Perhaps among the most unlikely films of 2015, it’s doubtful much of anyone was truly clamoring for a new Mad Max 30 years after Mel Gibson drove his way Beyond Thunderdome. But George Miller has a story he wanted to tell, and no one was going to stand in his way even if it took years out of his life to do it. Stripping away all the unnecessary pomp and circumstance of that last installment, Miller has reshaped the franchise into a lean monster of a two hour chase sequence, a long, drawn out spectacle of practical effects and wild production design. Sure, the explosions and the porcupine cars and the flamethrower guitar wielding Doof Warrior leap most quickly to mind, but what makes Mad Max: Fury Road special enough to be the second best film of the year is the care with which the rest of his world is treated. There is purpose to it all, from the religion of the War Boys and their deity Immortan Joe to Furiosa’s desperate need to liberate the breeders from their life of sexual servitude (this is a feminist blockbuster if ever there were). All of it matters. All of it has weight and importance even if it is surrounded by all of the complete insanity of the Bullet Farmer and the People Eater and that wacky Doof Warrior. Mad Max: Fury Road is the most creative film of 2015 and the most watchable film of 2015, gleeful and balletic in its violence, but its heart and depth (and Miller’s abject refusal to weigh it down with unnecessary exposition) give it the staying power that elevates it to the upper echelon of cinema.