Justice68

=======Potential Spoilers due to use of character names and the description of a few scenes with some level of detail.=======

Hollywood seems to have this fascination with rebooting or extending the longevity of a film franchise, because well there's money to be made and they are out of fresh ideas.

This iteration of Mad Max nonchalantly delivers all of the bad tripe that Hollywood drums up, and doesn't do anything to give us a sense of that movie going experience that used to excite us as young adults or children.

It's redundant and uses a worn out formula that needs to be broken.

I rated it a 6(generous)and that was only because of the wonderful scenery and some awesome attention to detail with costumes and vehicles/props.

1. It's great that they avoided CGI where possible. Though when they did use it, it was noticeable and rather amateurish looking. And it's not enough to carry the film.

You have to consider, if the main praise of a film is that 'it used real props,' then clearly the film wasn't that good.

2. Characters are uninteresting, unrelatable and entirely one dimensional. Max..totally uninspiring. Mel Gibson's Max was a badass, a man of honor in a world gone mad and a survivor. Tom Hardy's Max is just an invalid. Max himself is not only a mute for 3/4s of the film, he's also feeble - which seems to be a trait of Tom Hardy more than the character. It certainly wasn't the confident Max we were accustomed to.

3. Story was boring - if I wanted to watch a bunch of dimwitted women escaping into a fantasy land(whether real or mental), I'd just watch an episode of Orange is the New Black. That's all I need to get my nauseating fill of ridiculous femme monologues. And even if we buy that Max is a 'survivor' I don't call what he did really surviving. He just played wheel man for a bunch of idiotic mares.

4. Plot is amateur. Plot twists are obvious. Moments where bad guy is deterred or detoured by some character that I care nothing for, is obvious - such as the Splendid Angharad opening the door to block Immorten Joe from shooting Furiousa - like right at the perfect moment, exposing her belly and child with a smug grin on her face as if daring him to shoot her. Really? Who wrote this horesh*t?

5. Film starts out with one of the two regurgitated film openings with movies these days. Either you get a five minute 'this is what happened flashbacks, and now let's start the movie' or you get 'central protagonist/antagonist reflecting on life choices and some sort of mental/emotional anguish that drives or haunts their days.' In this film, it's the latter with the huge cop out that Max 'failed' some children and hears their screams taunting him.

6. Timing of scenes and dialogue is rough, badly edited and makes you wonder why they even paid known actors to deliver a handful of lines that aren't even convincing any ways. Why not let some new actors do it and pay them 1/4 the wage?

7. Whole parts of the film are irrelevant and only server to waste time. The intro to the film is inconsequential. We get a half hearted half minute monologue and voice over about some nonsense and then a few back and forth scenes about a capture and escape.

Then the film seems to properly start where it should have, with the introduction of Immortan Joe. They could have led in at the point where he's having this weird armor strapped to him and then he walks out to the people below. It not only curiously introduces the main villain but also shows a small example of what the world is like, when he releases the water and people began fighting over it.

The only thing in this film that interested me, was when Splendid Angharad got run over. A film is bad when the only pleasure I got from it, was watching an innocent character get killed by a monster truck buggy's tire.

Just goes to show how utterly sh*t the film was.

Frankly, they should be ashamed they bothered to reboot the series; or whatever you want to call it. People that like this are the same sheep that think the recent string of comic book films are good entertainment.

I call it simply crap.

In short, this is written and acted like a Terminator fan fiction - and not a good one at that.

If you are into the Terminator universe canon, then I highly suggest you give this a miss.

It would be one thing if it was a good movie in it's own right, but it's not.

That's a double whammy.

And Emelia Clarke is only in it because of GOT. Otherwise she'd never been considered for the role. That alone is reason to boycott it.

There are only three Terminator viewings that are worth seeing and that is of course T1, T2 and the great TSCC which carried on the real time line.

Do yourself and your Terminator brothers and sisters a favor and skip this horrific attempt to cash in on the Terminator franchise.

I cannot add too much as it's been reviewed so much already.

However I can say this : If you're tired of comic films and general remakes or reboots becoming all about action, action, more action, CGI, and stereotypical EPIC-NESS in your face all the time, then give Man of Steel a miss.

There's a trend going around Hollywood where they expand on the smaller backstories of super heroes in order to 'flesh' them out and ultimately make money from it. Instead of relying on an intelligent audience to enjoy a well written film, they expect the entitlement ADD generation to not be interested unless it involves violence, sex and a hint of Michael Bay-ism.

They fail to realize that the smaller back stories to our comic heroes were meant to stay a mystery, always to be wondered about but not be the main focus.

In Man of Steel, by 1/3 into the film and the script goes into detail about origins, answering the burning questions and handing everything to Clark on a silver platter. They dumb it down and give it word for word to the ignorant audience, whom they have no faith in to figure things on their own.

As for the other 2/3 of the film, insert romantic-hero-epic-CGI action film stereotypes or just read the other reviews on this site.

Gone are the days of Christopher Reeves playing the socially awkward Clark Kent - heck gone are the days of Clark Kent. All you see in this film is some emo buff looking bad boy named Kal for the most part.

Given the nature of the film, the content and the advertising - I admit I was inclined to watch it anyways. However reading some of the comments here I got the impression this was a film over-looked by the normal mass viewer.

Fortunately I did watch it and I agree with things expressed here so far. The film is so natural feeling, yet with a hint of amateur innocence. Great set pieces, costumes, scenery. The dialogue is acceptable, the pace is quick and the direction is clear.

I only wish it was longer or a part of a larger series.

If this is what 'Indie' can do on a budget, I'm hopeful for the future of B films.

The American adaption of the Killing was quite refreshing and similar to The Wire. It, as others have commented, felt detached from the usual regurgitated TV crime shows we suffer day in and day out that are full of melodrama and over acting.

Season one episode one through twelve is an engaging, believable and respectable story.

However like most things it eventually succumbs to stereotypes, short cut writing and redundant production methods.

This is prevalent in examples such as when eventually a main character starts to crack and/or show additional and unnecessary emotion - revealing their over involvement in cases. They starts to make things personal and there's quite a few dialogues that would be not only unprofessional in real life, but most likely would not happen.

It's aggravating because the show usually shuns most of the typical tear jerker and emotional knee jerk writing methods that we're accustomed to.

You ever watch those shows where the actors and their 'issues' don't fit the surrounding environment? Where Emo and Juliet still try to live life as it was in the 'good old days', except the good old days refer to a time when shopping malls still existed and kids went to public school, not scrounging in gutters for scraps to eat amongst rubble left be either a bomb, aliens or mother nature?

You ever get the impression that writers just can't envision an apocalyptic future that's actually bleak, without it's hope pride parade, racial tolerance and sharing is caring characters who always look on the bright side and make cliché promises to children about how 'everything is going to be OK, because now more than ever, we have to stick together, no matter our differences.' It's as if Hollywood can't ever stop with the subliminal political messages about the state of identity politics, and just actually make a television show.

Programs such as Defiance, Falling Skies, Revolution and Terra Nova all suffer from this double life leading paradox where they have large budgets, promising actors, fantastic set pieces and costumes...yet the writing and dialogue is diabolical and over dramatic.

Defiance is another one of those in-house workshop projects that are synonymous with the now cheapened 'Sy Fy' channel designed to appeal to the masses of sheep TV viewers.

It stumbles under it's own star struck weight, of Battlestar Galactica ex employees, Bear McReary's repetitive soundtracks and a viral marketing campaign of being connected to a video game.

If you appreciate true post apocalyptic scenarios, then give this a miss. Like the other shows mentioned above, everything is too convenient, clean and transparent.

I would have liked to give it a five for the CGI and setpieces, but they too are poor.

I often wonder if not for the violence and CGI/Set quality, whether the show would stand on it's own two legs.

The dialogue is often too dramatic and the historical inaccuracies are appalling.

That aside, their idea of how bladed combat works and more importantly Roman movement is astoundingly amateur.

Though what is the most aggravating is that 95% of the Roman soldiers are portrayed as dummies like police officers in countless films. Maybe that's a part of the fantasy of television and film, making things different from the real world - because a Roman cohort is nothing to shake a stick at. Apparently they feel the need to prolong the show's longevity by inserting episode upon episode of now of Spartacus taking on legions by himself.

Yes we all know how it ended for the slave rebellion, but a little realism wouldn't kill anyone (no pun intended).

And for that reason, the show has outlived it's 'gore and sex will attract' angle.