icarus-suraki:

flamethrowing-hurdy-gurdy:

This was a theme that was evident to me from the start (meaning, the movie made it VERY clear), that the escape is not an escape at all costs, but that there are rules which make it worthwile. “No unnecessary killing.” What kind of dumbass rule is that in a world with so much violence, why would you impose the chore of having to evaluate every attacker as someone you have to or don’t have to kill when you’re escaping from enslavement?

Well, probably because if you accept the rules of the game, there’s no point in trying to escape it.

Or a bit more poignantly: if you decide that you are not a thing, you must also defend other people’s autonomy. Otherwise it’s just you walking over corpses until you find respite, and THEN start living life better than your abusers…which, you know, okay, sometimes that’s necessary. No one would have blamed the wives for it, I think, no one blames Furiosa for being just a tad less discerning with her deadly force. But it’s so important that the wives still decided they want to be ‘above all that’, to quote the Dag. Their escape wasn’t worth jack shit to them unless they tried to fix things as they went along.

The other thing, and this is most clear when Angharad and Capable are yelling philosophy back and forth with Nux (while he hangs out of the cab of the rig, whatever) is that the “wives” seem to believe that the Warboys are also victims of Joe’s regime. 

“He’s just a kid at the end of his half-life” and “You’re an old man’s battle-fodder!” they yell. Angry as they are, they still seem to view the Warboys at least as victims–both like and unlike themselves of course, but still victims of the regime and its systems. They have come to the conclusion that they’re all being used in one way or another–in this case, used physically.

In that case, no wonder they’d be hesitant to kill or will make a promise not to kill if they’ve begun to view these other people, the Warboys and Warpups and so on, in a sympathetic or at least compassionate way. Especially one like Nux who really does seem to be totally taken in (listen to him repeating what amounts to chapter and verse with “He’s the one who grabbed the sun” and “By his hand we’ll be lifted up” &c). Hence, throwing him out rather than killing him.

The problem is that it becomes necessary (and has been necessary from the start) for someone to act in overt defense of them (that would be Furiosa and, eventually, Max–and eventually Nux) as the attacks against them mount. That defense has to respond in kind to what’s being dished out. Killing becomes the only way to stay alive. It does, unfortunately, become necessary to kill. One has to answer force with equal force in this imagined world. (As an aside, it seems like Toast knows this already–Toast is the Knowing, after all. She’ll reload the gun. She gets it. Philosophy is nice, but sometimes reality is more complex.)

In this same vein, I feel like the Keeper of the Seeds and her reaction, her silence, when The Dag says she “thought you girls were above all that” means more than just surprise. I feel like that silence, then the immediate turn to show The Dag all her seeds speaks to the need that the Vuvalini have found to simultaneously be “above all that” needless killing but still perfectly aware of what it takes to survive, what it takes for a woman to survive, in this violent and ruined world.

The Vuvalini are “above all that” but in a complicated way. They won’t seek out bloodshed for fun–that’s a game for Joe and his cohorts. But they’ll stand against force with equal force and strength and method. They will even take the initiative–they’re not purely defensive. It’s a very delicate balance to maintain. And I think it’s important in terms of character development that the “wives” with their promise that “it’s not necessary to kill” and Furoisa with her readiness to attack (not just defend) encounter this “third way.”

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icarus-suraki:

fygeneralzod:

Max+Warboys taking his shit.

THIS BRINGS ME TO ANOTHER THING that I think is interesting: how often the masculine characters in Fury Road refer to possession and ownership. A short sample:

• My war-rig (Joe)
• My Imperator Furiosa (Joe)
• My half-life warboys (Joe)
• My friends (Joe–I’d say this was just idiomatic except for how Toast says that because Joe owns the water, “he owns all of us”)
• My wheel (Nux)
• My lancer (Nux)
• My bloodbag (Nux)
• They took my blood, now my car (Max)
• My child, my property (Joe)
• That’s my jacket (Max)
• That’s mine! [the Interceptor] (Max)

And this is just the obvious stuff off the top of my head. And it is to say nothing of the calculations  of loss that the People-Eater is carrying out. “Protect the assets!” indeed. And need we even mention the implications of possession inherent in the chastity belts? Nnnnnnnope.

Furiosa, though, refers to the war rig as “the rig”–no possessive language. And what’s the chorus among the female characters? “We are not things.”

There’s a much greater sense of shared ownership or collectivism among the female characters–especially the Vuvalini. They literally give Max a motorcycle, even though he’s said he’s not coming with them. Just give it to him. They share their food and clothing with the newcomers. It’s much less centered on ownership and control and more on what benefits the whole group, not just the individual members.

This is probably just identifying the toxic masculinity elements in action, but it really starts to get interesting and weird when you keep hearing the words “my” and “mine” over and over and over. (Got some other thoughts on symbols of control too, for later.)

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stele3:

bonehandledknife:

mugsandpugs:

Things I care about:

– Max never fought to kill anyone. In every fight he had, his primary motivation was escape. Even when it would have been easier or more beneficial to kill someone, that was never what he chose.

– Max slowly learning how to talk again while in the company of Furiosa and the Wives (also, the fact that he kept his blood tubing and needle because MAX IS A GOOD PERSON and thought ‘someone may need my blood again’ EVEN AFTER ALL HE HAD BEEN THROUGH)

– Max being surprised at Furiosa’s willingness to trust him to drive the Rig to safety, and subsequent exchange of trust when he offered to take care of the dragging fuel pod, LITERALLY LEAVING BEHIND THE ENORMOUS PILE OF WEAPONS HE’D PILFERED FROM THEM THE MOMENT BEFORE 

– The amazing team they make fighting together okay they are so synchronized they work SO WELL together. And how she just stands up and he KNOWS to hand her Big Boy so she can take out the Rough Riders, and how he shoots out one of the windows for her so she can through the bomb through. THEY ARE THE ULTIMATE DREAM TEAM

– Max asking “So why’d you leave?” in that adorable voice, giving Splendid the thumbs up, how literally EVERY scene he had with Furiosa was a back-and-forth equivalent exchange of trust that grew slightly bigger each time

– Max forgetting his original goal (escape) and taking on a different motivation: protect. (He was once a cop, after all.) He’s crossed that horizon now, and even though it would make way more sense for him to bail, he takes on the Bullet Farmer singlehandedly at the probable cost of his own life (They are a tank of many armed people. He is just a Max) so Furiosa/Wives/Nux can keep moving.

– Murder Santa, that is all

– PATTING NUX’S HEAD OMG.

– Turning Furiosa’s words back on her. “They’re looking hope. [I’m looking for] redemotion.” / “Maybe, together, we could find some kind of redemption.”

– Most of his actions in the final scene fully revolved around, “Get onto Joe’s car so I can save Furiosa.” But he kept being interrupted (mostly by Rictus.) And when he finally finally has his arms around her and can haul her back into the car there’s just this RELIEF on his face.

– The Blood Scene. I have ranted about the Blood Scene quite extensively before (it’s my favorite scene in any form of media, period) But basically: Max is reclaiming ownership over his own body and his name. Furiosa helped him get his personhood back; now he’s helping her get her life back and is once again able to reclaim his name when he couldn’t earlier.

– Max holding Furiosa up, supporting her as she took on her throne. And then that NOD they exchange at the end could be interpreted in so many ways, and I know a lot of people think he should have stayed (and for his own mental sake he certainly should have) but I have a LOT OF FEELINGS ABOUT HIS CHOICE ANYWAY

– Max. I care about Max.

Yes yes all of this although, ugh, someone (PLEASE PING ME IF IT’S YOU) pointed out that the blood tubing that he used for Furiosa didn’t come from his own. It appeared after he went after the Bullet Farmer.

He’d scavenged it alongside the bullets, the wheel, and a shoe for Nux. Like he literally had a moment where he found the thing and decided to keep it, just in case.

Love these, but I do have to correct the bolded paragraph. He offered to take care of the fuel pod while still wearing the metal mask, and when he climbed out to do so he took the big bag o’ weapons with him. When he’s gone Furiosa checks the gearshift and pulls out the bone knife, which Max missed in his de-weaponizing of the cab, and which is later the thing that gets stabbed into Furiosa’s side. Interesting symmetry, there.

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fernacular:

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. 

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lierdumoa:

battlenuggalope:

Jurassic World, Mad Max Fury Road, and Little Girls

For her birthday, we took my soon-to-be six year-old to Jurassic World. Prior to that, she had watched a bootleg copy of Fury Road with me after I had confirmed that it fit the levels of violence I consider acceptable based on what I know of my daughter.

The most interesting thing to me was her reactions after each film.

After watching MMFR, she talked incessantly about it. (She had talked during the film as well, making observations, etc.) Her name was suddenly changed to Angry Cereal, mirroring two of her favorite characters. She made a new Sims game, spending more time than she ever had before perfecting the characters – and giving them all pets. A Lego car set was turned into a crazy car that could fit into the Mad Max world. Barbies were now the Wives and her dad’s Diablo figurine was now Immortan Joe. It’s been a little over two weeks and she still talks about it.

When the credits rolled on Jurassic World, she said, ‘Can we go see another movie?’ –And that was it. The only other comment vaguely related to the movie was her assertion she liked dinosaurs. Nothing else. No elaborate recreations, nothing.

I had thought with MMFR that my excitement had rubbed off on her but that doesn’t seem to be the case. After Jurassic World, I was excited, encouraging her to talk about her favorite parts. She asked for a Happy Meal. When we went to spend a gift card at Toys-R-Us the next day, I pointed out all the Jurassic World toys. They had Blue! She barely gave them a second glance.

It didn’t jive. She had tons of dinosaur books. Why was she infinitely more interested in an adult movie that was pretty much one big car chase rather than a movie about dinosaurs? Was it because despite the differences in ratings, Jurassic World had frightened her more? Maybe. But when she picked out a new stuffed animal to buy with her gift card, she informed us the little owl’s name was Splendid.

And that was it.

She had watched Fury Road in almost complete silence until the first shot of all the Wives. Then she turned to me and said, “There’s so many girls!” That was her takeaway from MMFR: there were lots of girls! All the girls were fighting together against the bad guy! The girls were the heroes! That was important to her, seemingly even more important than it was to me. Maybe because she’s just getting her first taste of playground culture where boys and girls are separate and the two don’t mix often and it’s been confusing. Maybe because she just really liked seeing girls on the screen. When I ask her, she just shrugs and says, “I don’t know, mommy, I liked all the girls. I liked Toast.”

As an adult, I’m aware of issues with representation. I don’t remember consciously noticing it as a child but I remember Leia and Uhura and Janeway being my favorites. I remember dressing up as Dana Scully. As a mom, I watch my daughter gravitate to girls and women on screen. A movie I thought would a sure thing because DINOSAURS! became a total miss because for her, there was no one on screen that she left the theater wanting to dress up as. There was no incentive for her to change her name to mimic favorite characters. I left grinning because holy shit, raptor squad! She left wanting a cheeseburger.

Children know when they’re being marginalized. They might have no idea what they word marginalized means, but they can still tell, instinctually, when they’ve been misrepresented in and/or excluded from the story.

[look, there’s even a scientific study supporting this]

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bonehandledknife:

mugsandpugs:

slitthelizardking:

bonehandledknife:

a sudden need to see Miss Giddy organize the War Boys into presenting some Shakespearean theater…

I’m just imagining grumpy ol’ Slit as Puck.

ooc a mediocre night’s dream to die to sleepto sleep perchance to RIDE TO VALHALLA!!!!

slitthelizardking YOU NEED TO BE STOPPED

ngl one of the reasons why I enjoy the idea of war boys doing shakespeare is that they will make it their own goddammit, because that’s how they roll

It will be awesome, too. Because like with that Jack Hitt piece for TAL about the production of Hamlet at the Missouri Eastern Correctional Center, I bet the war boys are going to find all kinds of correspondences to their own experience. Their culture is so theatrical already, from Joe on down; it is literally their main goal in life to be witnessed giving an aesthetically compelling performance.

I bet their Hamlet would be incredibly powerful. Loyalty and betrayal is everything to them.

There’s that pile of books in the Dome. I hope at least one of them is Shakespeare’.

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http://ift.tt/1Fxwoel:

redshoesnblueskies:

redshoesnblueskies​:

Fury Road – Physics & Feminism

redshoesnblueskies:

Warning – philosophizing ahead.

In a previous post conversation with malibujojo we were talking about Max & Furiosa’s fight, which led me to thinking about the broader context for the fight.  And once I get started, I kinda just keep writing.  Better to start a new post rather than clutter the previous one :)

I said:

….and then in the final moment, having overcome everyone in this 4-way brawl, when you’re going holy shit she is so fucking done, what does he do? fires 3 warning shots into the sand next to her head.  WHY??  Why does he spare her?  It’s a moment of instinctive something – training, compassion…what? and I exhale in disbelief, no sense of victory or relief.

and malibujojo has a great answer – Max is seeking a moment of calm to figure out what the hell he wants, what he should do next.  The warning shots are everybody SHUT THE FUCK UP.  Perfect – yes!  That fits exactly.

my response:

For anyone aiming to control the outcome, gaining control of the chaos, of the various vectors of danger, of the intersecting elements of all, is step one.  Shut the fuck up, indeed.  Warning shots are the most efficient deescalation at his disposal.

[I JUST NEED 30 CONSECUTIVE SECONDS TO THINK HERE, PEOPLE]

If he’s looking to have the best possible outcome along a path-of-least-resistance from the humans around him, NOT killing is a much much smarter move.  It saves dealing with now-probably-unhinged survivors, and it spares him the most possible energy to keep him mind clear enough to formulate a workable plan. [poor Max, he’s operating on almost no mental spoons]

[annnnd here’s where redshoes delightedly goes off the rails!  Nah – here’s where redshoes expands from one scene to an overall theme of the movie.  Like she does.  Because context is everything.  Here goes:]

There is one hanging thread in this scene for me – and it relates to an ethic I’ve been pondering that runs through the whole movie.  Furiosa didn’t hesitate more than a second before pulling the trigger on the shot gun.  Max knows absolutely and for sure she is a deadly threat and given the chance she wouldn’t even hesitate the next time because now she’s seen the extent of his capability.  And yet he doesn’t react with the same deadly-force-is-the-only-option approach.  Instead he bargains for a moment to think.  I think this is one of those moments when the movie tacitly acknowledges how different the stakes are between men and women:  she cannot safely subdue him, he’s simply too strong.  He would be a constant danger.  But he can safely subdue her and carve out a moment to think.  She didn’t have a choice; he did – a simple fact they both must know to the bone, living in the wasteland.  He wouldn’t blame her for that.  It’s just reality. **

In every way, this movie respects physics – bodies fall and break.  It also respects the realities of size and strength and how the men and women strategize for that reality.  The men are stronger, the women are trickier.  Furiosa’s skill as a sharp shooter is no accident; the Vulvalini are, every single one of them, sharp shooters.  It’s their best tactic – don’t even let the men get close.  The grannies do everything they can to stay out of reach – because once they close with a male attacker, the odds of winning drop dramatically.  While they’re all fighting on the rig they maintain distance as best they can – swing the rifle stock at your attacker, don’t get close enough for him to hit you.  Hide and sneak attack. Trick, feint or pick ‘em off one at a time from a high perch.

There’s a moment in the brawl on top of the rig when one of the grannies has been barely fending off a war boy and when it comes to a moment where Max can get to him, he just wipes the guy off the map. [in my brain I was going ‘aw maaan – menfolk! UN FAIR! …and hot.  reeeeally fuckin’ hot.  yes, I am a hominid who would chose the strongest mate, it’s all true]  This is the reality of strength, and they played it that way without apology.  Way to go, George Miller, way to go.

I admire that they did not choose to have super-human-strength women.  The grannies are grannies – however strong their harsh desert life makes them. But they are crafty.  The wives are sheltered women who have never had the opportunity to learn to fight or sharpen their reflexes or strengthen their muscles.  In the wives, it is their will that is strong.  Furiosa is nearly 6 feet tall and has been forced by living among the war boys to always play at the top of her game physically – maximizing her native strength and honing her tactics for times when her strength won’t be enough.  And even that cannot save her against a similarly sized man (yeah, he’s shorter, but they probably weigh pretty close :P) and the complication of Nux suddenly waking up.  Everything about the way she approaches that fight says she knows she’s got to win before the fight is even fully started, before Max can get his bearings, and when that doesn’t happen, she gets increasingly desperate, angry, ferocious.  

I keep seeing people growl that this isn’t a ‘feminist movie’ because it doesn’t emphasize women over men, or doesn’t gift women with strength or skills or magic that they do not have in real life so they can prevail over men.  It doesn’t have women dominate the plot until it warps under the weight – in mirror image to how male-dominated misogynistic action movies do.  

People seem to be forgetting that feminism isn’t about the dominance of women – it’s about the equality of women.  

Fury Road tells a story about the realities of women, and the feminine principle as a whole, in a brutal patriarchal society; but the point-of-view of the film refuses to be complicit with that in-universe stripping of agency.  In doing so, the ethics of the film show women as having equal value, equal agency, being equally deserving of freedom, fulfillment and their own destinies.

Magically endowing the women with super strength or insta-skills would have allowed the movie to handwave the entire issue of patriarchy, of misogyny, of feminism – and that’s what hollywood has been doing for more than 20 years now.

But George Miller didn’t fall for that trap.  Without even thinking about it, he wrote the women as people – and let the actors’ gender declare for itself.

That’s feminism, folks.  

**[as a woman with a background in combat sports, blackstump has a fantastic insight here – ‘He’s trying to fight her, she’s trying to execute him.’ That’s it exactly!  he has that choice…she does not] [this has been your ETA for today]

shoveaspockinit:

This is a great analysis and I agree with almost everything said here and admire the movie quite a bit for the equality that is presence, especially in acknowledgement of differences.

The only disagreement I have is that there is one inequality in the representation of men and woman in the film- all of the women in the film have benevolent motivations. Not one of them is evil. Not one of them is wholly selfish. It might feel nitpicky, but the idea that women, especially in sisterhood, are blameless, particularly with leading questions like “Who killed the world?”, is damaging as well as sexist. Especially when many modern feminist circles have a horrible confirmation bias that lets them continue to hold hateful, hurtful, and counterproductive outlooks as though they are not responsible for their actions. Just something to keep in mind.

redshoesnblueskies:

This is entirely a ymmv response – but this is the reason I didn’t include any discussion of this concept in my original post.  So!  No disrespect – this is interpretation, this is shades of rage vs. shades of nobility.  This is just my way of seeing :)

Here goes:

Something that is much less interpretable in the film (you really have to look for an unfamiliar intent expressed non-verbally in actions-over-words), but that Charlize Theron has made crystal clear in interviews, is that Furiosa is not out for any feminist-linked purity of cause.  She’s not freeing these women – she’s STEALING them. Her goal is to HURT the Immortan, because he took her from home, killed her mother, tried to make her a breeder, cast her aside when she was barren…he destroyed her life.

Furiosa isn’t in this for a benevolent cause – she’s in this for VENGEANCE.  And that takes a while to change. *thinks for a moment*  The first time she shows concern for the wives beyond ‘valuable cargo’ is after Angharad dies – Capable says she’ll go in back to be the lookout and Furiosa snaps fearfully, “No. I want you to stay together!”  She’s made the transition – these are no longer cargo, no longer her vehicle to vengeance…these are people.

In the overall arc, it’s that battle that solidifies the course of both Furiosa and Max.  Now they are no longer running scared, gunning for vengeance or enacting rage or terror.  Now is when we can say that some positive purpose starts to crystalize, aligning the course of their actions. The mission starts to emerge.

Rosie Huntington-Whiteley playing Angharad is very clear that her character is full of conflict, expressing that in her actions – she risks herself, she risks the baby, she acts recklessly – she is not acting in a benevolent noble-purpose model either.  She is profoundly self destructive in her horribly conflicted state of wanting to protect a baby conceived in rape.  She is moved by rage to scream “Who killed the world” at a kid she has just defended as a kid! Just a boy at the end of his half life!  Her rage is consuming her, even as she’s trying to think justly.

On seeing the true stakes involved, Cheedo loses it – decides to go back to Joe.  She’s been running scared, and now she breaks and abandons her friends, their mission, the whole thing.  That’s not a benevolent purpose – that’s a young woman in terror.

The Keeper of the Seeds is full of remorse about killing everyone they come across – at long range, before they can evaluate good or evil, purpose or intent!  This is a purely selfish act – survival above all else, because the risk is too great to act otherwise.  The Dag calls her on it, and she tries to explain…but the truth isn’t pretty, and she doesn’t try to deny it.

These character points are all evident in the film – they’re THERE, it’s not that they are hidden or down-played or pasted on as after thoughts to appease.  I think it’s just hard for us to see them at all.  We’re so conditioned to a set of movie tropes that these character realities don’t fit…that we almost cannot interpret, “These women are just as flawed as any realistic character.  They, too, have suffered warping of their world-view at the hands of the culture they were embedded in – they see all men as the enemy.  They have healing to do.”

Second wave feminism fell prey to this point of view, this rage, and got mired in it, couldn’t get past it.  Feminism as a whole is still pulling out of this tailspin that soured both its reputation and its expression.  Rage is not the end point of healing – it is only one step along the way.

The women – the people – of Fury Road are just starting down the road to healing. They are not good souls with pure motivations – they are messy, conflicted, angry at the wrong causes or wrong people or simply too angry to seek justice over vengeance.  Part of their character journey, is to take them from a destructive rage to a constructive anger.

It’s yet another way George Miller impresses the socks off of me – because the flip-side of the “magical super-strong woman” trope, is the “we women are noble, you men are base” trope.

And he refuses to fall into either aspect of that trope, of that myth, of that lie.

shoveaspockinit:

Thank you for your amazing response! I’ve only just seen the film for the first time, so our differences in familiarity with the content shows, but upon your pointing out evidence of the realism of the women of Fury Road out I’m very inclined to agree with you. There was much more nuance in there than I originally realized, and I think I find even more agreement with you at the end. The characters aren’t unselfish or benevolent in their own context, but it is very easy from our perspective to see them as such, because their rescue mission seems like the most benevolent purpose there is. 

An additional thing I realized, thinking about egalitarianism in Fury Road, is that the male characters seemed to be in many ways as damaged by their society as the women are. The hypermasculinity and unnecessary masochism of the War Boys can be comparable to self destructive measures of masculinity on our own world. It is important that there are multiple representations f these Kamakrazee characters, so we can see that they are both brainwashed and deserve and responsible for their own destruction, and Max’s role as a male character who is none of the above and still hurt is yet more lovely analogy.

On that note, if you’re willing to respond again, I’d be very interested in your thoughts on one related question: Do the female characters of Fury Road reflect culpability for the world they live in? Did they contribute to this damaging society?

Thank you again so much for your excellent analysis!

*tips hat* It takes two!

Totally absolutely YES on the men being every bit as damaged as the women by the reviling of any feminine principle in their whole society.  And while I understand that women in the midst of healing from the wounds of misogyny are not in a place to [nor are they responsible to] offer much compassion or help to men needing to heal, I hope that the end goal of ALL the healing, is to help humanity get the fuck out of this hole it’s dug for itself.  Fury Road gives us even that perspective, and it’s a beautiful one :)

Do the women in-universe reflect culpability for the world they live in…let me think outloud for a few minutes here.  Furiosa’s choice of the word redemption as her need, is damning of herself.  She has participated in this system far more than she can stand – she can no longer live with herself and so takes radical action, kicking off the whole story.  

So then we’re stuck asking the question – if she finished her own childhood inside this system, seeing no way out, doing whatever she had to do to survive which surely meant perpetuating the abusive culture she’s trapped by…can we call that culpable?  Is a rape victim culpable if she decides struggling will put her in more danger than just getting through the experience?  Is any victim of racial/orientation/religious/[insert here] oppression choosing to survive by whatever means necessary…culpable, partly to blame for the system oppressing them because they don’t choose to die?

Furiosa sees herself as having played by the Immortan’s rules for an unforgivably long time.  Without knowing the backstory, we only have her word for it (and damn, the comics are so fucked up I’m not at all sure how we can take them as canon – they read like non-con, OOC fanfic of the sleaziest sort).  But we know from a zillion case histories that victims of abuse almost universally feel guilt, feel culpability, feel they contributed to it. Sooo I’m calling Furiosa an unreliable narrator on that bit.  Sorry Furiosa.

Is Miss Giddy culpable?  For…what?  For staying and teaching the girls if that was all she had the skills to do?  For all we know she planted the seeds of rebellion in every word she taught (headcanon alert!), which would make her a revolutionary in her own hidden way.  Or she was simply a survivor, doing the best she could to stay alive.  Would that make her a cog in the wheel of patriarchy?  Does her willingness to sacrifice herself to Joe’s fury at the end redeem her, if so?

Not everyone is cut out to run an underground railroad or launch a rebellion or make a martyred stand – and I will never be comfortable telling (or naming) someone oppressed by institutionalized abuse that they were complicit in their abuse because they made the choice to survive rather than die – because they were not cut out to be heroes.

In a system that won’t literally kill you, one can surely make the argument that women with privilege who do not act to help women without, are blameworthy.  Here in the US, I could make that call.  In a system that will literally kill you, I most assuredly cannot make that call.  I don’t have the experience of what it is like to live that way and thus do not have the right to make that judgement.

So coming back around to answer your question:  Coming from my perspective, I’ve got to say culpability on the part of the women for furthering the misogynistic culture they were in, isn’t applicable as a concept.  Totally my opinion and in no way a judgement on this conversation. 

I believe it goes beyond culpability into a different realm – Furiosa whether or not one can call her complicit-with or contributing-to the abusive nature of the culture she was trapped in, took responsibility anyway.

And ultimately?  That’s what’s critical to healing the aftermath of abuse or oppression.  It may not be our mess to clean up, but if we don’t take responsibility for the clean-up, we most assuredly are complicit in the unhealed damage.

You don’t do that?  Then I’ll get out the ‘culpable’ stick :)

[apologies, once again, for the whacked formatting :P – tumblr no longer lets you nest indents, grr.]

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redshoesnblueskies:

cygnaut:

1. NO HOLDS BARRED FIGHT TO THE DEATH 
2. Hey, want that thing off your face? 
3. I need you to drive the rig.
4. *Loads rifle* Here.

If possible, should take approximately 20 minutes to get from point 1 to 4. 

#*shoots between your legs* step optional

I AM CRYYYINNGGGGGG

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redshoesnblueskies:

bonehandledknife:

bonehandledknife:

I just had a shower thought.

If Max and Nux are elements of reformed/non-toxic masculinity in the overall theme of feminine power struggling against toxic masculinity…

I bring up the final chase. The War Rig has been shown to have had a commanding lead, and only one car was able to even pull up next to them at that point.

Max’s Interceptor, being boosted by Nux’s lancer.

The only reason the rest of the war parties even caught up was because the spikes dropped by the Interceptor took out the second engine and dropped the power of the first.

Let me rephrase: the path to getting the women to safety was hindered by elements from their allies’ toxic past.

(In Max’s case, he’d specifically was almost killed by the Interceptor driven by Slit.)

I’m squinting at this up, down, and sideways and I can’t help but think that Miller could have possibly made another vehicle instead of the Interceptor, or have that car battle at a different point, he could have had Slit appear on the Gigahorse or maybe on a vehicle Max swung to.

But no, instead it’s the lead vehicle, the one that messes up their escape the most. And that’s completely fascinating to me.

I’m going to laugh my ass off if someone ever asks George Miller about this stuff and he’s like ‘uhhhh ok didn’t think of it like that but ok’ (via cortibah)

I would like to point you to this post on something I’d written that someone pointed out to me as well as this post on Filmmaking Intent.

The spouse and I spent 5 minutes yesterday finishing eachother’s sentences like this:

spouse: …so during their fight, Max is…

me: fighting his best allies, the women, the other victims of oppression…

spouse: all while literally…

me: having his BLOOD SUCKED…

spouse: by the DEAD WEIGHT of TOXIC MASCULINITY…

me: robbing him of power! while chained between them…

spouse: is a broken piece of…

me: WASTEFUL INDUSTRIAL OVERPRODUCTION…

spouse: dragging them BOTH DOWN…

me: and all of this chained to a muzzle literally IMPEDING HIS SPEECH…

spouse: making him incapable of ASKING FOR HIS NEEDS TO BE MET…

me: or MAKING CONNECTION WITH THE WOMEN…

spouse: or even LETTING HIM FEEL FULLY HUMAN…

me: or letting the women PERCEIVE HIM as fully human…

spouse: because he must be, like all men, A MONSTER – the muzzle proves it

[at least, like, 5 more exchanges because the metaphor just. keeps going. doesn’t it?]

me:  …..THIS IS FUCKING RIDICULOUS.  THERE IS NO WAY GEORGE MILLER DIDN’T
1) KNOW EXACTLY WHAT HE WAS DOING WHEN HE ENGINEERED THIS SCENE OR
2) WILL EVER IN A MILLION YEARS ADMIT IT.

both: AAAAUGH!

Okay yeah, there are endless metaphor and parallels available to us in ridiculously overanalyzing the movie…but I think having Max’s car and Nux’s lancer be what almost takes everyone down, and having Max’s blood being literally sucked away to feed the next generation of toxic masculinity impersonated…AREN’T THAT MUCH OF A STRETCH, ARE THEY.  I mean, this isn’t even in the over-the-top country of fannish theory spinning – this is just ‘visual representation’ we’re talking about here :P

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“

Miller’s purpose was to tell an honest story, and he let nothing else get in the way of that. Not even the male gaze.

I’m just going to drop this quote from him in, because it relates to the same thing, “it couldn’t be a man taking five wives from another man. That’s an entirely different story.”

There’s words and there’s action; Miller may not label himself a feminist, may not have set out to make a feminist movie, but he put his ideas and dreams and heart and soul into this impossible movie. And that heart and soul says he respects women deeply; he respects them enough to understand that a man taking wives away makes it a different story. The movie is so consistently insistently precise that even if he says he didn’t mean to, I can see it.

If someone says they respect me as a person but cannot stop staring at my ass, I can see it. Does it matter if they “deliberately” look at my ass?

Actions matter.

”

– bonehandledknife, from Filmmaking Intent v. Film Theory

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schwarmerei1:

OK, I’ve watched MMFR a *few* times and I am wondering if the “count” is wrong.

After escaping the canyon, the War Rig breaks down and needs repairs. That’s when Cheedo breaks away and attempts to run back to Immortan Joe. As she’s doing this Furiosa takes the SKS rifle and and shoots the two War Boys approaching on a motorbike and Cheedo is persuaded to return.

After this is the scene when Furiosa says they need “inventory” and Toast does the count of guns and ammo, then declares that Big Boy is “all but useless” due to only having 4 rounds left.

We don’t see the SKS rifle fired again until Max tries to take out the Bullet Farmer later that night in the bog. Toast says after the first shot “You’ve got two left.” He then takes another shot and misses, then hands it over to Furiosa for the last shot.

So what happened to bullet no. 4?

Was there a change of scene order and Cheedo’s flight/Furiosa shooting the bikers was supposed to be after the “inventory” scene? (It doesn’t look like it since inventory is clearly at sunset, and the bikers are earlier in the day – but who knows what Eric Whipp could magic up in terms of lighting?)

Is there a deleted scene? Is a straight up continuity error? Or did I completely miss something? (Entirely possible – I live in a state of permanent sleep-deprivation.)

I don’t think you missed anything. I’d noticed it when Toast made her “two left” comment, but I always thought for a second and said to myself, oh, right; when Furiosa shot the bikers was the other one. But I didn’t remember that that came before, rather than after, the inventory.

George Miller said there’s a deleted scene of Miss Giddy being killed that was removed for pacing. Since Miss Giddy is alive with Angharad when she dies, the deleted scene would have been after that, possibly putting it somewhere around the events discussed here. So maybe the removal of that scene had a cascade effect, and now it worked better to swap the order of the shooting-the-bikers and taking-inventory scenes, so shooting-the-bikers became more of a coda to the action of the escape through the canyon and the death of Angharad, and taking-inventory became a relatively quiet breathing space after that. Whereas before, taking-inventory might have been a breather after the escape, with a separate rising action through the torture and death of Miss Giddy and the sniping of the bikers. It would raise the stakes of the sniping if we knew that there were only four shots left at that point, making Furiosa’s killing two people with one shot more meaningful.

Since the deletion of Miss Giddy’s death happened late in editing it would make sense that it was too late to reshoot Toast’s comment about “only got four for Big Boy here”, and unfortunately you see her mouth when she says it, making it hard to dub “three” for “four”.

On whether or not it counts as a continuity error, one could make an argument that just because we don’t see another shot being fired doesn’t mean one wasn’t fired in-world, or that Toast didn’t give an off-by-one count either on purpose or accidentally. Those explanations would be awkward in terms of story but at least would be logically possible.

It’s kind of shocking to me that this far into the process of obsessively analyzing the movie people haven’t found more glaring continuity errors. I just checked the “goofs” page at IMDB, and it is really sparse (and some of the listed errors are questionable, I think).

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rustypolished:

Fury Road is, quite simply, an absolute master class in action film making. It loudly, brutally, violently obliterates the notion that high octane action camp and progressive, solid narrative structure are mutually exclusive. 

But beyond that, Mad Max is, quite simply, a love letter to every girl who grew up feeling alienated from the objectified, male-gaze and love interest oriented female action heroes of the 90s/00s. 

Mad Max takes women who are disabled, who are young, who are old, who are feminine, who are masculine, and grants them the agency to be heroes, real action heroes, in ways that are unique and specific to each of them. 

And it does it all in ways that are not only over the top explosive but also SHOCKINGLY tasteful. Somehow, Mad Max manages to express the sheer brutality and extremity of life in an apocalyptic wasteland full of fire tornados and nitro-boosted war machines without ever fetishizing the gaze of the viewers. The audiences is invited readily to experience the thrill and the joy of the chaos and the over the top violence, but never invited to violate or to sexualize the characters themselves. It’s an INCREDIBLY fine line to ride and I’ve never in my life seen it accomplished so artfully without ever feeling frustratingly withholding. The movie never censors itself, it restrains itself from allowing anything that doesn’t directly service the story or the world to appear on screen. 

There is, at it’s core, a profound respect and understanding for the uniqueness of womanhood and what that uniqueness means in a setting like the wasteland. 

Fury Road is, to borrow an analogy from my friend, like being given a steak after eating a lifetime of hamburgers. You won’t be able to fathom how you were ever able to accept anything less once you’ve had it. 

It’s absolutely the standard to which all action movies should be held. 

I watch and enjoy a lot of movies. I’ve never been this absolutely delighted by one until now. 

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Fury Road: Obsessive Minutiae:

icarus-suraki:

Yes, I saw Fury Road for a 6th time last night. I don’t think I have seen any movie this many times. I’m serious. This is listerally the most times I’ve seen any movie ever. I’m not even worried about the ticket-takers recognizing me anymore.

And now it’s time for….Obsessive Minutiae! (not…

I love this so much. A worthy addition to a growing genre of commentary I didn’t realize I needed but is now my favorite thing. A few specific comments:

The tattoo the Organic Mechanic puts on the bloodbags is upside down when they’re standing up. That way it’s right side up when they’re hanging upside down. This was probably obvious to everyone but me.

Obvious in hindsight, but a cool thing I’d overlooked. Makes sense, and brings home what an awful existence Max has to look forward to. They’d probably keep blood bags alive, rather than draining them all at once, wouldn’t they? At least for a universal donor? I’d think the cost of capturing ferals would be greater than the cost of keeping them alive long enough for them to replenish their blood supply so they could donate again. On the other hand, maybe a free-range feral’s blood is more sought-after than the kind you get from a caged captive. And especially with Nux in such a hurry, maybe they would choose to treat the blood bag as a single-use disposable item. Ugh.

There is a tiny warpup standing by the “altar of wheels”–and said tiny warpup imitates Slit’s V8 salute omg (look quick!)

I’d noticed him sitting there, but not the V8 salute he does (at the end, right?). So cool!

Has anyone identified the badges and stuff (that’s a circuit board up near the top; please let it be from a Nokia phone) Joe has on his armor? I’d love to know about them.

The one I keep noticing is the ribbon with “500” hanging from it. Maybe a reference to a car race? We North American types have the Indianapolis and Daytona 500s, for example.

None of the three of them [Joe, Rictus, and Corpus] can breathe. Look: they’re all three hooked up to breathing apparatuses. Joe’s is the most elaborate, but they all three have tubes at their noses. Seriously.

I did notice that (also, Miss Giddy has an oxygen mask during the pursuit). At first I assumed that was a sign of their being messed up by the toxic environment. But since learning more about the Dome being a sealed environment with filtered air, I think it might be the case that the breathing gear on high-status individuals is meant as protection against the toxic air of the Wasteland. Not that supplemental oxygen would protect you from airborne dust… It emphasizes the desperation of the wives, and of Joe’s desire to get them back quickly and unharmed: They may be doing significant damage to their chances for healthy reproduction the longer they stay out.

Totally swear that Nux calls the Ace something else? Grue? Or am I mishearing “crew” or “you” or “move”?

Yeah, “crew” was what I was leaning toward there. It’s possible Nux either doesn’t know the members of the War Rig crew well enough to call out Ace by name, or just hasn’t had time to identify him in all the excitement. Not sure.

Check out the carrier truck during the second chase of the war-rig: the buzzard cars are on the carrier truck, along with all the other wrecked cars. It had been full of warboys, now it’s full of spoils and scavenging. Waste nothing. We can rebuild them.

I’d totally missed that. And with the body count, probably a lot fewer war boys to ferry at that point, too. I can imagine a whole secondary war boy culture of reserves, traveling on the (slower) carrier, hoping for their chance to move up and take a position on a pursuit vehicle, or even (unimaginable glory!) on the War Rig, the Doof Wagon, or the Gigahorse.

Speaking of the Doof Wagon, I have to mention something that bugged me when I was listening to all the Mad Max movie-review podcasts I could find: People who say, “OMG the flamethrower guitar guy was the BEST, but of course it’s over-the-top ridiculous and makes no sense.”

Excuse you; it makes perfect sense. They don’t have radio. Joe needs to issue commands, and like with the fife-and-drum and bugle calls of previous eras, the amplified music of the Doof Wagon serves as coded signals to the troops. You can see that in the scene when Joe is pulling back the pursuit because of the sand storm; the Imperator on the Gigahorse signals and shouts, and Coma has switched to playing different, down-tempo chords as the war party slows down.

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redshoesnblueskies:

sparxwrites:

having gone to watch mad max for the second time last night, i can’t help but think about max and his unusual speech patterns. the popular idea of him “relearning to speak” seemed a bit… off to me, on the basis that if you listen closely, he actually says several sentences while he’s being used as a hood ornament, which are significantly longer and more complex than anything he says again until the conversations with the vulvalini. he’s evidently perfectly capable of speaking then, especially since he’s talking to himself largely.

it got me thinking about speech disorders (on the basis i’ve recently done a bunch of research on it for an essay), and wondering whether max had one – and it seems to me the most likely candidate is conduction aphasia.

Keep reading

I love break-downs like this!  Considering George Miller’s medical background, one imagines that he and Tom Hardy worked out some basic rules for how Max returns to/uses speech (whether or not Miller went so far as to be specific about exact clinical info).  An actor needs something to go on, yk?  

As someone with an episodic drug-induced aphasia, I always get really excited to see actors pull off realistic portrayals of any species of aphasia – which Tom Hardy totally did.  My whole family has gotten used to me suddenly getting stuck in the middle of a sentence, standing really still, going ‘hhhnnnnnnggggg’ and either making it to the next word, or restarting with an entirely different syntax to get around the block.  Man, Tom Hardy just nailed what that FEELS LIKE in his portrayal.  I didn’t BREATHE when he was trying to give those longer speeches, and each word that he did put together sounds like poetry under that kind of stress.

[this also leads to some pretty hilarious descriptions – if you can’t say garbage disposal, ‘sink monster’ works pretty well, doesn’t it?  I mean, you know what it is right away!]  

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My first response is probably that they’re possibly people who prefer dialogue to convey exposition. For me, personally, it’s hard for me to get into dialogue-heavy shows like The Office or Gilmore Girls or Welcome to Night Vale because that’s just not how I perceive the world.

Movies/TV is an interesting art-form in that it has the potential to combine skills present in multiple already present art-forms, such as literature, dance, theater, painting/photography, music, radio, and so forth. 

There’s however also a movement that asks, “But what makes movies unique of other arts?” What element of this form of visual media cannot be reproduced in other mediums?

The answer is the intersection of visuals and time.

No other medium can manipulate what you see and when you see it the same way that film can. The films that cleave to this concept completely is of a form called “pure cinema”, you’ll see Mad Max referred to in some reviews by this term, and that’s what they mean.

What is the plot of the first Avengers? Antagonist steals a thing and a team is brought together to fix the problem, but the team doesn’t want to be a team. The antagonist does things that brings the team together and then the antagonist is defeated with a heroic sacrifice.

What is the plot of Inception? We need to do this thing that involves going to a mysterious place (in this case a mind) that we’ve never been before, there is an  this objective at that place but there are complications, and there is a valiant effort at the end that involves heroic sacrifice and an end that involves a heroic reward.

What is the plot of Fury Road? Anti-hero steals several things, who are not things, that involves going to a mysterious place they’ve never been before, they meet people who don’t want to be on their team but the antagonist makes them a team, and they try to reach their objective but there are complications. There are a valiant efforts at the end that involves heroic sacrifice, the antagonist is defeated, and there’s a heroic reward.

The difference between the three films is that the first two films explains it’s plot through dialogue, it builds it’s worlds and it’s complications through words. Mad Max Fury Road explains everything through visuals.

And people are either not paying enough attention to visuals or unable to read what’s going on, because visual language is still a language.

Specifically, too, Fury Road is speaking in the language of action genre, but via Baz Luhrmann.

It’s specifically… the easiest example that comes to mind is my Furiosa costuming post. I made that post initially because I was frustrated by all these posts asking about Furiosa’s backstory. Her backstory is right there. At least to me.

And I made this post as quick as I could get away with because I thought it’d be fairly obvious after I posted the visuals and made the comparison and that anything else would be beating a dead horse.

But the post only took off after this part was added, and I STILL see tags with people going “I don’t get it.”

So much of the communication in this movie is non-verbal that sometimes I still hesitate directly rec it to someone sometimes because some of those I talk to have autism or aspergers or is otherwise neuroatypical in a way that the movie would only frustrate them.

Because if you can’t ‘read’ what’s happening, then Max suddenly helping Furiosa doesn’t register as him gradually winding down from his decade long panic attack. Max and Nux working together with Furiosa and the wives would come out from nowhere. If you can’t visually read the movie, then you wouldn’t be able to see Max’s character arc, there’d be no reason for him to turn them back from the salt. Furiosa also become impenetrable, why is she doing this thing, why does she trust Max, why does she want to kill Joe when she was so highly ranked in his army?

There’s this entire sequence in the final chase that takes my breath away, when she brakes to save Max and there’s a moment when they look at each other, he swings an enemy over as a body shield but he falls off the rig and Furiosa catches him.

But she gets stabbed, and Keeper is dying, and Toast is captured, and Max is slipping from her grip, the engine is failing and the war parties are closing in and Slit is about to ram into Max.

And you see that moment when despair turns into anger, then engine clicks on, and the music revs up and she wrenches the wheel to crush Slit between two rigs because she might be bleeding out but fuck that.

And there’s no dialogue. No declaration. Nothing to take you by the hand and walk you through this sequence, no last call to Pepper Potts as a warhead is being taken through the wormhole, there’s no explaining that “you’re just a shade, just a shade of my real wife”. There is no explanation.

Granted the film isn’t as completely brutal to say, “keep up, or get crushed under the wheels”, that’s why you’ll get people who say, “I loved the movie but it has no plot.”

Too often audiences just don’t have the tools or the language to fully dig into what’s going on at a surface level, especially if the surface has enough to hang on to and still make sense.

That’s probably why on Rotten Tomatoes, film critics has a higher approval percent than regulars, and why Rotten Tomatoes rates Fury Road higher than Metacritic which is a more broad spectrum sampling of mainstream audiences who don’t care enough about movies to get a RT account.

You could still argue against your friends, but you should go into it knowing that it may be a loss. I will never be able to get into The Office or Gilmore Girls or any dialogue-heavy medium like Nightvale. A red-toned painting will be lost on someone who’s colorblind. 

It’s not a value judgement on either the artwork itself or the audience; it’s just not the audience the piece was meant for.

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schwarmerei1:

primarybufferpanel:

manticoreimaginary:

When the Valkyrie opens her eyes, there isn’t a part of her body that doesn’t ache or sting. She makes a grunt of pain and it’s the only sound for miles in the vast desert, the trucks all long gone, leaving her alone in that hot expanse. Trying to roll over, she realises that there’s a heavy weight on her back and she twists her head (yanking unhappy muscles) and finds that it’s the body of Tough Nut. Her aunt is cold-dead even under the heat of the sun and already Valkyrie can smell the turn of her body.

It takes longer than she wants to admit to get out from under Tough Nut, to push the older woman off and onto the sand, and the whole time the bloody blowflies are having a go at the dried blood on the back of Valkyrie’s neck, on her scalp, down her arms. She feels like they alone are enough to make her go crazy, but she also knows she’s trying not to think too much ahead; because she’s out in the middle of nowhere and the bike’s busted up and there’s nothing and no-one that Valkyrie can see when she looks around, just her and Tough Nut and Tough Nut isn’t going anywhere.

(Valkyrie is tender when she reaches out and closes her aunt’s eyes.)

Her leg is broken, of that Valkyrie is sure, but she’s also sure that she needs to get out of the sun, get to somewhere sheltered. (She needs to find water too, but that’s a task that feels impossible.) Dragging herself across the scalding hot sand is like hell, and by the time she reaches a rocky overhang her hands are blistered and raw and she’s been sobbing dry tears, swallowing against her swollen tongue.

It’s a day later when the car comes rumbling towards her. Valkyrie doesn’t have the strength to sit up further, but she has enough left to pull out her gun and aim it unsteadily. If she dies, she’s taking this mongrel out with her.

But it’s the man who followed Furiosa who climbs out of the car, the one who turned them around. It’s that man who presses a bottle of water to her cracked lips and says slow, slow as she splutters and chokes, throat so parched it’s like swallowing rocks. It’s that man who helps take her weight so she can drop into the passenger seat of the car.

She doesn’t ask where they’re going, but she thinks she knows, (hopes she knows). She closes her eyes and drifts off to the sound of the roaring engine, the rattle of steel, the thought of Furiosa.

YESSSSSS!!!!

Make me your +1! This is gorgeous, so is the artwork! I want all the “Valkyrie survives” fic. ALL OF IT!

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itsybitsylemonsqueezy:

Cherish those little details

Keep reading

I liked all this, but had a comment about this part:

On the subject of things that didn’t entirely make sense to me: in the bog there was mud. If there was mud, there must be water. So either it recently rained, or there is ground water somewhere. But no one seems to get excited about this.

That scene was immediately before the creepy place with all the crows (where there also was liquid on the ground). In the initial meeting with the Vuvalini they explain that that was the green place Furiosa remembered from her childhood, but: “the soil… we had to get out… we had no water… the water was filth… it was poisoned… it was sour… and then the crows came… we couldn’t grow anything…”

It’s true that we don’t see them getting excited about it at the time, before they get this information. But that could be explained, maybe, by the fact that they’re still trying to put distance between themselves and the pursuit at that point, so they don’t have time to stop and geek out about the mud.

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itsybitsylemonsqueezy:

Oh oh! Thing I forgot to say about Mad Max!

Okay, it is a personal pet peeve of mind when in movies characters are wearing make up when they have no business to be wearing make up. Cave people did not have eyeliner. People in war zones did not have eyeliner. The next cowboy love interest I see with perfect make up is GOING IN THE DRINK. THE MEMBERS OF ALL THE RACES OF MIDDLE EARTH NOT ONE OF THEM HAD INVENTED MAKE UP DEAR GOD STOP.

So it was SO TREMENDOUSLY GRATIFYING when they gave an on-screen legit explanation of Furiosa’s furious make up! Even the paleness of the war boys and Immortan Joe was explained! I mean holy fucking god, you don’t even know what a big deal that is! Normally, we just assume that make up is part of the ~movie magic~ of the experience, the artistic license of a higher level story. BUT NO. FUCKING NO. This movie is having NONE of your pretentious ass suspension of disbelief shit. We made a REAL ASS MOVIE about real ass people and we explained our goddamn make up thank you very much!

BLESS THIS MOVIE. GOLD STANDARD.

And tags:

#Mad Max #I will never stop talking about how good it is #This is just going to be a Mad Max blog from now on #Don’t even care #Mad Max: the gold standard of movies

Yeah. There’s a fair amount of that going around. :-)

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bonehandledknife:

The only white painted full life’s are war pups, otherwise apparently even imperator level war boys (full black and shiny greased heads) wear the white paint. The only ones wearing white on the Gigahorse is Immortan Joe and Nux, the rest were paintless and without tumors.

Good call whoever that was that pointed out when Furiosa says “redemption” they’re using shadows to paint her forehead black.

The only cars really able to catch up to the war rig going at full is the nux car and the interceptor, otherwise there were things like harpoons slowing the rig down. The rough riders were able to catch up as well.

Increasingly suspecting that Nux was highly ranked/regarded at least within war boy circles until the tumors started wrecking him. There are not that many cars with as many lances as his car has, not even in Furiosa’s convoy. I wonder if he’d had other lancers but they’d abandoned him, because there’s usually more than one per car.

Lances are rare (thus valuable) but guns are even more so. That’s why Ace had to get Furiosa out of the drivers seat to shoot up one of the spikey cars, nobody else had one. The most they had were lances and blow torches.

Now think about how many guns Furiosa had access to.

Fairly sure at this point that the direct gaze is a near direct consequence of center framing but it has amazing implications for gaze, voyeurism, and humanization. Will be posting more on this during the weekend, unless I get sidetracked by horror movie v fugitive movie visual tropes.

Not only were the wives not generally framed for objectification but there were many times when they were posed so that their bodies were shapeless lumps or was hidden by props like car doors and seat backs.

Max is such a tank, Nux may be way taller but his arms are so puny in comparison. But then Rictus is on a whole other level of ridiculous size, he was able to toss Max around like a doll. I really wanna see Furiosa fight Rictus though, because apparently she’s the only one Rictus can’t get past to get at the wives. The beat down must be epic.

Random headcanon that the bone on the knife is from Furiosa’s mother.

This movie is such a feast I swear. I managed to get video of several moments I wanted to talk about tho, welp, now my phone has no more space.

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kimbureh:

War boys live to die. Military is the very core of their society. But war and violence are not its sole defining traits. It’s a society that also includes empathy, culture and arts.

It is
impossible to maintain a culture devoid of empathy and meaningful human
relationships. That’s why I think the short dialogues between the war
boys are incredibly important to potray these relationships and to make
the worldbuilding as a whole believable. For example the brief chat of the war boys when Furiosa decides to turn east, or when Nux wants Furiosa’s war boy to move out of the way so he does not accidentially kill him while attacking the Imperator.
War boys are no killer machines
24/7. Water and agriculture are two of the most important elements in the world of Mad Max. They might be called
“war boys”, but their daily duties are much more boring than the
adrenaline of war. Usually they deliver water, mother’s milk and
produce. They are UPS guys delivering vegetables. Vegetables.

There must be oh so much boredom in a war boy’s life.
Of course there would be bonding. Especially since they all know about
their short life span and since their faith in Immortan Joe and the V8
connects them so strongly even beyond death.
Out of this boredom and inherent need of meaning originates a specific war boy culture not even Immortan Joe could predict, but surely uses for his purposes. The war boys developed an art form of scarification to praise the ancient engines using their bodies as canvas. They can repair, but not build engines from scratch – they must seem like timeless wonders to them. The steering wheels are decorated and customized just as the cars themselves. Nux wrote his name on the pedal of his car. Sure, dying for Immortan is his goal, but he nontheless has a sense of personal worth in the way that he thinks he deserves his glorious death to be witnessed. And he grants this right to his fellow war boys, too (He is no exception with this attitude, as the movie makes clear). War boys do not unnecessarily kill each other in order to achieve their goal, since this might rob a fellow war boy of his deserved chance to go to Valhalla.

There must be strong bonds between war boys and war pups, since the younger boys need mentorship of a kind. Imagine war pups listening to the stories of returning war boys after a feral hunt. Imagine how proud they would be, if they heard that they mentor died gloriously in battle and everyone there witnessed it. Imagine the wheel of his mentor was eventually handed down to him by merit. There is not much perspective in their short lives, so they would all the more cling to this. Nux’ biggest dream is to drive the war rig (after his death wish of course), not to change his miserable life.

Let’s hope we get more background information in the upcoming comic books.

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