"To clarify, most of the audience was there because they just happened to get a flyer handed to them a few days ago outside a major movie theater in Burbank. So they were basically local moviegoers. This wasn't a bunch of industry people, or cast and crew, or Mad Max fans. Yes, there were a few studio people in the audience, and definitely some Mad Max fans (who they got the flyers from friends, etc.) and a few industry people (who maybe write about movies online or who work in the business) who happened to get hooked up with flyers from friends. But this was basically a "real" crowd. There weren't a bunch of press there or anything.
The audience applauded at the end of one of the early action sequences. And there was significant applause at the end of the movie. The applause was cut off quickly only because the lights came on right away and the guy who was sort of in charge of the screening started talking and people wanted to hear him.
George Miller was there. He had a friendly conversation with some enthusiastic fans outside the theater afterwards. And at least one person was able to get a photo with him (lucky for George, none of the rest of us could do it because we had all left our phones in our cars, as instructed).
THE MOVIE IS F'ING AWESOME.
It does not need reshoots. It does not need further editing. It has unfinished fx shots and raw sound. And I'm sure they will refine some things in the edit because they always do. But it is a ground-breaking action blockbuster AS IS. The person who tweeted that it needs serious recutting and reshoots is either a liar, a moron, or just someone who doesn't understand filmmaking and has never seen a pre-release, unfinished film before and had a hard time looking at unfinished shots. But let me say again, they have everything they need for this movie to be incredible. There are one or two things they could tweak at the end just to make things a little smoother, but none of it is all that important.
Tom Hardy does NOT use the Bane voice in the movie. Whoever said that has probably never seen a Tom Hardy movie besides The Dark Knight Rises and just thinks anytime Tom Hardy does a deep, gritty voice, he sounds like Bane. Does he sound a TINY bit like Bane? Well yeah, but only because he's the same bloody actor. Again, the guy who said that is just a moron and trying to stir **** up. What was Tom Hardy's accent in the movie? I know my accents pretty well, and even I'm not sure. It was subtle whatever it was. Vaguely American, a tiny bit British here and there, maybe a little Aussie. NOT BANE.
It's a fantastic ensemble cast. Tom Hardy is really good as Max. As in the Road Warrior, Max is a man of very few words in this movie, especially for the first 2/3rds of it. He doesn't play the character exactly the same as Mel played it. In some ways, he's a bit of a different character. And as I said before, this film is more of an ensemble piece with several characters all working together toward a goal. In the original trilogy, Mel was sort of like Clint Eastwood in the Man With No Name westerns. He had a clear goal and we followed him as he sought that goal. That aspect is not quite as strong in this film. That may bother some people, but it didn't bother me.
Charlize Theron is great too and has a really cool look with her shaved head and sporting a mechanical arm. Nicholas Hoult was pretty great to, although almost completely unrecognizable.
There were some serious die-hard Mad Max fans in the audience and they all loved it. The consensus was that it was worth the 30 year wait and that they didn't care that it was very different from the early films.
It does NOT take place anywhere in the timeline of the other films. Not really. I feel like the person who said that only said that because Max is driving the Black on Black V8 Interceptor at the beginning (sorry if that's a mild spoiler). But basically everything else about this movie is different. But there are little nods to the other films all over. I wouldn't even say this takes place in the same world as the other films. It's a different post-apocalyptic world. Max is even a different character in some ways. It's actually easier to describe the few things that are the same in this film as the other trilogy than to try and describe all the things that are different (it didn't matter, the fans loved it anyway).
I'm not even sure I'd call this a reboot. I'm not sure what to call it. The new Star Trek movies are a reboot. They are WAY closer to their source material than Fury Road is to the other Mad Max movies. Why should George Miller do a remake of Road Warrior? Road Warrior is already a perfect movie. I'm glad he did something fresh and new.
As far as putting it in the timeline, when George was talking to people after the movie, he specifically said this movie was NOT in the timeline. He said trying to get it to fit between films was just too complicated and would have held the story back from the bigger, crazier world they wanted to show. And he didn't want to just tell one of the same stories over again. That's why Fury Road is just it's own movie with some "connections" as he called them (like having Hugh Keyes-Burne play the bad guy). Little nods to the fan audience. That's all.
Running time was about two hours. I really hope they don't shorten it.
The screening was listed as being for between ages 13-54 (they didn't want people older than that because, well, the movie industry figures old people don't pay to see action movies anyway). But this was not a PG-13 movie. They'll have to cut some stuff. There were a lot of nudity (but they were in context, as you'll see) and blood, and mayhem (bodies being run over etc.). I suspect the studio will NOT want to release this rated R, so it's a shame that some of what we saw will probably be cut from the film.
The costumes, makeup, art direction… all of the work in this movie is just so detailed and creative. It's going to blow people away. I do expect it to get some Oscar nominations in the technical categories. (But it will probably get snubbed for big awards. This movie is just too much of an intense, contemporary, punch in the nuts for the older Academy voters to understand it).
We filled out comment cards at the end. I saw a few around me. Of the five I saw (and none of these folks were fans, just regular moviegoers, probably in their 20s) there were 3 marked excellent (highest score) and 2 marked good (second highest score). (At least one of the people who wrote "good" was a young woman, for whatever that's worth). There was a 40 year old woman sitting next to me who doesn't even normally go to action movie and didn't think she'd like it, but she liked it a lot (even if I did see her covering her eyes a few times).
A LOT of people from the screening were hanging out in the lobby afterwards, all amped up and wanting to talk about the movie rather than walk to their cars. That's always a good sign.
My prediction: If Warner Bros can just resist the temptation to mess with this thing too much, this could be one of those movies that helps define a decade of filmmaking."