As the year from hell finally comes to a close (in 1 minute!), I want to send out a special thank you to the folks from my first Tumblr fandom:
Mad Max Fury Road
To all of you who, over the past 5 years, have gone in different directions, fallen into new fixations and fandom that have appeared sporadically to brighten my dash –
We ride eternal!
Thank you for being shiny human beings!
witness!!!!
Witnessss!!!!
Witness!!! 🙌
WITNESS!
^this is me after watching the movie and meeting you all, suddenly practicing aggressive self-care and waging war on my suicidal thoughts because I saw some kinda hope
thank you, FuryRoadies, Warboys, Vuvalini, Keepers of the Green Place, Wastelanders, and Potato.
A little Mad Max Fury Road headcanon, about Coma coming back to the citadel and playing a sick Dragonforce riff. This had been on my ‘to draw’ list for years.
it’s the five year anniversay of Fury Road and I got nowhere else to be, so let’s talk about blood.
Action movies involve physical conflict as their central mode of story telling. Fists are flying, guns get shot, swords are clashing, all with the purpose to overpower an adversary. In these contexts, blood is a very common image. Blood is drawn when the hero is in trouble, when the tables are turning and the action gets serious.
Blood is taken, never given. Blood means pain, danger, and a loss of power that is zealously fought for.
So far so obvious.
This common way of interpretation is also very flat and boring, and blood as a symbol is arguably much more complex for about half of the population. People who are menstruating deal with blood on the regular. They are intimately familiar with its sight, its smell and its touch. For them, blood is nothing that is taken with violence. It is a common bodily function, and even if it is an annoyance, more often than not, the sight of it can be a great relief for anyone who doesn’t want a pregnancy.
Blood is given, not taken. Blood means a great deal more than just injury or threat or weakness, it means fertility, the power of life itself, it may symbolize adulthood and all its freedoms and responsibilities.
Which are all interpreations we usually don’t see in action movies. As a genre, action movies are focused on cis men and their struggles (for power, for love, for revenge, what have you).
Then comes along Max, who is mad, and whose blood is taken by the Immortan Joe’s war boys, which makes him even madder. A lot of things happen, but by the end of the movie, he uses his blood to throw a literal lifeline to save the heroine of the movie. He gives his blood to save Furiosa, who was taken as a girl to produce an heir for the Immortan, and upon failing that, became his Imperator in battle. Her relationship to blood is endlessly complex, I could write an entire essay on that. But here I want to draw attention to Max, a cis male action hero, who flips the script and uses his body in a way action heros never do. He uses his blood to heal, to literally give life to somebody else.
Critics have claimed Max was a “weak” action hero in Fury Road. I think what they meant was that he didn’t adhere to the violent dealings with blood masculine actions heros usually stick to. And to me that is a good thing.
wow i genuinely forgot how much i fucking love fury road and how many miles of barbed wire that movie disentangled from around my heart.
there was something in there. the, like, literal rock foundation of respect–i think. the hope. before we the americans elected trump, before brexit, before the world started just outright trying to burn itself alive.
maybe that’s a good thing to go back to, now–that respect, that hope. that entire movie is “home can be fixed even if it’s fucked up,” and, well, we’re doing a hell of a lot of fucking up right now as a species. but maybe we can fix it. we just have to dig in our heels and bleed a little about it.
god i forgot what genuinely liking something without qualifications or reservations felt like–that’s a weird fucking feeling.
Some fanart for an absolutely wonderful MMFR fanfiction: Midwife Rising by ImRobin, featuring a Wretched midwife clawing her way up through the ranks of the Citadel in the aftermath of the Fury Road and everybody’s favorite trash lizard.
Synopsis: “While the Citadel revels in its first night free of tyranny, Capable leaves its safety to make a perilous journey alone across the Wasteland. Her purpose is simple: retrieve Nux’s remains or die trying. When she finds not a body, but hope, clinging desperately to his last thread of life, Capable’s future is unexpectedly filled with new promise… and unforeseen consequences.”
Gonna try and ride this new challenge back into the swing of things.
10Movies30Days, credit to whoever made the challenge. In short you pick 3 scenes from ten movies that you’re a big fan of, and do small speed paint recreations of those scenes without too much attention to accuracy, more to colour, energy, feeling, whatever stood out ot you the most about that scene.
I’ve wanted to paint this shot since I first saw this film, though I might try and proper repaint at some point because I don’t feel like I did Splendid’s biceps justice.
Love how these repair boys in the background all have this ’????’ look
Did that one war boy use that flip so he could safely land right side up or to look cool? He’s now my favourite.
OMG I AM SO GLAD THIS IS GIFFED. i just watched this again, and noticed the same damned thing tonight. also the Boy doing the somersault over the car. *swooooooon*
Specifically to look cool.
….i can’t stop watching this.
DID THE FIRST WAR BOY FOLLOWING MAX JUST FALL UNGRACEFULLY TO THE FLOOR
It has come to my attention that I haven’t posted Fury Road content in forever. Reblogging myself because someone liked this and reminded me that it existed.
Please note that in this clip all of the following happens:
Max vaults over the car and barely escapes being caught by War Boy #1 (Death Death).
Death Death reaches for Max, misses, and falls as a result. He does not get up. Presumably he gets trampled by all subsequent warboys. Small piece of throwaway visual storytelling as to the “live fast/die young/anything for the glory of the Immortan” war boy culture.
War Boy #2 appears to reach for Death Death but ends up slapping the roof of the car instead, maintaining his balance and propelling him forward.
War Boy #3 does an artful somersault over the car.
War Boy #4 does an artful slide across the car.
War Boy #5 does a clever vault with his legs going over the hood, saving time and energy.
War Boy #6 is just coming into view; we’ll never know what he did but I bet it was cool.
War Boy #7 watches from the left.
War Boy #8 watches from the right, and looks at War Boy #7: “Should we do something?” He appears to be installing a new engine in…
…the Interceptor, Max’s car, showing how nothing goes to waste in the Wasteland.
Note also how the sense of frenetic energy is enhanced by the camera pushing in and out. All this in a three-second shot. And it’s crystal clear what’s happening thanks to George Miller’s and John Seale’s center-target framing and Margret Sixel’s editing.
Fury Road was nominated for ten Oscars. It won six. It should have won the other four.
