I don't think it's quite fair to compare Mad Max to Micheal Bay's movies just because there is explosions in both of them.

First of all, Mad Max has great camerawork cinematography and editing that give us a downright satisfyingly good grasp of what is happening when and where, despite a scene being about 20 same-ish looking cars driving around and exploding at each other.

Compare that to Micheal Bay who never knows when to reign in his camera.

With Mad Max, they filmed with real cars, real oil, real flames and in real sand. Your subconscious registers that these are actual objects and environments. That's why the action in Fury Road feels gritty, tough and more believable in a way. Thus the much more enthusiastic critical response to this movie than to Bay's.

Still, it's a kinda dumb spectable action movie with explosions. I give you that. Better than Bay's movies for sure, but basically you are right about this.

I disagree about "less is more" though. It doesn't apply minimalism to it's action scenes, that's true, but "less is more" is the perfect way to describe how Mad Max approaches how it set's up it's world. There is always glimpses at a bigger scenario. The world, the society in that town, the previous apocalypse, Furiosa's story, her relationship to the girls, Max's history. But they are never explored or explained away. There is more mystery and fascination this way. It works quite well because the hold back

"Show, not tell" is an important golden rule in filmmaking. Fury Road has some really good execution of this concept.

There is barely a line of superfluous expositionary dialogue or narration in the movie. Maybe one or two about the plot like Furiosa's name in the beginning ad the plan with the map in the end. There is glimpses that give us an impression of a huge, dangerous, fascinating world that we never fully see. Less is more.