radical, and one needs total conviction to pull it off, or else cracks start to show.

This all points to one man, and that is the director. George Miller had a unique vision of a great blockbuster, and he achieved it. He never intended to shine light on the human condition, for if he did, then he failed. Miller has what so many contemporary American directors lack: a unique vision. A unique vision leads to style, to better acting and to a better film than others who attempt the same.

My theory for the reason that Mad Max: Fury Road became overrated so quickly is:

The completed vision of Mad Max: Fury Road, as well as it’s spatial continuity jolted people into realising that for the past five to ten years, they’ve been subconsciously craving something more than a mess of explosions.

This is what led to the huge roar of approval for Mad Max: Fury Road. It is not a great film: it is a good action film done right.

Now is the time to realise that we should not believe that this is the best we can get - Mad Max: Fury Road is the quality that should be expected of blockbusters. Now that this subconscious need has been addressed by George Miller, and the bar has been set higher, is it naïve to hope for better?

Image Credit: Village Roadshow; Warner Bros. Pictures