Tomorrow I’ll have this doof in a Mad Max group show at Mission Comics in SF with some cool people, so come check it out. Also, I’m a horrible procrastinator and after having two months to make something, I started on it this morning. Need to start planning better… But I do like that deadline rush (at Mission: Comics & Art)
I was talking to someone about Fury Road today and they said ‘I just hated how it had no plot. They just left and then turned around and went straight back, it was so stupid’ and I think my soul was in danger of leaving my body because really - that’s the whole point. That’s the great message of Mad Max Fury Road - they need to leave and go back because they need to understand that the Green Place doesn’t exist. Valhalla doesn’t exist. There’s no better place waiting, no Eden to escape to, nowhere for Furiosa and the wives to run to. This world, broken and damaged and war-torn as it is, is all they have, and if they want a Green Place then they have to make it themselves. They have to choose peace. They have to choose love for each other. They have to take the seeds from the older, violent generation and start again. They have to destroy the oppressive power structures holding them back, capitalism and the patriarchy that Immortan Joe represents.
The Green Place was around them all along, and it takes this long, cyclical journey to understand that, both for them and for the audience. The circular narrative structure is an absolute work of genius, and the fact that the entire plot can be boiled down to “they leave and come back” is an indication of how well this works as an action movie - that the plot is simple enough so everyone can understand what’s going on while explosions are going off and cars are racing past at 100mph - yet it’s still incredibly rich and wonderfully complex too.
And what a pertinent message to send out - the generations before us killed the world and now it’s up to us to fix what’s broken. There’s no Green Place but the one we make ourselves, which will be born out of fire and blood and rise from the ashes of the old world.
Cannot believe this is what Miller has been holding in all these years.
George Miller unleashes the full extent of his imagination in a carefully balanced “seesaw” of a movie. The film rips through the senses in its almost poetic simplicity with structure and incredibly long action sequences that pause only for very brief moments to increase the stakes of the film and the plight of its characters. Take all the extreme outlandish elements of the 3 previous films and take out the over acting and apply modern day tech and you get a perfected vision of what Miller originally wanted to portray and patiently waded through such films like Happy Feet and you (the audience) finally get what I can only say is an incredibly satisfying “high octane” thriller that puts the previous 3 cult hits to shame.
It is a post-apocalyptic future; how far from now? I don’t know. The world as we know it, or as much of it that Miller lets us see is reduced to desert wasteland divided by warring factions. Our hero Max is captured and dragged into a place known as “The Citadel” powered by the slave labor of many all to serve the purpose of one, Immortan Joe, of whom controls the most valuable assets known to man, water and gas. Joe lives similarly to that of a Pharaoh and only keeps his most trusted around him as his cabinet; all of them are members of his family. Max is kept alive to donate his blood to Joe’s warriors known as the “War Boys.” Much like a crazed despot Joe keeps a harem with 5 beautiful women of who appear flawless in an otherwise desolate landscape to mother his children. One of his own trusted officers named Furiosa runs off with the 5 wives to return to her homeland.
Mad Max: Fury Road has razor sharp action sequences powered by Miller’s crazy imagination as people fearlessly leap from vehicle to vehicle in high speed pursuits through the desert. The structure of the film is on point as the War Boys all have their roles to play; notable roles being that of the electric guitar player that’s tied to a giant rig to simply play power riffs to empower the war boys and to set the tone of things to come, much like drummer boys and buglers of the past. There are also crazed maniacal roles called “Polecats” who dangle on long poles in Buster Keaton-esque fashion as they swing from the top of poles from dune buggies to board other vehicles in acrobatic fashion.
I had heard in an interview that George Miller employed the consultation of the author of the Vagina Monologues, of whom have worked with victims of sexual abuse to create the demeanor and disposition of the 5 wives in this film. All of the actresses did a wonderful job portraying distrustful and distant visages as well as strong courageous roles when the occasion called for it.
Miller portrays all the wonders of womanhood as we see the 5 wives first appear in almost mirage like sequence in which their limber bodies are being bathed upon a desert landscape covered only in the thinnest of cloths — but throughout the film we see that although they appear to be delicate creatures they fare the perils of this savage wasteland. Lead by one of Charlize Theron’s more memorable roles as she brings an immeasurable sense of ferocity to the movie. Whether she plays an ambitious tycoon or a depressed wife she stays true to her roles and does great justice to the films she stars in by staying true to the aesthetics as she voluntarily buzzed her head for this role.
Although the dialogue is sparse, Miller is able to paint an effective picture using modern day technology to create viscreal imagery powered by knee jerk camera movements to accentuate the disjunctive nature of his savage imagination. The character development is created solely through the different environments in which the characters came, be it the underground grungey conditions of the war boys, to the beautiful paradise in the center of an otherwise claustrophobic and dry landscape made for Immortan Joe’s 5 wives — George Miller effectively brings together the different walks of life to fight for a common cause.
Miller blew my mind when I was younger and happened to stumble upon The Road Warrior on a random weekend afternoon on television wherein I learned how suspenseful a scene can be as I saw Mel Gibson desperately try to grab a hold of a shotgun shell while maintaining control of his vehicle during the middle of a chase, and blew me away again with the incredible use of CG infused backdrops and vivid color to breathe new life to his career defining franchise.
This is a revamp, but can also be a continuation in the franchise as it can be viewed as Max traversing the wasteland and stumbling upon random scenarios in which he becomes the reluctant hero as he searches for redemption.
I went to see a talk by the Colin Gibson, the production designer of Mad Max: Fury Road, and one of the most mind-blowing tidbits I learned was that when the Green Place turned sour, the matriarchal Vuvalini took their girls and fled, but they left all the boys behind. Those boys, left to die in the poisoned bog, became the Crow People we see walking on stilts:
Gibson also said they chose white paint for Immortan Joe’s war boys because (and I quote) “fat white bastards killed the world.” The Vuvalini were conceived as the opposite extreme to this, the opposite of the “fat white bastards” - but their way and their culture is still a dead end, and their callous disregard for male children is no better than Joe’s callous disregard for female children.
This makes the ending of the film, where the wives and Furiosa take the Citadel in order to build a new society, even more important. Neither Immortan Joe nor the Vuvalini had the correct ideology, but the wives and Furiosa do. Thanks to their long journey in the Wasteland, they are placed in a position to fashion and rule a more idealised, peaceful society, one based on equality across race, class and gender.
Dag, the pregnant pacifist, took the seeds from the older, violent generation so she could build a new, peaceful one. Capable showed empathy and kindness towards Nux even though she had been abused by men her whole life, and will surely show the same empathy to the war boys and war pups left behind. Toast the Knowing, observant and intelligent and ready to lead, took the wheel from the dead tyrant at the end and eagerly helped raise up the oppressed classes at the Citadel. Cheedo the Fragile turned her fragility into her greatest strength, proving that gentleness is not weakness in this barbaric world.
Furiosa forged a relationship of complete respect and equality with Max that helped her overcome the trauma she suffered at the hands of men. She achieves catharsis by killing Joe and loving Max and the wives, emerging from it all ready to begin again, ready to leave the past behind and step into the future.
We see many different tribes and cultures in this film and are presented with many different methods for survival, but only one that is really worth fighting for. The love, trust, respect and equality that exists between a ragged band of strangers in a War Rig thus becomes the prototype for the new society that will rise from the ashes when the Citadel falls.
ALL OF THIS
This is the information I’ve been looking for for a while.
if you ever see a mad max post that I haven’t reblogged, assume I am trapped beneath something heavy and couldn’t reach my phone.
