bonehandledknife:

sothasiil:

the mad max fury road set sounds like a mass hallucination. immortan joe putting motivational posters everywhere for the war boys and being the group dad? furiosa teaching nux how to knit and nux knitting everyone christmas presents? max making bro-clets for half the cast? those two stunt-doubles meeting and falling in love while beating the shit out of each other? did a bunch of old friends just get together, have a massive, mad-max themed live-action roleplay and film it? or

juuuuuuuust about.

“The director didn’t have to look far to cast the role of the Warlord. On the first “Mad Max,” he had cast Hugh Keays-Byrne as the gleefully psychotic Toecutter. At the time, the freewheeling actor had volunteered to help pull together a cast and, if Miller would just ship the bikes, he’d lead a three-day road rally from Sydney to the Melbourne set of “Mad Max.” Much to Miller’s amazement, by the time they arrived, Keays-Byrne had transformed a loose band of actors into an authentic biker gang.” (x)

Also, earlier this year Riley Keough married Ben Smith-Peterson, having met him on set where he was stuntman for (I think?) the Doof Warrior.

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bonehandledknife:

primarybufferpanel:

bonehandledknife:

primarybufferpanel:

bonehandledknife:

bonehandledknife:

primarybufferpanel:

Max and Keeper Of The Seeds are clearly soulmates.

“So we take the war rig and charge it right through the middle of them. We can decouple the tank right at the pass, shut it off behind us”
“Kaboom!”
*Max pointing like ‘She gets it!’*
*Furiosa closing her eyes because she thought her life was already out of control before this moment*

I’m gonna need some fic of Keep and Max talking, maybe her kinda affectionately bossing him around. Maybe giving him some horrible alcoholic drink she’s brewed.

you’re missing the best part:

they need to be explosion buddies, there needs to be random explosions at the Citadel and Furiosa just, every time, closes her eyes and like, TAKE IT OUTSIDE, because jfc they’re under a thousand tons of rocks, ppl plz

you know what this doesn’t even need to be an AU, max spent at least half the day with her cackling in the rig’s backseat, she’s just gonna be the worst ghost backseat driver during his hijinks, “what are you doing, don’t chew that, stick ‘em in a still, those herbs are good, boy you listen to me, that scraggly thing will take the hair right off your face, stick it in that bottle come-on now, give it 60 days and you’ll be singing and it’ll double as emergency guzz”

and

“behind you boy, raider’s gonna snap you, look sharp!”

and

“that’s a tanker, that’s what it is, that’s a lotttttt of oil we don’t want heading where it’s heading, am I right?”

“*sgrunt*”

“those rocks look mighty flinty to me”

“mmmm”

“kaboom?”

“mmgh…yup.”

“kaboom.”

and at some point at the Citadel, Furiosa staring down at the practice range.

“Your shot’s different.”

“…been taking some pointers.”

And her eyes narrow at the way he’s loading the long gun.

I am here for the AU where she lives but I am also VERY MUCH HERE for Keep being Max’s newest ghost/hallucination. He is totally cool with it because she’s pretty good company and sometimes she tells the other ghosts to shut up and let the boy think. She also has all sorts of practical advice and he kind of enjoys her whoops of glee when he opens up the engine of his car or bike.

(Learning to properly shut her out when he’s in bed with Furiosa and Keep is offering helpful advice is another matter. Most of the advice actually IS really helpful, too)

“Max, why did you throw the blanket at the wall?”

“…uh.”

LIKE OH MY GOD IF KEEPER’S WALKING HIM THRU VUVALINI COURTSHIP RITUALS, BUT, FURIOSA DOESN’T EVEN NOTICE (OR MAYBE JUST IN HER LIZARD BRAIN NOTICES) BECAUSE IT’S BEEN AGES AND SHE DOESN’T EXPECT IT FROM MAX. LIKE SHE DOESN’T EVEN KNOW HOW TO CAN AND MAX DOESN’T KNOW HOW TO CAN BECAUSE NEITHER OF THEM CAN.

And the Keeper is just so long suffering and wishing she could drink from that still and being a horrible matchmaker.

“maybe if I trip the boy, he’s twitchy enough.”

“can I lock this room? maybe I can lock this room.”

“dammit, the food poisoning didn’t work, steel stomach on that one.”

“…they’re the most boring drunks I’d’ever did see.”

At some point after the first orgasm she’s ever had in company, Furiosa is staring up at the ceiling, all loose limbed and glassy eyed, and mumbles “Where.. how.. did you know that…?”

And Max just knows he is not going to hear the gleefully triumphant end about that forever. He probably owes Keep a long bike ride or a bigass explosion now.

WHAT. BECAUSE SHE KNOWS HOW TO MAKE EXPLOSIONS HAPPEN?

#shot

seriously tho, Max is gonna get such a rep with the War Boys, they’ll be all OMG PICK ME SENPAI because all the best booms come from runs with him and he’d just get this thousand yard stare when there’s enemy at the gates and Furiosa doesn’t even say anything anymore just hands him a gas cannister and gives them that Imperator look that means ‘don’t fuck up anything important’ but that he knows means ‘stay safe’ and that Keeper knows means ‘don’t have too much fun’ and the hair rises on the back of Furiosa’s neck as Keeper cackles because AS IF

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redshoesnblueskies:

I don’t even know what to say here.  I’ll listen to the soundtrack and dig up some fanart and see if anything comes to me.

[two hours later]  Okay, here’s what I’ve got:

-Pacing and editing in the service of character
-Coherent Action Cinematography
-Artistic Cinematography
-Use of Color
and  [this one is raaather long]
-An Actor’s Director – Character work without Dialog doesn’t happen on Accident; or, HOLY HELL VISUAL STORY TELLING

Pacing and editing in the service of character

How is it that in a movie so balls-to-the-wall action, like seriously the most actiony action movie I’ve ever seen, we get so many moments where the complexity of each character is apparent on screen?  There is nothing wasted in Fury Road – everything moves the story forward, both cinematographically and in character beats.  The pacing gives every character beat both enough room to breathe and enough momentum to contribute to the relentless forward motion.  If a movie this driven can feel like it has stillness, space, time, and also character reveals in almost every direct-intent action of each character…then what the fuck have I been watching in all previous experiences of media, exactly?  okay, I’ll rein that kind of question in…but srsly.  It’s that overall question that makes me say over and over that Fury Road will redefine film, once everyone gets the chance to freakin’ catch up :)

Coherent Action Cinematography

Is there anything I could possibly add to the many articles we’ve all read or bonehandledknife​‘s ongoing film-theory break downs?  I can only thing of one – that the center framing was used for in-motion elements that crossed static elements – where one would usually put one’s focus in the edit.  I think I’m looking at the characters, but the center point is yanking my eye to the side even from some out-of-focus zone, pulling me into the framing for the next beat.  So the center framing wasn’t just a way to guide us from cut to cut – it was a way to guide us from static elements to moving ones, or from one depth-of-field zone to a new one.  Way cool and not something I’d have noticed before all of these great discussions!  [bonehandledknife, I welcome any of your awesome analysis here!]

Artistic Cinematography

As I was just discussing in a back and forth with bonehandledknife​, the Plains of Silence scenes were lit and composed in a voluptuously artistic way.  bonehandledknife pointed out that they are composed as paintings (or as still photography) – to lead your eye around the frame, rather than letting movement serve that function.  Rather than center framed, this is more classic golden ratio framing.  

It creates even more of that sense of stillness that the story beat calls for, and adds a depth-of-field the movie cannot usually afford to have, with distinct foreground, middle ground and oof background objects.  The camera is still, or pans slowly.  The zoom level takes in most of our character’s bodies a lot of the time – framing for beauty and a sense of space rather than tight shots as we’re used to in conversational or concentrated emotion scenes – I’m thinking here of the conversation about the satellite among the wives & vuvalini, and the conversation between Max and Furiosa.  Space, depth of field, almost full body shots – such calm composition for poignant and painful moments among the characters.  It gives these emotional scenes room to breathe, and that gives them even more impact.

Use of Color

Continuing with the above thoughts on the night scenes – color added immensely there as well.  The day-for-night section ranges from almost-black purples back-lit with aquamarine swaths for the sky, with every shade of cyan where delicate grayscale would be in a monochrome of the scene.  Lighting for highlights gave the color extra depth and definition.  Whatever Miller did (in post? in camera?) to give the actor’s eyelights their magenta/purple-fringing effect was simultaneously otherworldly, spooky and gave a very subliminal ‘the light may be arty, but the lens was real’ feel.  I loved it.

The decision to overexpose for later detail in the shadows was brilliant – the texture on the war rig and on everyone’s clothing is gorgeous, unlike anything I’ve ever seen in dark shots like this.  

I could go on and on about the day-for-night work – it absolutely captivated my eye and my imagination.

Daytime colors:  If you’ve seen the BTS footage, you know the sands of Namibia have a lot more gray in them and that our actors were liberally dusted in that slightly brownish gray dust.  The skies are striking, but they aren’t a hyper-real teal.  The choice to color grade the movie to bring up the land to an ochre that leaves your lips dry with dust and a sky that stands above the ground like a swath of surreal paint, takes a geography with almost mythic classical lines and hits you over the head with it.  aaaugh – color in the service of form, I was overwhelmed from my first viewing.

An Actor’s Director – Character work without Dialog doesn’t happen on Accident; or, HOLY HELL VISUAL STORY TELLING

I’ll take a guess here and say I bet George Miller is a marvelous actor’s director.  Obviously the casting is spot-on – but you don’t get performances where every flick of the eyes or slight cringe of the shoulders or freeze-in-the-headlights tell the story in the way that other movies rely almost solely on dialog to do…without fantastic direction.  Furiosa’s handling of Max is a massive relationship interaction almost sans dialog that could have been pages of dialog in most other movies.  Forgive an extended break-down of an example – I’m just having a great time here :D

She starts at ‘this guy is an absolute wild card we cannot afford – executing him is the only option.’  When he had the out-and-out chance to kill her though…he didn’t do it.  This gives her a totally new set of options to reframe the situation, and she goes through them one by one.  

When she has to adapt to the reality of ‘he’s got the rig, we’ll die without it,’ she looks for possible handles on this guy, and ends up hitting on the critical one ‘he’s an animal in a trap (the muzzle being the most horrible, visceral element to him). I’ll offer him a way out.’  Once they’re all back in the rig, she makes good on her promise and with non-threatening body language hands him a file.  It’s hard to resist an inkling of trust at that kind of integrity. 

When she reaches for the start-up switches, he assumes she’s going for a weapon – and sure enough there’s one under the dash.  Considering her actions in this scene, I doubt she was going to pull it on him just now though – it would have put them in a stand-off and destroyed any chance of deescalating him (increasing their danger).  She lets him take it.

She then puts up with his panicked sequester of all weapons (played for humor, but really structured like ‘a stray on the verge of fear biting’ as someone insightfully pointed out).  ‘I’ll wait him out for a while, see if he calms down when allowed some element of control.’  Her approach sets the tone for the choices of the wives – they put up with his panicked attempts to cover every angle.  They, too, wait him out (with an air increasingly disbelieving nonchalance, all things considered).  Max gets visibly calmer throughout this scene as he’s given space to sort himself out.  

When Nux screws up the fuel pod, her strategy pays off – Max has stopped panicking enough to assess strategic options.  He’s still holding a weapon on her, and he actually goes through the fuss of reflexively taking the bag of guns with him (which is kind of hilarious), but it’s clearly a better idea for her to drive and him to fix – a better deployment of skillsets – so he acts on that.  And she lets him.  In this instance it’s about staying in control of the rig, I’m sure.  But letting Max feel competent is the right move here psychologically as well.  It’s one more way to give him agency and get him further calmed down.  So Max has a job – now he’s part of the group.  

In the same scene he finally gets the muzzle off, and boy does that transform him.  He walks back up the rig like he owns the thing – his terror is almost completely dissipated.  He arrives back at the cab, gun back in hand, only to come in on this scene of chaos.  What to do?  By the time they’ve shoved Nux out the door, Max is no longer holding a gun on anyone.  He could have taken advantage of the chaos to take over completely…but emotionally he no longer needs to in order to feel safe.  Again, her plan of solving for “terrorized” rather than “terrorist” was shown to be the right call.

Furiosa’s next move in handling him is undoubtedly born of necessity (her plan is kind of fucked – she’s trailing 3 war parties and knows she’ll end up making a run for it) – but it also follows from deescalating Max, giving him her trust in small ways (file, not waving guns in his face though he surely didn’t find them all), engineering the interactions with him to calm him down etc.  The next step would have to be giving him critical work and trusting him to do it.  Giving him complete control of the rig is going pretty far, but what choice does she have.  She gives him the start-up sequence – and though he starts the scene with one last attempt to feel safe by holding a gun on someone (Angharad), by the time she’s back in the rig she arrives to find him loading her rifle and handing it to her without hesitation.  Her fleeting smile to herself as she sees he’s fully engaged with her rather than alienating himself from her is a work of fucking masterful acting on Charlize Theron’s part.  Goddamn that woman’s acting is nuanced.

How much direct dialog is used to bring Max around?  It starts and ends with, ‘You want that thing off your face?’

Visual story telling in this movie extends all the way to the acting taking place almost without dialog pertinent to a crushing pace of character/relationship development.

Someone in one of the excellent film-theory threads said they wanted to slap down the script for Fury Road on the desk of every screenwriter in the biz with ‘what is your excuse now??’ wrt writing women as people.  I feel the same way about, well, everything else.  

This movie is a master class in visual story telling – a masterwork of the genre. 

This is how visual story telling is done.

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Completely stupid, random headcanon with no basis in anything other than my own amusement.:

ayalaatreides:

OK so, post-Fury Road, the War Boys still settle disputes as they always have– with physical aggression. Fistfights, whatever, etc. But this irks Furiosa and bothers the former-wives. They’re trying to steer the War Boys towards a more peaceful existence. One day, Cheedo is meeting with some of…

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redshoesnblueskies:

creepydudesinthedesert:

xennariel:

warboyheadcanons:

warboyheadcanons:

femmortanjoe:

I was thinking ‘Witness’ or ‘We are not things’

What do you think? I’d like your opinions :>

To me; “You know, hope is a mistake. If you can’t fix what’s broken, you’ll go insane.”

Ok well that was the most touching one, my fave might be “I AM THE SCALES OF JUSTICE! CONDUCTOR OF THE CHOIR OF DEATH!”

For me, it was probably “Witness me” or “Feels like Hope.”

Mine would be “they’re looking for hope.” “And you?” “…redemption.”

‘I am so sorry.’

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bonehandledknife:

proserphone:

sauntervaguelydown:

bonehandledknife:

jumpingjacktrash:

roachpatrol:

bonehandledknife:

7000 days = about 19.4 years. According to the comics, Joe gives his wives three chances to give him a male heir with no deformities. Let’s say that Furiosa got tossed in 3 years, and it took her 3-6 years to climb the ranks.

That still leaves a group of maybe 13 year old and younger War Pups who’d only ever known of Furiosa as Imperator. 

Nux spoke of Joe like he’d barely ever seen him, or only from a distance, maybe through binoculars.  There were two other Imperators near Joe.

What if these other Imperators were as distant and aloof? Are they also black thumbs, or do they simply delegate, or only come out for war?

We know Furiosa probably modified her War Rig herself (see: kill switches and hidden weaponry), which means she HAS to have been in the shop and garages. We know from the film that the War Pups are in the background everywhere. We know there’s no way Furiosa could have been cruel to these children given the systematic way we’re shown her empathy; we also know that there’s a systemic pattern of cruelty, deprivation, and put-downs in the general War Boy culture (’mediocre’, being un-witnessed, witheld water and general human needs, the quick way that Nux blooms under the least bit of kindness).

So think about this generation of War Boys who knows in their hindbrains that the safest place to be (both physically and emotionally) is around their Imperator. Their’s because it’s the Imperator that they see the most, in the shop. The Imperator that Joe trusts on his most dangerous runs. The Imperator that is spoken of by older War Boys like Slit with fear and awe.

Is it any wonder the way they say her name?

furiosa: den mother of the apocalypse

you know, considering that, her takeover isn’t so much a coup as a natural succession. she’s the highest ranked warrior with loyal followers.

And it didn’t even occur to her. She didn’t even want it. Didn’t realize that if she went back to the Citadel that her face would be enough.

And even more: Max realized. Went out first so that everyone else were safe, and somehow knew that they needed to see her. (Though maybe it was one of the others? Or at least, he agreed enough to implement it.)

this is fantastic, but do we know that Furiosa was ever a wife? Is that something they tell us in the comic? She’s got a deformity and I was under the impression that Joe only took 100% healthy women as wives. I’d been thinking her mother might have been a wife.

Furiosa’s mother died “on the third day,” which I assume was meant to insinuate she died on the journey back to the Citadel. In the comic, Furiosa is a little cagey about saying what happened to her arm, but she implies that something happened, not that she was born that way. So I think either she was supposed to be a wife and cut off her own arm to stop it, or she was a wife and then cut of her own arm to get out of it.

Miller is on record as saying it was a battle that took off her arm, an epic one. Theron confirmed that it was really cool in the same interview set, they also got other character speculations.

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http://ift.tt/1LlYOwR:

djemsostylist:

So this last time I saw Fury Road, I noticed Furiosa has an older crew–and all her men are fairly high ranked. In fact, of the men that we do see, both on the Rig and in the support vehicles, only one seems to be fresh–there is one War Boy with grease only around his eyes,…

The notion of war pups having a special thing for Furiosa works well with the end of the movie, too, where the pups are the ones who lower the platform to lift her up, initiating the transfer of power that will leave her in charge of the Citadel.

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schwarmerei1:

sentimental-mercenary:

So there was a kerfuffle the other day on the mad max kink meme about this, and I figure I might have some ethos to speak on this issue, maybe, so here, in other words, is my useless two cents.

First, I kind of agree with the requester who kicked the shit off by asking for some sort of trigger warning.  But not because I am a frail flower that will be triggered by someone’s silly fic.  Because, you see, I don’t care to read ‘photorealistic ptsd’ fic in the same way that my sister, a doctor, doesn’t care to watch medical shows on TV, or my Army buddy friends can’t watch war movies.

They’re not triggered, they’re PISSED OFF at inaccuracies. How many rounds that pistol ACTUALLY holds. That’s not a real hand signal. House would be sued for malpractice and fired as an insurance liability.  That’s not how hospital consults WORK. Etc, etc.  Their clear knowledge of the real world situation jars with the Hollywood fantasy/myth and they simply are not entertained.

I’m not likely to be triggered reading a fic about PTSD. I’m really likely not to be entertained by it. So I’d like, since fandoms as I’ve said before, are COMMUNITIES, to have some heads up and be able to select things I think I will enjoy, and avoid things I think I will not enjoy.

It’s really that simple. It’s not about censorship or some bullshit SJW I AM OFFENDED, it’s just…yeah I would choose not to read that and I’d like to have that choice.

OKAY onto the PTSDpicking. 

Keep reading

Thank you for this insightful post! I particularly agree with this bit:

“* Second, that’s…not how PTSD flashbacks work? This is NOT me calling Miller out, because I don’t think he intends Max to have any sort of defined disorder. But in the interests of fanfiction and PTSD I’d like to bring to the floor that despite what Hollywood has told you, Godzilla isn’t real, and PTSD hallucinations don’t work like that.  In fact, if I had to diagnose Max, I’d probably put ‘psychosis’ higher on the list than PTSD.”

Indeed, the text of the film supports this. The Organic Mechanic (although clearly not a qualified psychiatrist) tattoos “psychotic” on Max’s back. The way his visions speak to Max and accuse him, and the way he describes them in the opening narration “Here they come…worming their way etc.” sounds much more like psychosis (to me) than a flashback.

I also agree that they are a simple visual storytelling device. The viewer learns instantly that Max is near-crippled by guilt about his perceived failures, which is important dramatically for his character arc. We see multiple people in his visions during the attempted flight from the Citadel, but Glory is the one that returns throughout the film because she is the one that positions Max’s character in a way that it is easily understood.

We know she is not his literal child from canon (Glory may be an invention of his brain) but the fact that a young female child is the one that keeps returning to accuse him, helps the audience read his actions throughout the film towards Furiosa, the Wives, (and childlike Nux) as protective (parental even) rather than possessive. If Max kept seeing visions of his dead wife instead, would we read his evolving relationship with the adult women (and Furiosa in particular) differently? Maybe I would.

The visions of Glory/past trauma are also used for his dramatic arc in the way that they disappear when Max is conscious and actively engaged in helping Furiosa, but Glory returns as soon as Max stays behind when the women set off across the salt. Glory disappears again when everyone links up, but comes back during the final chase when Max is separated from Furiosa and on top of the War Rig, and in fact “saves” him by causing him to raise his hand to block the dart that would otherwise have gone into his head.

Miller abandoned the idea of making the people thrown from vehicles look realistic (he made the Visual Effects crew watch real footage of people in high speed crashes) because a person ‘starfished’ flying through the air looks wrong to eyes accustomed to cinema visuals of stuntmen being able to control the way they fall. Reality looks fake because the images we are used to seeing in movies tell us otherwise. Same with Max’s visions: they are an accessible way for the viewer to understand the character’s emotional journey, not a medically accurate portrayal of mental disability.

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bonehandledknife:

twishagratzu:

cygnaut:

1. The People Eater’s missing nose could be a sign of syphilis (the guy is just riddled with symbolic diseases)
2. The milking mothers either have some really creepy baby dolls they’re staring at to increase their milk production or like actual mummified babies. I assume babies they’ve lost? :(
3. We never see where Toast got the music box from–it’s playing in the night scene with the Vuvalini and then she has it in the war rig on the drive back–so it could totally be something Max had and gave to her. Maybe as a goodbye? It’s probably just meant to be a general reference to the Road Warrior, but I do love the idea that Max is either the feral boy from that movie or (since that doesn’t quite fit with the ending narration) maybe he’s someone who heard stories about Max Rockatansky from the Great Northern Tribe after he passed into myth. 
4. The blood transfusion kit Max has at the end isn’t the one that’s connecting him and Nux at the beginning. (Nux cuts the tube when he cuts the chain with the bolt cutters.) Instead, it’s a new one on the tactical vest Max picks up along with other supplies from the Bullet Farmer. That says to me that he made a conscious choice to pick it up and keep it on him in case someone got injured. Max was already ready to give blood midway through the movie and turn his universe donor status into a strength and a choice. 

THat last one!

oh god but can you imagine that? 

His rummaging through the things like, “Bullets. Bullets. Bullets, powder, guns? Guns! Wheel, gotta get the wheel. What else— boot, should take a boot.”

And then just this long long stare at the blood transfusion kit.

A flash of Glory, bleeding out in his arms. Where are you Max?

And then he stuffs it into his bag and tries not to think too hard.

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Was the behind the scenes you watched the B-Roll? Or are you thinking about the scene that only appears in the trailers where Capable has her arms wrapped around Nux? Because yes, that scene was really cute and should have been kept in. I really am hoping for some sort of deleted scenes, or extended edition to be released because this movie had so many things going on that could have been added. Like the torture and death of Miss Giddy, I only learned about it from the art book so there is many scenes cut out from the theatrical movie.

Personally I believe he died for Capable and the group. But I also feel he was really reluctant to die in the end? The end scenes with Capable and Nux before she left the rig where mostly non-verbal after he tells her he will follow after her, so I’m just interpreting how I saw it.

After telling her to cross over Capable looks at Nux like she is reluctant to leave him and shows disbelief what he just told her. Nux responds with a stubborn but firm glare like he wants her to go for her safety. Before Capable moves to the Gigahorse, they share one last reassuring glance at each other. As if Nux was telling her it was going to be all right. But then when Rictus appears, all reassuring looks are gone, and Nux’s eyes are full of fear. He does not want Rictus to reach them, and when the engine is ripped out Nux’s eyes are full of a hesitant resignation of his fate. He realizes that even if Immortan Joe is dead others will still follow after them. So in order to protect Capable, and for the women to go forward, he has to crash the rig and stop the perusing war party. When Nux says to Capable ‘Witness me’, the most important part of it is that he whispers it. He doesn’t shout it in glory like the other War Boys, he says it in an almost reluctantly in a way like saying ‘remember me’. And that is what the Witness culture really is at its core, and it’s the only way Nux knows how to die. He points to her like he is saying, remember me Capable.

To which Capable responds with the Vuvalini gesture of remembrance, and ultimately does remember him. In the Vertigo comic, it is based after the movie, where a history man is shown telling the story of Nux as the tale of a courageous man. This means that Capable remembers him and instructed the History man to tell his story. In the end Nux gains the immortality he so craved by living on in the memories of the children being told his story.

And I just made myself emotional writing all this. I am sorry if this is not what you asked for.

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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…

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I love the subtlety in Mad Max Fury Road:

redcandle17:

floatingpuppy:

I love the fact that Mad Max Fury Road is full of subtlety, that
those characters in the film communicate a lot through eyes, and that it leaves
some hiatuses for the audience to imagine and speculate. In one word, it is
showing rather than telling.

Here is one hiatus that particularly interests…

Well said.

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stayforthecredits:

Charlize Theron on rumors that her and Tom Hardy clashed on set: “We f–kin’ went at it, yeah. And on other days, he and George [Miller, the director] went at it,“ she reveals. “It was the isolation, and the fact that we were stuck in a rig for the entire shoot. We shot a war movie on a moving truck — there’s very little green screen. It was like a family road trip that just never went anywhere. We never got anywhere. We just drove. We drove into nothingness, and that was maddening sometimes.”

Theron and Hardy filmed on location in Swakopmund in Namibia, on the edge of the Namib Desert, for six-and-a-half months. But it wasn’t just the environment that was driving them mad.

“It’s material that’s really frightening — we didn’t have a script. Tom and I are actors who take our jobs seriously. Both of us want to please the directors we work with, and when you don’t know if you can deliver on that, it’s a frightening place to be — and for Tom more than me, because he was stepping into big shoes,” Theron explains.

Despite going at it a few times, Charlize went on to say that she ultimately appreciated Tom’s approach more than some of her peers.

“I’d rather have that honesty working with someone than someone who fake-smiles through something — especially for actors, when your job is to go for the emotional truth. When you’re with somebody and you don’t feel like you’re in their emotional truth, then you don’t trust them,” she says. “I think good actors go all the way. If you want to be a safe actor, and you emotionally protect yourself from things getting out of hand, the performance will show all of that. Anyone who really, really, really goes into the deep dark corners of what emotional truth is, as somebody who works opposite of that, you have to be grateful for that. I beg for that. I beg for that on a job, that potency to the stew that makes it that magic that it is.”

Despite their rocky relationship, Charlize showed the interviewer a gift that Tom left for her in her trailer. It was a self-portrait Hardy painted with a red handprint on the back and an inscription: You are an absolute nightmare, BUT you are also f–king awesome. I’ll kind of miss you. Love, Tommy.

“We drove each other crazy, but I think we have respect for each other, and that’s the difference,” Charlize concludes. “This is the kind of stuff that nobody wants to understand — there’s a real beauty to that kind of relationship.”

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lady-beard:

but where do the war boys come from?

why aren’t there any war girls?

when seed lady says ‘it could be a girl’ and dag shakes her head, it seems to signify maybe girls just don’t get made

how do you selectively breed like that?

where did the wives come from?

—

how did furiosa become an imperator?

imperators were referred to in plural – ‘an imperator’s gone rogue’

who are the other imperators? the men near joe with the black foreheads?

what does the black forehead signify?

why did furiosa reapply her forehead grease when going through the mountain pass?

why would immortan joe, who clearly does not respect women (see: breeders, milking women), allow furiosa to be an imperator & drive the war rig?

furiosa’s tried to break out many times, was she punished? how did she get immortan joe’s trust back after her previous attempts?

—

the war boys kind of just let the gang in at the end

how do they go from being reverent towards joe to not really giving a fuck when he turns up dead?

I’ll take a shot at these. Not claiming these are all particularly valid explanations; just the best explanations I can come up with on short notice or that I’ve read others talking about. Note that I’m couching these responses in terms of what I think might be going on in the (awful) society Joe has set up. I’m not defending those elements of the society.

When a male child is born to the wretched folk at the base of the Citadel, it is considered a great honor for him to be taken up and made a war pup, to have a chance of eventually taking his place (if he survives) as a war boy. It’s a pretty crappy life, but it’s way better than what he’d have at ground level.

There aren’t any war girls because girls are considered physically weaker and therefore inferior for fighting. So they don’t get the chance. Maybe a few of them get chosen to become milk mothers.

I don’t think it requires selective breeding to achieve a gender imbalance in terms of children. They could just be selective about who gets allowed into the Citadel. Maybe the Dag’s dismissive attitude toward the possibility she’s pregnant with a girl is a reflection of the institutionalized male-heir focus of Joe’s breeding program. Maybe they kill infant girls, so for a pregnant breeder it’s better not to even consider that possibility?

The wives are taken from surrounding areas, wherever physically superior breeding stock can be found. To the extent a trade network exists in the wasteland, Joe’s known obsession with healthy breeders probably brings a steady trickle of the anomalously healthy and attractive, who are captured and sold.

Furiosa became an imperator after she was deemed unsuitable for the breeding program (due to her loss of her arm? granted it’s not a genetic disqualification if it happened traumatically, which it apparently did, but maybe it’s enough for Joe’s not-entirely-rational thing about physical perfection). At a young age she was left to shift for herself, and worked her way into the society of the war pups, eventually rising to a position of power through repeatedly demonstrated badassery.

Yeah, imperators are the guys standing near Joe with the black foreheads. It’s some kind of badge of distinction. Furiosa reapplied the grease to her forehead as she was approaching the canyon because she wanted to be in-character and project an air of authority during the tricky negotiations with the canyon people.

Joe allows Furiosa to drive the war rig because he recognizes her talent. For the most part, yeah, he views women as property. But he views men as property too. He views everyone as property. For whatever historic reasons, he recognizes that Furiosa is useful to him as a military leader. Apparently his disrespect toward women isn’t an unreasoning misogyny, as much as a general megalomania and disdain for everyone’s innate human rights.

Furiosa’s “many times” line is hard to square with the position she holds as an imperator, it’s true. My head canon is that when she said that she didn’t mean she’d tried to _escape_ many times. Merely that she’d been out on many runs in charge of the war rig.

Joe led as a brutal dictator with a cult of personality sustaining him among the war boys. Most of the older war boys weren’t there when they returned (presumably their vehicles were trapped in the canyon by the wreck of the war rig and the Doof Wagon, at least for a while). It’s actually the war pups (the little proto war boys) who take it on themselves to raise up the returning Furiosa and the wives.

it’s a little tidy, it’s true. But I’m okay with it for narrative economy. Basically, Joe wasn’t liked by anyone. He was obeyed because he was feared. But once he was gone that fear evaporated and there was a major power vacuum. Furiosa was popular, and a known-to-be-awesome military leader, so she looked like as good a choice as anyone – especially given that she brought back Joe’s corpse, having apparently defeated him in battle. For all we know, defeating the previous warlord in battle is exactly how one secures legitimacy in the wasteland.

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teapotsahoy:

Since my last “I dunno but here’s a thing: someone explain me the thing” post was so successful beyond my wildest dreams:

Someone explain me Mad Max’s sound editing: 

Although in general I think it’s pretty evident Furiosa is the hero, if not the protagonist of Fury Road, (Max is arguably the character who undergoes the most change) there are two places where the sound editing put the viewer squarely in Max’s perspective: first, the rasp, and second, when Max is used as a tripod.

When Max is sawing the mask off his face, the sound of it is extremely present the whole time, and the sound of it is not just the sound of a rasp, but the sound of a rasp as transmitted through metal, that is to say, exactly what you would hear if you were sawing on something clamped on to your face.  I mean, go get a rasp and a bit of pipe and conduct experiments.

The second time the viewer is auditorily put in Max’s shoes is when Furiosa rests the SKS (I used the IMFDB because I do not understand from guns) on his shoulder to make a shot, and all sound in the movie momentarily fades, putting the viewer in Max’s perspective as he goes deaf from explosion in his ear.

I dunno what this means!  I don’t think that Max is the movie’s viewpoint character, because, well.  I mean, sometimes Max wanders off the scene and we don’t follow him.  But I don’t think the sound editing does this with any other characters, either?

There’s that whisper that The Dag gives to Angharad as she walks up with the bolt cutters: “Angharad, is that just the wind? Or is that a furious vexation?” It sounds like what Angharad is hearing, though they’re standing right in front of Max, so I guess you could interpret it as what he’s hearing if you prefer.

I think Max kind of is the movie’s viewpoint character. He’s not the most important. But we pick up the action with him, and leave it when he leaves. It’s true there are a few times when he’s elsewhere as things happen (the war rig’s departure from the Citadel, and the part when he goes off to deal with the Bullet Farmer). But we mostly stay with him.

I guess it doesn’t really matter. It’s a mythic telling performed after the fact, clouded by time and the limits of oral tradition, is how I think of it.

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I’ve been thinking about her character more. Spoiler-y comments below.

• I think “The Splendid Angharad” must be a title given to her by Joe. (I think the same is probably true of Toast the Knowing and Cheedo the Fragile.)
• Joe calls her Splendid when he runs into the wives’ chamber looking for her, and when he’s scolding her for shielding Furiosa.
• The other wives call her Angharad. Significantly, that’s what Joe calls her when he shouts his warning about the rock. I think it shows how afraid he is in that moment that he abandons the pet name.
• Joe treats the wives as property, but I get a sense that Angharad has special status in the Citadel that goes beyond that, verging on her being viewed as royalty. Maybe it’s a reflection of her being Joe’s favorite, and the prospect of her producing a healthy heir. But whatever the source, she has an aura of queenliness.
• She’s clearly the leader among the wives. She’s the only one Furiosa speaks to directly up until the point when she’s lost. She’s the one whose words are painted on the walls in the Citadel. The escape plan appears to be as much hers as Furiosa’s. She’s the one who takes the lead in arguing not to kill Nux when he attacks Furiosa in the cab of the war rig (”No unnecessary killing! We agreed!”), and then engages with him verbally before they throw him out.
• Despite that post I previously reblogged, I no longer think Max was lying when he said “she went under the wheels.” It wasn’t the wheels of the war rig, though; it looks like she goes under the wheels of the pursuing vehicle, even as Joe is swerving to avoid her.
• George Miller has said there is a deleted scene in which Miss Giddy is tortured and killed in a failed attempt to get her to reveal the wives’ plans. Since Miss Giddy in the Big Foot during the chase through the canyon and is seen caring for Angharad before her death, that scene must come after that point. I assume it will be on the DVD, and I hope it sheds more light on Angharad’s character, as well as on the question of why Joe is hanging around on the other side of the canyon when the war rig returns.
• I didn’t know anything about Rosie Huntington-Whiteley before this, but in listening to Fury Road podcast reviewers I heard one particular dudebro laugh while saying her acting was weak, but better than in Transformers 3. (Then I said something rude and changed to another podcast.) I didn’t see Transformers 3, but if her character came off as wooden and unbelievable there I think it probably says more about Michael Bay as a director than it does about her. Certainly she delivered a compelling character here.

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cumaeansibyl:

we, uh, went to see Fury Road again

that’s six times for me (I had errands last week that took me by a movie theater so I stopped in and saw it alone)

we discussed various awards the movie could be up for on the way back and who their competition would be, and I literally forgot the new Star Wars was coming out this year because I’ve basically forgotten any movie exists except Fury Road

okay, and Jurassic World, but Fury Road doesn’t have dinosaurs which is possibly its only flaw and now I REALLY wanna see George Miller’s Jurassic Park

anyway we think there’s an outside chance of it picking up a Best Picture nomination – it was a smash hit at Cannes and universally beloved by critics – and of course it should win all the technical awards

also if Sigourney Weaver could get a nomination for Aliens then it’s not impossible for Charlize Theron to get one for this

but, of course, the Oscars are SUPER MEGA BULLSHIT so who knows, tech’ll probably get swept by fucking Tomorrowland or some bullshit

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rainbowterrarist:

Literally. You know those weird butterflies you get when you’re really into someone, and even when you’re doing other stuff without them your mind keeps wandering back to them?

That’s how I feel about this fandom.

UUuuugggghhhh don’t break my heart, Mad Max fandom. Don’t break my heart.

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hyperbali:

so here’s something about fury road i don’t get, in hindsight

(yeah i’m in mad max mode tonight and for the unforeseeable future, sorry)

but…why is joe and the rest of the war party kind of just sitting around doing nothing by the time the war rig comes back their way? they were at least a day, maybe two, behind the group and they were just…sitting there.

lots of them were on lookout, sure, but joe had no way of knowing they’d come back around. was he waiting for the bullet farmer to come back with the wives? did he wonder what was taking him so long? what would he have done if they made good on the plan to go across the salts?

My wife brought up the same question after our first viewing. I like what people have suggested about Joe being in mourning for Angharad and her child. The film makes a point of showing that. The comment about waiting for the Bullet Farmer to return makes sense, too, if you assume that Joe has not already learned their fate. It could also be that having lost the trail of the war rig, he’s stopped at their last known location near the exit from the canyon while he sends out scouting parties to try to find them.

There’s also this: he’s sunk a lot of cost into the attempt to recover the wives. We know the People Eater has already been complaining about their losses. It could be a point of pride for Joe at this point not to return without something to show for it. And not just pride, but the practical need to maintain power. As a dictator, he relies on the War Boys in particular, and his subjects in general, believing he possesses godlike abilities. To return with nothing after being so thoroughly defeated by Furiosa would be a blow to his authority. I think that could be a factor in his hanging around for the couple of days he’s apparently been doing that: he doesn’t know what to do next, but he knows that returning to the Citadel empty-handed would be bad.

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cygnaut:

1. Help her get to her feet so the people can see her. 

2. Support her if she stumbles due to extreme exhaustion and blood loss. 

3. Check: is the crowd chanting her name? Start a chant if necessary. 

4. Step back. It’s okay to give a quick nod of solidarity, but not too long of a nod. She’s not into goodbyes and you know she’s got shit to do. Feminist utopias don’t build themselves.

4. Slip away quietly unnoticed. 

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