Review Detail

I have never seen the original film, up to this point it has been of little interest to me due to it's unflattering reputation, so it's great to see no evidence of anything dreadful in theomega's edit. Even though more than 50 minutes have been removed it still feels suitably epic, and I could not identify any gaps in the narrative.

The end result is still a bit cheesy (a violent cult decides to abandon its ways on what is basically the outcome of a wrestling match) but that fits with the type of story it is trying to tell, and I much prefer sincerity and tactile visuals over the more modern trends of sarcasm and CGI. Helps too that it is less of a Mad Max ripoff than Waterworld, Costner's other post-apocalypse vehicle where he plays a mononymous wanderer.

The Johnny Cash songs work really well, you could imagine them being played in-universe. Only a few things stuck out a little, these were: colour banding in the new title cards (mentioned in an earlier review); what appeared to be flash frames at a couple of points (but on frame-by-frame playback were actually film edge damage), and a location card flickering for one frame before fading in.

Barring those nitpicks, I can't see anything to prevent it from being mistaken for a professional product, and can quite imagine myself watching it again. The key question is now to decide whether to give the original a go!