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No doubt, in terms of technical effort, Fury Road's end chase is remarkable. But in terms of emotion, it's not in the same league as RoadWarrior - most movies aren't.

Just look at the mechanics and what happens.

In RoadWarrior the stakes are incredibly high from the start. If Max fails, everyone from the compound will die. They have fled and blown the only form of salvation out there in their wake. These are women, children, and elderly in a school bus and a few unarmoured vehicles. The protags go up against the marauders in a rig that's been modified overnight with a few plates and spikes and a vehicle with no offensive weaponry or even armour. Their weapons consist of molotov cocktails, a crossbow, a few shotgun shells, and bad language.

In Fury Road, little value is put on the Citadel or defeating Joe's army. It comes across as self preservation. If they lose, some will die, but the women will most likely be enslaved. They are all aboard a War Rig which has allowed them to escape his capture, the rock riders capture, and the buzzards capture. They are pretty much armed to the teeth with a variety of guns and supported by a team of warriors. While they are going up against a bigger army, it's an army that's seen to routinely failed at every hurdle.

In RoadWarrior pretty much every protagonist who's part of the tanker chase dies, and they die in ways that are so unheroic and brutal it's hard to process. The second in command is crushed by his platform failing. The Warrior Woman (the closest thing to a love interest for Max) is shot and dragged off the tanker alive, the Mechanic, a crippled man, is also shot and dragged off the tanker alive, their leader is killed trying to save a child with a spear thrown in his back, two captured compound dwellers, while bound to an enemy vehicle are crushed by the tanker as a result of Max's actions. The Gyro Captain appears to die as his aircraft hits the ground hard. These are people who we are introduced to an act 1, they matter to us, they matter in their universe. They get no send off, no glory. Their last moments are wide eyed and flailing as their soft bodies meet rusty metal or rough asphalt. Max himself becomes increasingly powerless, going into the battle barely able to walk and talk and spending a lot of it pinned into the driver's seat of the tanker, the door of which gone leaving him completely exposed.

In Fury Road almost every protagonist we've followed from the start survives the final chase. Some of the Vuvalini are killed but this is either in a flash during a moment of heroism or slowly and gallantly during a moment of dignity. Meanwhile, every other protag seemingly becomes smarter and stronger, the most extreme of which being Max, who turns borderline superhuman, literally leaping from vehicle to vehicle like spiderman, and pole vaulting across the entire battle scene. For a moment he is able to see into the future and takes an arrow to the head as if it's just an inconvenience. He's so invincible, he's able to just climb in the People Eater's tanker and drive merrily along while occasionally bitch slapping and pistol whipping the guy. Even going into the chase he's more concerned about who's got his car than anything else. In the end, Nux sacrifices himself, and it is sad and heroic, but so overly schmaltzy it's hard to take serious. If anything, the guitar flying out the debris kind of echoes a sentiment "Oh, Coma died, that kinda sucks.".

Where I feel the two films are comparable is in the deaths of the bad guys. Although I have to admit I don't recall much other than the Tow Truck roll over - and that may be more about seeing the Mack get destroyed. I feel Fury road sort of has an edge here with the disposable warrior theme. Some of the marauder deaths in Road Warrior's final chase aren't that great. One bike seems to have turned up stoned. Another bike flips through the air quite comically. The shotgun hit to the face of the bad cop is good though, especially when the other one is trying to steer the car afterward.

Someone said, back during the test screenings, that a friend felt Fury Road blew its wad in the first chase. Personally, I feel that to be true. The buzzard chase is excellent. The Rock Rider chase has its moments. The bog scene we shall not speak of. The final chase too Fast & Furious.

More good points but personally i completely disagree with your overall opinion here. It's more a case of the style of film making has changed over the last 35 odd years and Miller has said as much. Everything is faster, more OTT as we 'read' film a lot quicker these days. I don't really think there's anything superhuman in any of the chases. To me it is still just survival. it's just that the advances in technology has allowed Miller to showcase the action in a much more dynamic way. Yes i said more dynamic as whilst i love Mad Max 2, Fury Road completely wipes the floor with it. Mad Max 2 might feel more 'real' but Fury Road is post apocalyptic action fantasy i have been dreaming of for decades.

I really think they are just different movies. Cut from the same cloth of course but George has access to so many more tricks and tools which he no doubt would have used had they been available back in the day.

Regarding the emotioanl resonance of the scene compared to Mad Max 2, they're different stories with different stakes. If it felt the same as Mad Max 2 we'd be complaining that George was just repeating himself.

I'll just point out here, because I can't think where else, that it is incredibly cool that one of the Mack's harpoon gunners isn't killed in the rollover but when the Mack jostles against the War Rig and he is smashed into some spikes/jagged saw blades. You can see a lot of blood on him as the Mack pulls away and begins to roll.

Personally, I wouldn't say disappointed, but yes it doesn't feel as adrenaline-pumping as the first two major sequences, or as tight and, frankly scary, as MM2's closing chase ... however compared to non-Mad Max films it felt head and shoulders above, in both regards - I did think there was a feeling of genuine risk, especially when Joe has Toast and confidently counts that he has one of four (at the same point both Max and Furiosa are struggling too), and it did feel exciting too with the race to get in front (both for Razor Cola and later for the Gigahorse).

Also, from the Wives' point of view death would probably have been preferable to incarceration; for Furiosa, seeing that happen would also have been worse than 'just' dying ... in that regard I felt like the stakes were very high indeed.

I just rewatched the Fury Road end chase. Which is the second time I've seen it.

Meh.

So much meh.

Oscar nominated meh.

Have to say Im relieved that Im not alone!

Id really like to see that full cut; I definitely wanted more of that chase!

I think it would have been better for sure, if Max had driven the warrig. Him not driving kind of relegates him more as a supporting character??

I didn't hate Furiosa's character; it was good acting and Charlize is easy on the eye even there and a great actress BUT I for one, hope that she doesn't return. She takes over too much from the Max character.

I don't have an issue with Max not driving as such. I just think the final chase lacks any feeling of genuine peril.

You have this War Rig which has an undetermined speed. It ends up in a drag race with the Razor Cola where both vehicles are being nudged by blowing nitro into the intakes. At this point, right at the start of the chase, we're trying to be sold the concept that the War Rig can outspeed the Razor Cola, which is kind of ridiculous. The stakes here are the Razor Cola getting in front and spiking the War Rig's tyres - which is actually does, with no detrimental effect. So you're kind of left wondering what the whole point of the scene is. This leads to one of the engines on the Rig dying and the army catching them up. It's a far too complex and overly dramatised way to cut to what could have been terrifying right from the start - the War Rig is a sitting duck and thus there's no way of reaching the canyon without a fight.

Meanwhile, you've got Vuvalini riding around on a bike and serving through the army like it's no problem up to the point where it's convenient to kill them off. One second they can appear out of nowhere and pick off the driver of the Razor Cola from a distance, the next they can't hit Immortan Joe head on with multiple shots and lack the awareness to see a tanker serving for them. We get our first protag death and it's a flash against a superimposed image.

The claw cars come in and this looks like it's going to be supercool. The setup is great. But then we're sold this notion that they can somehow take hold of the tanker with spears that pierce the metal and are prone to being cut through with bolt cutters. While this doesn't make much sense, it's blatant the vehicles aren't attached. So we get this direct comparison with the buggy grappling hook scene in Road Warrior which demonstrates exactly what would likely happen.

Now guns are going off everywhere and you're kinda sat wondering why the hell Immortan Joe's army doesn't just shoot out the tires of the War Rig, you know, like they try to do in Road Warrior? But instead we just get the usual waves of attack you get in a lot of trashy action movies. Worse still, Max is pretty much bouncing around like Action Man and it just gets silly; topping all this ridiculousness is the scene with the People Eater's tanker where Max, having momentarily seen into the future and survived an arrow to the head with his weird visions, and we've had to accept the Interceptor has now been completely destroyed, spider man jumps from the War Rig to the Tanker, takes control of it and then climbs out as it's physically exploding.

While this is going on, we've got Furiosa's struggle, which is completely undermined by Keeper Of The Seeds slowly dying right next to her. And then, completely undermining the entire premise of the final chase, Fragile decides she wants to bugger off with Rictus part way through the chase. So you're pretty much sat there thinking "Gee, good call, Cheedo, I'm with you, this is bullshit."

By then everyone is just waiting around for their turn to do something. We cut back to Max who's, been sat around checking his email or something, and we're suddenly into the scene on the Doof Wagon which looks like it was shot with the special effects budget of a PBS special.

And to top it all off, we get the final fight, and it sums the whole movie up. Furiosa gets out the War Rig, while injured, makes her way to Immortan Joe and kills him, not before of course giving him the last words he'll hear "Remember me." Where's Max? He's still wrapped up in a sub-fight with a secondary character, which absolutely hammers home that he is not the main character in this movie. And then, to add insult to injury, any remaining glory is taken by Nux, whose self sacrifice defeats the army... apparently.... even after we know they cleared a mountain of boulders from the very same canyon only an hour's viewing before.

We can argue that Fury Road is better than other modern movies, we can try and excuse it on the terms it's a different movie in a different time for a different audience, and we can cry subjective taste over object reasoning, but we cannot ignore, never mind how hard we try, or how caught up we are in the current hype, that Road Warrior did a hell of a lot more with a hell of a lot less, and that is they main reason we are here 35 years later.

I agree with MFWV8 on pretty much all points except that Cheedo jumped on the Gigahorse to help Furiosa climb aboard.

Sorry, my bad, I got the impression she still wanted to go back.

No not at all it is what it is