Because I was thinking about the handgun that Furiosa and Max wrestled over, and about the hilarious caption vorobey008 put on that photoset, I noticed something I hadn’t before, though it’s probably obvious to everyone else.

There’s been a lot of (very cool) talk already about how Furiosa full-on tried to kill Max during the fight (first with the sawed-off shotgun, then with the handgun):

But when Max gained the upper hand he made a point of not killing Furiosa, instead firing those three shots into the sand next to her head:

And yeah, that was a luxury Max had in that situation, as a person with significant physical advantages (not to end the fight at the first opportunity by killing his opponent, the way Furiosa tried to). But also, it was a fight, and they were experiencing a certain amount of anger and aggression, and Max was pissed, because that gun going off next to his head hurt. So he didn’t just end the fight by pressing the gun against the back of Furiosa’s head, as he could have. Instead he dished out some tit-for-tat playground retaliation, firing the gun next to her ear the same way she’d done to him, and adding two more shots for good measure.

Which makes me think that later, when Furiosa tells Max, “don’t breathe”:

…there may have been a certain amount of retributive balancing going on. Because Furiosa is no stranger to testosterone-fueled one-upmanship.

It doesn’t undercut all the cool analysis people have already done of these scenes. But it does bring home to me how similar the two characters are.

Also, I think Max was lucky Big Boy was out of ammo. Because Furiosa still owed him one.

Reposted from http://ift.tt/1gvYyBW.

Tags: gifs, my gifs, fury road, max and furiosa, performative masculinity and combat culture, this eardrum in particular.

This entry was posted by jbc on Sunday, July 12th, 2015 at 2:39 pm and is filed under Tumblr. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.