Why MM:FR Was the Most Tasteful Action Movie I’ve Seen
Things that the film handled with restraint:
Rape: As countless people have said – Half of the movie’s main cast consists of sex slaves. And there’s not a single rape scene.
Gore: The film looks exactly the type to be ultra-violent a la Quentin Tarantino. But it’s not. The one gory moment is one that you can see coming from miles away and lasts only for a second. And even then, it’s not terrible. Considering this, the movie probably could have had a PG-13 rating with minor alteration.
Sexualization: Five women wearing nothing but gauze sounds like a recipe for anything but what we got; no lingering, awkward, bodily shots. There was even a scene with a completely naked young woman with the camera focused directly on her. Guess what. The camera treated her exactly as if she were wearing flannel pajamas.
Degradation of women: Bad people get upset. We get that. Sometimes they like to swear at our heroines. And yet no one felt the need to say “bitch,” “cunt,” or “whore.” How a film managed to present about the least female-friendly society you can imagine but treated its female characters with more respect than 99% of action movies is beyond me.
Things that the film did not handle with restraint:
FLAMETHROWER GUITAR.
Gender equality: No one once says “Women are ___,” or “Men are ___.” It almost seems like outside of Immortan Joe’s freakishly utilitarian society, men and women get along just fine. Huh. Weird.
Death: Good and bad people die alike on the Fury Road; very quickly. It’s your typical action movie body count. But in a move that’s both odd and brilliant, the film spends a good amount of it’s scarce dialogue detailing what death means to the characters. For some, it’s a suicidal call to honor. For others, it’s a necessary risk to bring about more life. People die in droves. And it’s sad. Death matters.
Criticism: This is about the most critical movie of gender inequality, capitalism, and fascism I’ve ever seen without anyone ever mentioning gender inequality, capitalism or fascism.
COMPASSION: I can’t state this enough. This is a post-apocalyptic genre movie where people kill each other over sex slaves, border disputes, and cars and its message is hope and compassion. The biggest, most heroic moment of the movie is an act of healing, not an act of violence. WHOA.
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