Best! Summer! Blockbuster! Ever! (That Was Released This Week): ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’

Ridley Scott’s first return to the world of Alien, 2012’s Prometheus, proved so divisive that his second, Alien: Covenant, had to get past a firewall skepticism and hostility. It’s shame that not everyone saw Covenant for what it is: the best Alien film since James Cameron’s Aliens. Scott mixes in elements from Alien, Aliens, Alien 3, and Prometheus — and a middle section seemingly inspired by one of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe adaptations — in the service of a film that uses the series’ terrifying xenomorphs to explore some big, cosmic questions about life and death. (Alternately, you could give this spot to Top Gun, by Ridley’s brother Tony. But decades on, it looks even more like a beautiful commercial selling war as its product.)

Where to stream Alien: Covenant

The sequel to the Dreamworks hit goes full-on Empire Strikes Back, deepening the emotional palette (and the parental issues), expanding the film’s world, introducing memorable new characters and creatures, and setting it all against breathtaking backdrops.

Where to stream How To Train Your Dragon 2

The film that made Arnold Schwarzenegger a star smartly casts him as an outsider who mostly lets his sword does his talking as a he travels a sword-and-sorcery land in search of revenge. John Milius loves blunt philosophy, blunter action, brawny heroes, and Kurosawa movies, all of which made him the ideal film filmmaker to bring Robert E. Howard’s pulp hero to life.

Where to stream Conan The Barbarian (1982)

Bill Murray, in one of his best roles, plays a neurotic patient who drives his psychiatrist (Richard Dreyfuss) to the brink of madness by following him on his family vacation. Murray and Dreyfuss have both talked about not getting along while shooting the Frank Oz-directed film, but whatever hostility existed between them seem only to have improved their on-screen chemistry.

Where to stream What About Bob?

Sometimes the blockbusters that define an era aren’t always seen as such until years later. Between Dirty Dancing and Ghost Patrick Swayze appeared determined to become an action star. But audiences didn’t seem terribly interested in seeing him in those roles. Like other such efforts, Rowdy Herrington’s Road House didn’t wow critics or conquer the box office in 1989, but it found an appreciative audience on home video and via endless cable repeats, one that locked into the weird wavelength of a film where beery philosophizing, barroom brawls, and soft focus romance all get equal time and get treated with the same straight-faced seriousness no matter how ridiculous. Swayze plays a legendary bouncer who puts his skills to the test a Missouri night spot in a film that mixes memorable lines (the endlessly quotable “Pain don’t hurt” is just the most famous) and left-field turns involving monster trucks and stuffed polar bears. Filled out with a supporting cast that includes everyone from Ben Gazzarra to Sam Elliott to Keith David, few movies dance so gracefully on the knife’s edge dividing the ridiculous and the sublime.

Where to stream Road House

Even now, it’s astonishing that Mad Max: Fury Road exists. Director George Miller seemed eager to move on to other projects after Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome in 1985, but ten years later he bought back the rights to the series and, in the years that followed, talk would surface about a possible fourth movie. That talk almost turned into reality in 2001 until the film fell apart in the wake of the September 11th attacks. More stops and starts followed until filming began, under difficult conditions, in Namibia in 2012, and the physical distance between the production and the rest of the world again made it seem as much a rumor than a movie. (Not a lot of paparazzi hover around movies that shoot in West African deserts.)

When the world finally got a look at it, it seemed almost as unreal. Preview audiences spoke of it in hushed tones. Questions like, “Is this the greatest action movie ever made?” followed its premiere. Could any film ever live up to such hype?

The answer arrived — trailed by the a din of engine noise and the smell of diesel fuel — on May 15, 2015 in the form of a breathtaking movie in which every element not only works but exceeds all expectations. Fury Road joins action scenes that outdo even the film’s landmark predecessors to a thematically rich post-apocalyptic world and memorable characters — none more memorable than Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), a driver with a plan to turn against the heartless warlord Immortal Joe that includes kidnapping five women he keeps as wives. Roped into her scheme: series hero Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy, taking over the part from Mel Gibson).

Part of Fury Road‘s brilliance comes from the way it lets viewers experience its world without overexplanining it. Max only gets enough flashes of backstory to explain his alienated state. Immortan Joe’s War Boys practice strange rituals on their suicidal runs. Furiosa gets no big speeches laying out why she does what she does. Through it all, Miller doesn’t tell, he shows, using careful editing, searing images,  to flesh out the world and push the story forward at a pace beyond any legal speed limit. And, as with previous Mad Max movies, he keeps its awful future tethered to our world. It serves not just as a warning of what might come but as a blowup of the misogyny and exploitation all around us. Even years after its release, it seems almost impossible it happened at all.

Ishtar became a punchline even before it hit theaters, but people were laughing for all the wrong reasons. Elaine May’s comedy about a pair of luckless songwriters (Dustin Hoffman, Warren Beatty) who get entangled in Mideast politics attracted a lot of bad press by going way over budget, and the negative publicity and lukewarm reviews led audiences to miss out on a wry update of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby’s old Road to… movies filled with a bunch of intentionally, wonderfully awful songs by Paul Williams.

For a stretch from 1999 to 2007, the third week of summer usually saw the release of either a Star Wars prequel or a Shrek movie. It was a dark time, and never darker than 2002, which brought the worst of the Star Wars prequels, Episode II — Attack of the Clones. Where The Phantom Menace, whatever its flaws, still mostly looked and felt like an extension of the classic trilogy, Attack of the Clones goes all in on ready digital effects while throwing out any interest in character development. Even the moments that audiences dug at the time, like Yoda’s big fight scene, look pretty silly.

Keith Phipps writes about movies and other aspects of pop culture. You can find his work in such publications as The Ringer, Slate, Vulture, and Polygon. Keith also co-hosts the podcasts The Next Picture Show and Random Movie Night and lives in Chicago with his wife and child. Follow him on Twitter at @kphipps3000.