--- description: It matters that "Mad Max: Fury Road" won the National Board of Review's award for best movie, but not for the reason you might think. title: Why 'Mad Max’s Win as the National Board of Review's Best Movie Matters image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5e983f1e86b9d993/6987eeca3c1639b260455e5e/frd-02064r.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) ## Entertainment Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close * [movies](/tag/movies/) ## movies Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # Why It Matters That _Mad Max_ Was Named Best Movie by the National Board of Review ## Video: Mad Max Fury Road - Official Main Trailer HD [Watch (HLS stream): Mad Max Fury Road - Official Main Trailer HD](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/TyzaPCaQ.m3u8) (2:24)  _Published 2015-04-01. Watch the official trailer for Mad Max Fury Road._  by [Eliza Berman](/author/eliza-berman/)  ## Eliza Berman Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Berman is a senior editor at TIME. Dec 1, 2015 10:37 PM CUT  Charlize Theron in Mad Max: Fury Road. Charlize Theron in Mad Max: Fury Road.Jasin Boland—Warner Bros.  by [Eliza Berman](/author/eliza-berman/)  ## Eliza Berman Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Berman is a senior editor at TIME. Dec 1, 2015 10:37 PM CUT The National Board of Review is a vaguely defined group of “film enthusiasts and professionals, academics, young filmmakers and students” whose last ten awards for best film have predicted only _two_ Academy Award Best Picture winners. So when the group [announced](http://www.nationalboardofreview.org/2015/12/national-board-of-review-announces-2015-award-winners/ "undefined") Tuesday that it had selected the blockbuster action flick _Mad Max: Fury Road_ as its best film of 2015, movie-watching corners of the Internet cocked their collective heads and wondered, “[Should](https://twitter.com/MarkHarrisNYC/status/671791220855840770 "undefined") [we](https://twitter.com/FiveStarFlicks/status/671744256197791744 "undefined") [even](https://twitter.com/SamuelAAdams/status/671783314282409986 "undefined") [care](https://twitter.com/SamRS72/status/671797291758559233 "undefined")?” The answer depends on the value one places on the prizes doled out long before The Big One. If the question is whether the NBR’s blue ribbon serves to prophesy a shiny gold statuette, the answer is empirically no. Its track record as a predictor of success at the Oscars shows that there’s neither causation nor correlation at play. Though nine of the last ten NBR best film winners were nominated for Best Picture, just two have won, and last year’s pick, [_A Most Violent Year_](http://time.com/3614477/a-most-violent-year-best-picture-acting-awards-national-board-of-review/ "undefined") (which also nabbed NBR acting awards for its two stars, Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain), received exactly zero Oscar nominations. NBR’s top movies fared slightly better in the 1980s and 1990s, when half of them went on to win Oscar’s biggest award. But in the ‘60s and ‘70s, as in the last decade, the hit rate was 20%. Last year alone, with the exception of Julianne Moore for best actress in _Still Alice_, [virtually none](http://www.showbiz411.com/2015/02/24/awards-season-is-over-now-lets-disband-the-national-board-of-review-they-got-just-about-everything-wrong "undefined") of their awards translated into wins at the Academy Awards. All of which is to say that as a predictor of Oscar glory, the NBR is middling at best. But if one’s reason for paying attention goes beyond award-season prognostication and into the deeper terrain of cultural significance—not whether _Mad Max_ might win more and bigger awards but whether it says something about going to the movies in 2015—then yes, it’s most definitely worth paying attention to. The first reason is a matter of genre. Big-budget action movies like _Mad Max_, which trade in spellbinding visual effects and face-melting explosions, are rarely considered the stuff of high art, or even worthy of a nod from the Motion Picture Academy. Sure, _Zero Dark Thirty_ and _American Sniper_, both Best Picture nominees, had action aplenty, but they had the gravitas of war on their side. _Inception_ and _District 9_, also nominees, were adrenaline-inducing thrillers, but high-concept ones. That a critical body deems worthy a high-octane franchise film replete with fiery chase scenes seems to signal a lowering of the brow. Crowd-pleasing, the award tells us, can sit comfortably with critic-pleasing. The second reason to pay attention is that _Mad Max: Fury Road_ is, by most accounts, a [feminist](http://time.com/3850323/mad-max-fury-road-eve-ensler-feminist/ "undefined") action flick. _Vagina Monologues_ scribe Eve Ensler served as a consultant. Its heroine, Charlize Theron’s Imperator Furiosa, is as far as a character can get from the damsel in distress: She is a fierce leader, and the land to which she leads is a matriarchal one. Of the NBR’s last ten picks for best movie, only one, _Zero Dark Thirty_, starred a woman in its primary role. None saw the use of the word “feminist” in headlines at anywhere near the frequency that _Mad Max_ did (and most didn’t see it at all). As early awards are meted out over the next few months—from Monday night’s [Gotham Awards](http://time.com/4130610/spotlight-gotham-movie-awards/ "undefined") to the Golden Globes and SAG Awards in January—prognosticators will make sport of reading them like so many tea leaves. But as Sam Adams [writes](http://blogs.indiewire.com/criticwire/why-movie-awards-shouldnt-predict-the-oscars-20151023 "undefined") on Criticwire, shouldn’t organizations like the NBR “zig where the others zag?” And can’t an award have value beyond how accurately it predicts another award? If Charlize Theron, Tom Hardy and director George Miller don’t get so much as an Oscar nod, they should at least be allowed to take pride in the fact that a group of people, shadowy as it may be, deemed their work worthy of recognition. So when it comes to an award which even a winning director [concedes](http://time.com/3992851/paul-haggis-crash-oscar/ "undefined") isn’t necessarily tantamount to _actually_ being the best, it’s worth remembering that a movie’s cultural relevance—that is, its ability to move people and conversations—is worth more than its weight in gold. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4131668/mad-max-national-board-of-review/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4131668/mad-max-national-board-of-review/"},"headline":"Why It Matters That Mad Max Was Named Best Movie by the National Board of Review","datePublished":"2015-12-01T22:37:33.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T13:00:59.323Z","description":"It's not for the reasons you might think","url":"https://time.com/4131668/mad-max-national-board-of-review/","keywords":["movies","Oscars","Oscars 2016 topic"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5e983f1e86b9d993/6987eeca3c1639b260455e5e/frd-02064r.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Eliza Berman","jobTitle":"Berman is a senior editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/eliza-berman/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5e983f1e86b9d993/6987eeca3c1639b260455e5e/frd-02064r.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"FURY ROAD","caption":"Charlize Theron in Mad Max: Fury Road.","creditText":"Jasin Boland—Warner Bros.","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/movies/","name":"movies"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4131668/mad-max-national-board-of-review/","name":"Why It Matters That Mad Max Was Named Best Movie by the National Board of Review"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Mad Max Fury Road - Official Main Trailer [HD]","description":"Watch the official trailer for Mad Max Fury Road.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/TyzaPCaQ/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2015-04-01T02:51:23.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/TyzaPCaQ.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/4131668/mad-max-national-board-of-review/","duration":"PT2M24S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/4131668/mad-max-national-board-of-review/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```