The three highest-grossing films of 2015 weren’t necessarily visual marvels. Star Wars: The Force Awakens was full of sweeping gestures, but relied on familiar, nostalgic cues to maintain interest. Jurassic World was all but doomed to exist in the gargantuan shadow of the original film, while Avengers: Age of Ultron sought an overcrowded palette that reeked of post-production overhaul and franchising obligations. This can be typical for the blockbuster — so much sizzle with very little steak.
And then there’s Mad Max: Fury Road, a film that lurks much farther down the list (at #21, it didn’t even beat the fourth Hunger Games effort or the generic thrills of San Andreas). It's spot proves that maybe we don’t deserve a film that marries such competent technique with unabashed spectacle, and that the true wasteland isn’t what's on screen, but in the rest of the theater around us.
