I can relate to what's been said here. In my circle of friends, who are huge and quite eclectic cinephiles, they always thought
Furiosa looked bad, and this from the first trailer. While I agree that the film looked CGI-heavy
(in a bad sense), I wondered why they were so adamant because the film still looked like he had much more to offer. I don't know if they finally went to see it or if they intend to, didn't had the time to catch on about that, but there's definitely a disconnect between that film and the audience.
Oddly enough, I'm the guy who "missed"
Mad Max (I only saw Fury Road once years ago and I'm still discovering the original trilogy now) and yet I'm super interested in this movie. If it weren't linked to something else, my interest would be exactly the same. The "epic" tone in a
Heavy Metal-style universe may seem niche, but it still seems pretty fresh to me in the cinematic landscape. Also, it features one of the biggest stars of the moment and there was that huge and positive Cannes coverage... But still, things are apparently not catching on.
About
Dune, I think that what may have helped this franchise to meet the public eye was that it had a few more star-power. Chalamet, Zendaya, Momoa... All very popular with people who go to the movies the most. And then Villeneuve worked his magic...
Also, maybe the film's promise was simply much more in tune with what audiences wanted. Some things are hard to predict.
I can't begin to understand the full extent of the disconnect, but I do think part of it might be that in general, audiences are wary of a "[name your IP] Story Without [main character from IP]" premise. It's always a bit of risky move, imo. I could imagine many just saw this as a "Mad Max movie without Mad Max" kind of thing. The barrage of Sony "Spider-Man movies without Spider-Man" probably haven't helped that stigma. Look at the Egerton/Firth-free Kingsman prequel or the Katniss-free Hunger Games prequel for further recent examples that disappointed big time at the box office.
Of course, Furiosa is much, MUCH better than those, but with the collapse of the MCU projects starring the lesser known characters as well, I'm starting to get the distinct impression that audiences are kind of sick of spinoffs/prequels/etc. that don't feature the main faces of these franchises.
It's a valid argument, but I'm not sure if it really applies to this film. Or at least not completely.
Just to share my perspective: it seems to me that it's indeed
Mad Max afficionados who talk the most about
Furiosa the most and who already went see it. In fact, I don't think "Max" as a character is still really popular
(an argument can be made about Hardy eventually boosting the sales though). The original saga is over forty years old, and
Fury Road is almost ten. Those who grew up with the first films, whether they were kids from the 70s or 80s, and those who discovered all this later with
Fury Road are almost all automatically over 30 and are perhaps no longer in the age range to be rushing to the cinema...
I'm pulling a theory out of my hat here, but I think we're seeing a lot big licenses movies fail because, quite simply, a new generation of viewers is emerging who may just consider that all of this "isn't for them"
(and it's kind of true). On a forum like this, we're in a bit of an echo chamber, but if you consider that young adults are generally the bracket that enables big box-office numbers, I'm personally seeing more and more of them who haven't seen
Star Wars, Aliens, Jurassic-Park or even Nolan's Batman films and so on. And just don't really care about it. These are not their childhood, they developped other interests and so , there's no push for them to see all thoses new movies.
When this period of revivals and other legacy films, which we're still in, began between 2012 and 2015, it was really aimed at the "young" 20-30 year olds, with a not inconsiderable nostalgia factor. But now ten years have gone by and the composition of the audience and its tastes have, I believe, changed much more than we think.
