'Mad Max: Fury Road' quietly races away with 6 Oscars
Let this be a lesson to all future would-be Oscar winners: If you want to win a bunch of statues, hire some masked dude to shred on a fire-spitting electric guitar.
Mad Max: Fury Road might have missed out on wins in the big categories -- Best Director and Best Picture -- but it won six of its 10 nominations. None of the night's other winners can boast such big numbers.
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Mad Max dominated the evening's technical categories, with wins for Costume Design, Production Design, Makeup & Hairstyling, Film Editing, Sound Editing and Sound Mixing.
Going into Sunday Night's ceremony, The Revenant was the only film with more nominations than Mad Max, at 12. Its two wins -- for Best Director, Best Actor and Best Cinematography -- were all in categories that Mad Max was nominated in as well.
The post-apocalyptic action flick also lost in the Visual Effects category to surprise winner Ex Machina. In addition to Mad Max, the arthouse sci-fi film from Alex Garland -- writer of 28 Days Later -- also beat out another favorite in Visual Effects: Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
While the box office speaks very loudly to Star Wars' success, the Academy was having none of it. J.J. Abrams' sci-fi blockbuster didn't win a single award, despite being nominated in five categories.
But don't let that -- and the near-misses in the big categories -- bum you out, genre fans. Movies like these have a spotty history at best at the Oscars, unless they're major events like Avatar or The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.
It might not have been crowned Best Picture, but six wins out of 10 for Mad Max means a lot of new viewers are going to sit down and check it out. And the more people that fall for director George Miller's effortless, seat-edging action -- not to mention his unexpectedly powerful feminist message -- the more likely we are to see more movies like this.
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Adam Rosenberg is a Senior Games Reporter for Mashable, where he plays all the games. Every single one. From AAA blockbusters to indie darlings to mobile favorites and browser-based oddities, he consumes as much as he can, whenever he can.Adam brings more than a decade of experience working in the space to the Mashable Games team. He previously headed up all games coverage at Digital Trends, and prior to that was a long-time, full-time freelancer, writing for a diverse lineup of outlets that includes Rolling Stone, MTV, G4, Joystiq, IGN, Official Xbox Magazine, EGM, 1UP, UGO and others.Born and raised in the beautiful suburbs of New York, Adam has spent his life in and around the city. He's a New York University graduate with a double major in Journalism and Cinema Studios. He's also a certified audio engineer. Currently, Adam resides in Crown Heights with his dog and his partner's two cats. He's a lover of fine food, adorable animals, video games, all things geeky and shiny gadgets.
