I was checking out this cool bts image Dayna Grant posted on Twitter:
And that made me want to check out the scene in the movie again.
Here she is running along the right side of the rig (because after Furiosa yelled “fool” she dove from the left side to the right, to avoid the Rock Riders’ bullets). Note the sun shining on the right side of the rig, with the left side in shadow:
The next shot has a little bit of a continuity issue, since she’s passing the same set of wheels a second time, but it’s no big deal:
Incoming Rock Rider from the left (now the sunny side):
Dayna slides under the rig – but from the left side:
Rock Rider sliding in from the (now shady) left side:
…and catching Dayna!Furiosa’s legs, while we cut between two shots, the first of which has the sun on the left side of the rig, while the second, from a camera mounted under the rig, seems to show the sun back on the original right side:
I understand they made a decision early in the shoot not to worry too much about trying to maintain continuity with sun angles, which is fine.
But I’m fascinated by the decision to flop the fourth shot to show her sliding in from the left side of the rig rather than the right. Why did they do that? Were they trying to create a heightened sense of chaos/jeopardy by showing something that would subconsciously register as wrong while being too quick to consciously notice? I’ve read about Friedkin doing that with the wrong-way freeway chase in To Live and Die in L.A.; maybe it’s more of a thing than I realized?
She never looks up when she’s thinking. When she’s telling Max about her past, she’s looking straight ahead, or to the side. When she’s telling Max about the salt she’s looking at the salt. When Max is telling her to go back to the Citadel she’s looking past him, and when she decides she looks up at him and clasps his hand.
I’m just amusing myself with the idea that Furiosa introduced the forehead to forehead thing to the War Boys.
Maybe after her first run on the War Rig she’s so pumped up, she’s done it, they shook off the Buzzards, it feels like her whole body is still roaring with the growl of the engines and the bellow of the horn and the sheer adrenaline of it, her crew was fantastic, she chose well, she is so high with it.
So she jumps down from the cab when they’re back at the Citadel and Ace comes up to report and she grabs him and lightly conks their foreheads together in a half remembered greeting. And Ace is like ‘…the fuck?’ but she is grinning and clearly pleased with him so obviously this is the highest sign of approval and honour you can be given by an Imperator.
So the War Rig team starts doing it, and since they are the Most Elite Team among War Boys, soon the others start imitating the gesture. And because they’re War Boys it becomes more of a slightly competitive conking of heads than the tender forehead press the Vuvalini do, but that is the story of how the War Boys started butting heads.
I mean I mean I MEAN
Ace is like… touched by the Imperatorially Blackened Forehead? Being given some of that status grease on his forehead? Being grinned at from up close by an Imperator who is practically vibrating with Yes!Good!YouRock! feels?
Talk about stuff that inspires loyalty
I just. Can you imagine Ace just standing around a little stunned and not quite knowing how to process it? And the rest of the crew is like looking at him too and Furiosa’s already moving through them still vibrating with energy and headdaps and shoulder pats they’re looking at him for guidance and Ace is like almost angry when he goes up to the nearest Boy and slams their foreheads together because, “Well??!”
And the War Boys whoop with it, moshes together in a pile of limbs, and Furiosa’s finds herself pretty much crowdsurfing. The sounds of their celebration bangs against the heights of the Citadel like its carving out space for her in the rocks.
I’m just imagining Ace after a halflifetime of Very High Up Joe giving kind of conditional distant approval and always knowing Joe would be more pleased if he died for him… he gets this. He gets the new Imperator, spilling over with energy and approval, touching him like that, completely unfiltered. She has to go onto her toes and pull his head down a little and she does not care, she is 20 feet tall and bulletproof in that moment and in her War Boys’ eyes forever after.
So we’ve either been reading the same kinkmeme prompts or that was your prompt which means I should tell you that I was one of the replies saying ‘yes plz’.
And gosh, I’m not writing smut at work.
But listen though, like the first night, that first time, none of them even ends up in their bunks and it’s not what you think; they’re in the meal halls still.
They’re in the meal halls and they’re handing each other food and passing down plates like catching a body falling from tumbling like hand meeting hand to swing away from wreckage and they’re all endless words, endless revisiting of that run, what would be done better faster more, more modifications to their lances, more maneuvers to practice, is there a better way to get a lance for you, is there a better position for our flamer, is there a better allocation for the bullets…
“I don’t think I saw our Imperator miss once.”
And their tables roared and hands slapped tables and aqua-cola was lifted high and splashed about like chrome.
Little by little, the night grew long and
the mess hall emptied of all but them. Their
stories grew softer, grew quiet, and almost secret like Witnessing that they shouldn’t have the right to have. Three tables became crammed into one, spilled ontop and across the floor of the table where Furiosa held court. No one wanted to leave.
But War Boys run dry eventually too and they drooped from the table to puddle around each other on the ground, like the half-acknowledged memories of their War Pup piles. (They shouldn’t be, they shouldn’t–)
“Look at this lot,” Ace huffed at his Imperator, the both of them remain hunched at the table.
“I’ll need to get them up in the morning.” Furiosa murmured.
Ace knew that if the Boys were found here by the morning crew, they’d hear no end of it.
It makes something skitter in his stomach to realize that she’s watching over them, still (like swallowing something alive).
“I’ll keep you company then,” Ace says, and raises his cup.
She smacks her’s against it, gently, like heads meeting.
Something I really really enjoy about Furiosa’s character:
Most of the time in movies and books and the like when you have a badass warrior lady they have a common personality trait: they’re kind of huge jerks. They’ll do things like be hyper aggressive and rude and insult/belittle people and just all around be super harsh. And then off course they’ll have the heart of gold underneath and all that but it’s always buried under a veneer of defensive assholary.
And that’s all well and good, I’m not knocking it, but it gets kinda old after a while y’know?
furiosa isn’t like that! Furiosa is never mean spirited or harsh when she doesn’t need to be! Like, granted, she did grapple with max when they first met but it was because he had a gun trained on her charges. A typical action heroine would spend a good chunk of the rest of the movie being super antagonistic towards Max, but she doesn’t. As soon as she figures out Max’s motives she makes peace with him and becomes downright friendly. The meanest thing she ever says to max is calling him fool, but that’s just exasperation at his reluctance to cooperate.
She never ridicules the wives for not being proficient at combat, she accepts Nux as soon as Capable vouches for him, and she is never rude or unreasonable.
Furiosa is strong, competent, and independent, but they never make her an asshole to prove it. She remains unabashedly compassionate and kind, and I just adore it.
My lovely and talented friend Kim of Wren’s Fairy Realm has allowed me to share her recent OOAK piece with you all on tumblr. She doesn’t have an account yet but we’re working on it ^__~ This is her hand sculpted version of Furiosa from the new 2015 Mad Max film. She is currently available on eBay HERE
And check out more of her artwork and WIPS (work in progress) HERE Thanks for checking her out. We appreciate it!
Oh my god who wants to buy this for me so I can cry about it forever???
I wish I knew more, but at the moment I only have what I’ve seen in the movie, and a few scans from the “Art of…” book and the tie-in prequel comics being put out by Vertigo. I agree, though, about Angharad’s pregnancy being the ticking clock that pushed them into action.
The first of the tie-in comics apparently gave back story for Immortan Joe and Nux. The second, Furiosa #1, which goes on sale next week, has a description that reads:
High in the Citadel there exists a bio-dome of clean air and pure water, protected from the toxicity and anarchy of the Wasteland. Here the warlord Immortan Joe keeps his most prized possessions – his wives – imprisoned for his pleasure and his insistence that they bear him healthy male heirs.
Then, amid this cruel depravity, an unlikely rescuer emerges…the Immortan’s most lethal warrior: the Imperator Furiosa.
So that sounds like a pretty cool thing to get hold of if you want to know more.
Other than that there’s just that one scene in the bio-dome early in the movie, and whatever one can infer from other scenes.
I do wonder about the fact that Joe suspects something is up with Angharad the instant he sees that Furiosa has left the road to Gas Town. He must have had some reason to be suspicious already. Something in Angharad’s recent manner? Is there something that links Furiosa with the wives in Joe’s mind? Have they recently been in contact with each other?
Then there are the words painted in the bio-dome:
OUR BABIES WILL NOT BE WARLORDS
WHO KILLED THE WORLD?
WE ARE NOT THINGS
Those sound like a continuation of an argument that has already been taking place between Joe and Angharad.
And then there’s the dialog between Joe and Miss Giddy:
Joe: Splendid? Angharad? Where are they?
Miss Giddy: They are not your property.
Joe: Miss Giddy!
Miss Giddy: You cannot own a human being. Sooner or later someone pushes back!
Joe: Where is she taking them?
Miss Giddy: She didn’t take them; they begged her to go! (They struggle over the shotgun, which goes off, missing Joe. He grabs Miss Giddy.)
Joe: Where is she taking them?
Miss Giddy: A long way from you.
The other scene I really like in terms of what it implies about Angharad and the other wives’ state of mind is the argument between them and Nux in the war rig after he tries to strangle Furiosa. I love that scene. In a movie with so little dialog, to have this sudden shouted debate that bears directly on the movie’s underlying themes is breathtaking.
I think the wives have spent a lot of time talking and thinking about these issues. Their decision to flee Joe wasn’t a spur of the moment thing. They were committed. They’d worked it out. They knew what they were doing and why they were doing it. I’m really curious what brought them and Furiosa into contact, who reached out to whom first, and how they came to realize that each was willing to take such a risky and irrevocable step.
I just saw Mad Max Fury Road for the fourth time, and I’m always looking for new things, paying attention to different stuff. I wasn’t actually looking for this, but I was particularly struck this time at Furiosa’s initial defiance, which starts with her turning the war rig off its path…
