The first time I watched Fury Road I was on acid and didn't know anything about it beforehand. It was such a profound experience that my whole perspective on media changed. The shitty part is that filming it was hell for everyone involved b/c of extensive use of practical vehicles (they actually built almost every car in the movie) and working in the middle of a literal desert for the whole process. So when people complain about the trailer for the Furiosa film having "too much CGI" it just seems silly. Miller correctly decided not to put everyone through that shit again and if the stories are anything to go by, that's easily the correct choice. Plus it still looks pretty good, I will get ungodly high and go see it opening night with my friends 
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Here's a list of tons of leftist movies.
movies where the main villain is a man who controls all the cars and is ultimately killed by women once they manage to break his car monopoly are the best
I guess they didn't need to make the main protagonist a white dude
Max is more a point of view character than a hero per se. It's really Furiosa's story, he has an arc but he's more there to witness their struggle than to upstage anyone. In my opinion at least.
I think that's been the case since Road Warrior. He really just wants to be left alone, but happens to stumble across other people's stories from time to time. When he helps out, it's usually the bare minimum to keep himself alive and to get back to being alone as quickly as possible. Like you say, as a story device he's just our eyes into their world.
Apparently George has described Max as not really being a person, but rather a folk hero character whose tales are told around campfires. "this is the story about the time Mad Max went to Bartertown, where he met Masterblaster and helped him escape Aunty Entity." "This is the story about the time Mad Max met Furiosa, the great Imperator, and how he helped her overthrow the warlord Immortan Joe." Like he's the frame narrative, the perspective character a bard uses to introduce the real story. /
I too loved it but everyone I know hated it. "its not mel" "its not in line with the other films" "its too over the top, its seems silly"
Its nice to know I'm not crazy.
I think it’s better than the originals because of all those things.
I couldn't get 30 seconds into it without rolling my eyes and turning it off
MEDIOCRE
The cinematography and swoop noises every time the camera moved were cringe as hell
WHO RUN CRINGE TOWN???
I watched this with my husband at home after months of hearing hype about it. We have no prior experience with Mad Max anything, except knowledge of the general style vibe that has permeated the culture. We laughed in astonishment and confusion for most of the movie, and at the end wondered what the fuck. We have always meant to revisit it, but never gotten around to it.
I would love to drink of your Mad Max koolaid. Help my autistic brain understand what the fuck I watched and why everyone continues to be so fucking stoked about it?
I know they did a lot of practical effects in a way that is basically unheard of anymore, and that's the one tiny part of the reverence that I understand and share. I am dying to get in on the rest of it. Would any of you like to just go the fuck off about it or is there a blog post I should read?
The movie's ridiculous presentation hides its fairly sophisticated inner workings. I'm not claiming it's high art, but it's not just pure stupid action a la Transformers or something. There is a lot of interesting storytelling happening just through careful attention to detail, and it's almost a case study in "show, don't tell"*. For example, we know a lot more about Furiosa than you'd expect. She's a capo in this horrific, misogynistic tyrant's society. Towards the end of the film, Max asks her what she's hoping for and she just answers "Redemption". The look in her eye tells us the rest. These little pieces are deliberately placed - we don't know the exact details of how she went from kidnapped slave girl to commander in the Immortan's forces, but we can figure out enough of it.
Or, let's look at Max's changes throughout the movie. He starts off deranged, disheveled, covered in matted hair - feral, in a word. Then he's captured and literally caged. He's got a muzzle on for the first third of the movie! He gets free, lashes out, and is slowly tamed by Furiosa and the other women. Ultimately he ends up helping two generations of women fight back against the tyrant who ruined their collective lives. I don't want to say that this has a direct meaning (something like "oh he's learning how to shed toxic masculinity and be a better ally!), since I think that literal interpretations tend to detract from emotional depth. Themes in story are best when they're expressing feeling and not a literal message. There is a lot going on with gender conflict. From the repeated "Who killed the world?!", to the obvious level of the wives fleeing the big gross dude, the one war boy slowly realizing he's just another foot soldier for a man who doesn't care about him, to the greater susceptibility of men to follow dangerous men to destructive ends while women seem more resistant to that.
Come to think of it, Fury Road is best compared to Chainsaw Man. The manga and anime are about a lot of things - the struggles of growing up poor in Japan's lost generation, a government that explicitly views you as an animal to be used for their own ends, the corrosive nature of workplace politics, cynical sexuality used for manipulation, and more. It's also about a man who is a fucking chainsaw. Ridiculous, over-the-top action serving as the capstone to a carefully planned world and story.
*I happen to think that "Show, don't tell" is overused as storytelling advice, but the execution here is flawless.
it's cool. it rules. it fuckin slaps. explosions, racing, overthrowing a reactionary tyrant. the real journey is the friends we made along the way (also seizing the means of water)