rainbowterrarist:

Notes I took while watching:

• “War Boy” is a title that infantilizes/diminishes in the same way that calling grown women “girls” does. Interesting flip in a movie that is being lauded as one of the most feminist movies, like, ever
• Slit definitely wants to be a lizard. He hisses/growls like a reptile, and crawls all over cars like a reptile. Slit is lizard trash.
• After fucking up in front of Immortan Joe, in the back of the War Rig, Nux says the gates of Valhalla have been opened to him 3 times…but we’ve only been shown 2 times up to this point in the movie (in the sand storm, and then when Immortan Joe sent him on a special mission). So there must be a REALLY INTERESTING PRE-MOVIE STORY ABOUT THAT OTHER TIME.
• At the end of the movie, Max is on the platform as it begins to rise, then there’s a cutaway, then when we cut back to the platform he’s not on it. MAX WHERE YOU GO. YOU SLIPPERY. Like did you just sliiiiide down like “oh wait I’m totally not ready to settle down, almost made a mistake there”

In order, because I loved each point you made.

• Exactly, yeah. Because feminism is about equality, and the wives, having seen clearly what Joe is doing to them, are emphatic with Nux before they toss him out of the cab that Joe is doing exactly the same thing to him.
• I never realized. But you’re right. It makes me wonder if the symbolism was intentional, tying in with Max’s encounter with the two-headed lizard in the opening shot.
• I wondered about that too. Maybe Nux is referring to the time in the cab, when he (briefly) had his chain wrapped around Furiosa’s neck before the wives pulled him off? Though granted, that wasn’t as dramatic as the other two.
• There’s a brief look Max gives Furiosa (who is looking the other way) just before the camera cuts away. And then the next time you see them Capable has taken his place supporting her on that side. My headcanon is that Max and Capable exchanged a glance before he left, and Capable knew he was going before Furiosa did.

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wizardinhistower:

Major spoilers below.

So I’ve seen Fury Road like three times now and I had some time to think.
Furiosa is a lot more badass than even we seem to realize. I’m not even talking about all the ass we see her kick during the movie. I’m talking about all the ass she must have kicked before the movie.

So Imorten Joe has built this whole hypermasculine suicide death cult of Warboys who are all male to a T. He keeps a harem of “breeders” and has other lactating women working as milk factories. Clearly not someone who thinks women have any place near combat.

But Furiosa is one of his Imperators. It’s never explicitly stated, but there’s no way Imperator is not a military title, probably like a general or some such. I mean, it comes from the old word for Emperor.

Given the whole Warboy culture, it makes sense that the Imperators must be the best fighters of the lot, and of the bunch, Furiosa must be the very best. She would have to be, to have the title both as a woman and missing an arm.

I can’t get over this. Furiosa kicks so much ass, the super sexist Tyrant respects and fears her enough to put her in charge of the army over all his other soldiers.

And clearly the Warboys feel the same. When Furiosa first goes off road, one of them asks if there’s been a change of plans. When she says “heading east” the guy doesn’t even blink, he just passes the info down the line. The Warboys are clearly used to taking orders from Furiosa and respect her enough that they don’t question her.

When the Warboys back at the Citadel are gearing up and Nux asks what happened, one of the Warboys tells him Furiosa has gone rogue. You can tell from the way he says her name and the look on both their faces that this freaks them out.

I can almost hear Nux thinking “oh god, why her?”

And Imorten doesn’t just go after her himself, he calls EVERY LAST WARBOY HE HAS, not to mention everyone from Gas Town and the Bullet Farm, which is why the Citadel is undefended and our heroes can do their crazy plan.

Because Imorten literally sent every soldier he had to take down this one woman.

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byebyebriar:

So, I saw Mad Max: Fury Road. It was great. It was epic. It was filled with ‘holy SHIT’ moments and you want to know the best part?

No ‘show me the tits!’ scenes. I sat through two hours of action packed-everything is on fire-rock music blasting-explosions every five minutes and did not once have to cringe my way through a character being stripped so we could see their ass or a random sex scene because the hero ‘needs’ to get laid at least once or women just there to be hot and be rescued. Consider at least half the cast is recently freed sex slaves this is freaking amazing. I know most of the sex slaves names, heck, I can even tell you some of their characteristics beyond ‘red head’ or ‘blond’. This movie treated them like people and made sitting through 100% percent funner.

That’s not even getting into how Max’s insanity is portrayed neither as a power-up similar to berserker fury or something he just needs to ‘get over’. He’s crazy. Everyone knows that he is crazy, but that does not mean he is not worthy of decency or respect.

Thanks Mad Max, for giving me a balls-to-the-walls action movie free of all the sexist, ableist, faux-philosophical speeches, bullshit I usually have to endure. See you on the Fury Road. 

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impfuriosa:

Capable was raped, abused and locked up. She wouldn’t fall in love with a man immediately after the escape. In a bad movie – yeah I guess so. The Mad Max world may be well, mad but the portrayal of feelings and characters are well done and realistic.

Nux has never experienced kindness and friendship so of course he would be drawn to the person that treated him like a human being for the first time in his life.

I also think that a platonic relationship shows that there can be other feelings between a man and a woman than romantic love. How many action movies are there where an important male character doesn’t desire a main female character sexually and romantically but wants a friendship? 

Ever seen a movie where a female and a male character touch each other not because of sexual desire but because they just really like each other? The only example I know are Ghibli movies.

So yeah platonic Nuxable is canon and it’s great. Nothing stops you from having headcanons tho.

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mugsandpugs:

The scene where Max saves Furiosa (which I have yet to watch all the way through without crying. It is cinematic brilliance.) Furiosa was stabbed because she was holding onto Max and wasn’t able to both defend herself and protect him. She continued to hold him long after she was stabbed, until he was able to climb to (relative) safety. Only then- desperate and dying- did she move onto her real goal: killing Joe, ending everything.

Everyone plays a role in the finale- everyone moves to align the planets so that she, Furiosa, can succeed. Max fights Rictus; Nux takes over driving the Rig; Cheedo tricks everyone so that she can be there to pull Furiosa onto the truck. Toast keeps Joe from being able to shoot Furiosa and then CLIMBS OVER HIS CORPSE to keep driving the truck (note: I LOVE that. She may have been captured, but she was no damsel in distress. May Joe RUE the day he ever underestimated his wives.) This is everyone’s hard-earned victory.

At the beginning of the film, Max had his humanity stripped from him and was reduced, like the Wives, to an object to be physically used and discarded. He was not Max; he was only “Bloodbag.“But not Furiosa. Furiosa gave him a name (even if it was just "Fool.”) She trusted him to drive. She let him have her back. She told him her story, and he witnessed her grief. She gave him options. She listened to his advice. She took a fatal injury to protect him. She comforted him, confessed to him, trusted him to literally and metaphorically support her so that she could make that shot. She gave him his humanity back

.And so him willingly giving her the blood from his veins at the end is an enormous moment for Max- it had been stolen from him, but now it was his again, to do with what he chose. He CHOSE to give it away. He had his humanity, he had his agency, and he was, once again, a “person.” At the beginning of the movie he tells her his name doesn’t matter- after all, he was only a Bloodbag. But when he GIVES his blood he is definitively able to say, “My name is Max,” because now it DOES matter. Because of her, he has reclaimed himself. That name and that blood is once again his to give. 

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mugsandpugs:

Finally- I’m sorry I’m just so caught up on this- being allowed to make mistakes.

 It’s been talked about before so I’ll be brief, but with Joe? Mistakes and mediocrity are unacceptable- the minute you fail to do his bidding, you are nothing to him. 

Furiosa, however… people around her screw up all the time, and they are still given repeated chances. For example, Big Boy only has four shots remaining. Max takes, and misses, three. But Furiosa doesn’t yank the gun out of his hands or curse him out, she just looks at him. And, from the earlier scene with the biker gang (where Furiosa made every shot she took while Max had to fire off multiple rounds) he KNOWS she can make this one. So he gives her the gun and steadies his shoulders for her. He knows her skills, and she accepts his flaws.

Nobody gets mad at Splendid for making noise and catching the biker’s attention. Nobody gets mad at Toast for being unable to load the clip in time. Nobody gets mad at Cheedo for being afraid and trying to go back to her abuser (in the very next scene she is shown being held by the other Wives.)

And that same kindness is extended to Nux, who screws up repeatedly through the entire film. When he chokes on the gasoline, Max pats his head and sends him to do something he’s good at. He doesn’t get angry, he doesn’t call him mediocre. He just basically says “I got this bro- you go do your mechanic thing.” It’s likely that Nux has never seen this kind of mercy in his life. Let your skills shine. Team work. Support, not rejection.

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“I worked for two-and-a-half years in a big city hospital. I stayed registered right up past Mad Max 2: Road Warrior. I never even thought there’d be a career. I stayed as a doctor on the first Mad Max because we kept running out of money in postproduction. Then I stayed through to the second Mad Max because if you are doing stunts,  you are obliged to have a doctor on set. There weren’t big budgets, so I ended up running a clinic during lunch time tending to cuts, sunburns, scrapes and all that.”

– George Miller

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“[I saw] a lot of trauma from cars, and that did affect me. I wondered what it would be like if you were a cop or a journalist seeing it all the time. And that was the trigger [that led to Mad Max].”

– George Miller

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sylvia-morris-reblogs:

lies:

gingersnapwolves:

as much as I really loved Mad Max: Fury Road, I feel like someone should have checked their math

because like

“If you drive 160 days that way, all there will be is more salt”

okay so let’s say they drove 25 miles per hour (which is much slower than they would need to across a salt flat) and drove for 12 hours per day on average (which is possibly less than they would have)

in 160 days they would travel 48,000 miles

which is enough to travel the circumference of the earth

twice.

Max could be speaking metaphorically, continuing his line (almost his only other complete sentence) about how “if you can’t fix what’s broken you’ll go insane”. He could mean that even if Furiosa does circle the world twice, she’ll still carry the Wasteland inside her.

Like he does.

Yeah also: how much fuel do you need for 160 days? Surely more than they are carrying…

That’s a good point, which someone else also commented on earlier in the thread. At 100 mpg (which is probably overestimating their fuel efficiency), they’d need nearly 500 gallons of fuel per vehicle, which they don’t appear to have with them.

I feel like the rest of the movie is too obsessively grounded in physical reality for Miller & Co. to have just made a mistake like that, or to have said, “you know what? Screw it. Let’s say 160 days because it sounds more impressive, even if it doesn’t make sense.” So the answer must be something else.

Maybe the discrepancy arises from our assuming that Furiosa is talking about riding the entire 160 days. They don’t have enough guzzaline for that, obviously, and since the scarcity of it is one of inviolable principles of the world, they’re not going to casually assume they’ll come across more. So maybe the 160-day estimate assumes they’ll only be riding until their fuel gives out, after which the remainder of the journey will be on foot. That solves both problems at once (the distances not adding up and their not having enough visible fuel).

I don’t remember the exact dialog from the night before, when Furiosa explains the plan to Max. (Sounds like a great excuse for another trip to the theater; yay!) But the part where Max overtakes them and has the conversation the next day, when Furiosa agrees to go back, is included in the promotional clips on YouTube.

Max says:

Look. It’ll be a hard day. But I guarantee you that 160 days’ ride that way there’s nothing but salt. At least that way you know we might be able to – together – come across some kind of redemption.

It’s true that he says, “160 days’ ride”. But that could be shorthand, eliding the fact (known to all present, and therefore not needing to be stated explicitly) that they don’t actually have 160 days’ worth of fuel, so they’re going to end up walking well before that point.

That’s the best I can come up with for now, at least.

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It’s pretty much canon. Like, both The Road Warrior and Beyond Thudnerdome have actual narration framing the two films as such and George Miller’s said that’s sort of what people should view Fury Road as too. And it’s the approach that lends the most to the franchise surviving a VERY long time without having to worry about continuity too much.

I mean, just imagine us someday getting a Mad Max film where Max is played by a dark-skinned actor of Indigenous Australian descent: the “Max as post-post apocalyptic Australian folk hero” approach very easily allows for that by killing two birds with one stone (recasting a previously-white character to be played by a nonwhite actor being one) by framing that movie as the folk retelling of a group descended from predominantly Indigenous Australian survivors (diversifying the post apocalyptic genre being the other proverbial bird).

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lunokii:

So I went and saw Mad Max a second time with one of its visual effects workers, and we had some pretty cool discussions about the movie. He also let me flip through a storyboard book he was given really fast and so here’s a list of a bunch of stuff he told me…

• Angharad’s scars are from self-harm

• The scenes were filmed in order of how they appear in the movie

• Rictus Erectus’ baby head necklace represents that he has the mind of a child

• Mother’s Milk is turned into cheese

• Someone cut off Furiosa’s arm so besides that she’s completely healthy

• Immortan Joe is the most powerful out of himself, Bullet Farmer, and People Eater

• The Bird People (the ones on stilts in the Green Place) eat crows

• Rictus is pretty much immune to pain

• Originally History Woman/Miss Giddy was going to be killed by Joe to symbolize that he doesn’t care about the past, only the present where he is powerful

• On the original story boards there was going to be a scene where the wives are sitting in the War Rig and singing to each other

• The flashes of Max’s daughter represent his fears trying to escape so that Max can accept himself

• When Max is watching everyone go across the salts and his daughter makes him hit his head, for a brief instant her face turns into the face of the guy who shoots Max

• Nux imprinted on Capable and loves her because she was the first person to show him true kindness. They have more of a strong platonic bond than a romantic bond

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“This is not in the movie: this is stuff that we talked about, backstory about how she ended up with no arm and that she was discarded. She couldn’t breed, and that was all that she was good for. She was stolen from this place, this green place that she’s trying to go back to. But she was stolen from that place and kind of embedded in this world for one thing, and when she couldn’t deliver on that one thing, she was discarded—and she didn’t die. And instead… she hid out with those war pups in the world of mechanics, and they almost forgot she was a woman because she grew up like them. So there was no threat. It was like, “If you become us, then you’re not a threat.””

– Charlize Theron on Furiosa’s origins (x)

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fauxgingerwithasoul:

Stuff Mad Max addresses:

• Physical Disabilities
• PTSD
• Objectification
• Toxic Masculinity
• How fucking sick it would look if we had a guy playing a guitar that shoots fire suspended from wires ON A MOVING VEHICLE

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fatuglygeek:

I was originally going to type up a review of Mad Max: Fury Road, but lots of people have already said the main stuff, and said it better than I could. However, one line from the movie kept stirring in the back of my mind; I felt that I should understand it, but didn’t. 

“If you can’t fix what’s broken, you’ll go insane.”

Max has almost no real dialogue in the film, so if he’s given a full line, I’m gonna assume that that line is important. 

What does he mean by “insane”? Well, frankly, he means his own condition. Max knows he is insane (it’s in the opening lines of the movie, as well as the name Mad Max.) He understand this about himself, but knowing it doesn’t help him escape his ghosts.

Max is trying to tell Furiosa that she shouldn’t make the choices he made. He couldn’t fix the brokenness in his own life, and he went insane. He spends his life driving around alone in the wasteland, just trying to survive. That’s how Furiosa will end up if she and the Wives and the Vuvalini go into the salts. 

Escaping Immortan Joe won’t fix anything. He’ll still brutalize the people who rely on him for water. He’ll still have his Milking Mothers and Warboys and he’ll find new women to enslave. It’s not enough for the women to get away; they have to fix what’s broken. Their society is broken, and the only way to escape madness is to go back and fix it. 

This is why Nux’s story arc is so important. Nux is the proof that change can happen, that even those who have dedicated their lives to destruction and objectification can make new choices and find humanity.

Escape is not enough. Survival is not enough. You have to fix what’s broken. The only way out is redemption, and redemption isn’t found in isolation. Either we all fix what’s broken together, or we all go insane.

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derpydenizen:

I’m gonna tag dyinghistoric and bin–lizard because they might want to see it.

These are just some observations I made after seeing Mad Max: Fury Road for a third time today.

There may be spoliers beyond so be forewarned

Keep reading

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redcandle17:

I went to see Mad Max Fury Road yesterday for the third time. I tried to pay attention to details this time instead of merely enjoying the adrenaline ride, but it was no less enjoyable. 

– At the beginning, when Max is pursued and attacked by a group of War Boys, they are way more interested in his car than him. There’s a group of them gathered around the car, examining it, and Max manages to crawl a few paces away before one of them comes over to put a booted foot on his back and a gun to his head. 

– I felt a bit sorry for the War Boy who was acting as Furiosa’s second-in-command. Seemed like a good soldier. Though he was more a War Middle-Aged Man than a Boy. I’m wondering now how Furiosa had planned to get rid of her War Boys. 

– When we first see Nux, he’s sitting on a bench carved out of the rock in that cavern – and it struck me: that’s their infirmary. Even “running on empty” they don’t get anything close to a real bed or even cot. Poor War Babies. 

– Slit just ignores Nux and walks right past him when Nux asks what’s going on. I like the War Boy I’ve dubbed Exposition!War Boy who tells Nux what’s happening. He’s so dramatic and talkative.

– So when that War Boy apparently named “Morsov” gets hit by two bolts from a crossbow, Nux is one of the War Boys urging him to get up. When he does get up and perform that badass dive onto the Buzzard car with explosive-tipped lances in each hand, Nux and the others cheer him and shout “Witness him.” Except Slit. Slit is the one jerk who says, “Mediocre, Morsov.” 

– Nux is such a pathetic puppy desperate for attention. I almost get a case of secondhand embarrassment from the way he calls to Immortan Joe and his shock and awe when Joe briefly glances at him. Of course Slit is there to harsh his squee by insisting that Joe was really “looking at your blood bag” and “scanning the horizon.” 

– Slit is a dick. Unfortunately I have a soft spot for jerks, so this means I like him. There was no almost about it when he displayed his own pathetic need for Immortan Joe’s approval. “I got his boot. I got the blood bag’s boot. Take me.” I did get secondhand embarrassment. 

– When Nux decides to pursue the rig into the sandstorm, the way he puts up the car windows and coolly closes the sun roof after looking directly at poor Max (who is understandably frantic, being trapped outside the car and unable to even jump off because he’s still chained to Nux) is very amusing to me because I am a sadist. 

– Max growling “That’s my jacket” and tearing it off Nux, who just laughs and says, “You can ask for more than a jacket.” I love it more every time I see it. 

– And of course it’s bittersweet to hear Nux saying he wants to drive the war rig. That’s the greatest reward he can think of asking for. I wonder how the wives felt listening to him talk to Max about being rewarded (for returning them to slavery). 

– Nux tells Joe he’ll “pike her(Furiosa) in the spine and keep her alive for you.” Yikes. Interesting that Joe declines the offer to have Furiosa captured alive for torture though. 

– The sun is setting as Capable volunteers to go keep watch in the back of the rig and encounters Nux. I would love to know what she was thinking as she sees him and why she lies down beside him. She seems almost fascinated by him, with the way she reaches out to touch his lips.

– In the next scene, it’s fully dark and Capable is sitting in the middle of the other wives, with a troubled look on her face. Presumably she’s thinking about how she’s going to keep hiding the War Boy from the others or perhaps wondering why she hasn’t told Furiosa about him being on the rig. 

– Then the rig is stuck in the mud and they’re trying to get it out, and when it does get out, Furiosa and Max stare at each other and realize neither of them is driving. And with Capable assuring them that Nux “wanted to help” and Nux kissing her on the cheek after she cuts the chain, well, it really makes me wonder what exactly happened between the two of them. Whatever it was, I love it. 

– I love the understated, unspoken way the movie made it clear that Max was not simply a Hero, but a good person as well. That boot he brought back for Nux along with the ammo and steering wheel they needed. He didn’t need to do that. Just the fact that he thought about it showed he was a good, thoughtful guy. Considering that Nux had used him as an unwilling blood donor and strapped him to the hood of a car during a high speed chase, it would have been understandable if he’d just went “fuck that guy.” But him bringing the boot back for Nux, man, that truly shows depth of character and innate goodness.  

Oh, dear God, I just realized it’s two hours later. I just spent two hours writing this and I only covered the first half of the movie and it’s mostly about Nux in one way or another. Help me.

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sonnywortzik:

little fury road things i dig way too much:

• toast knowing her way around guns. just. every gun. all of them
• toast saying they can “squeeze off this little [gun] a raunchy 29 times” and looking at max like maybe she’s trying to get a reaction out of him but he does fuck-all
• nux kissing capable on. the cheek. a cheek kiss. on the cheek. boy was spraying poison on his face a few scenes ago now he’s kissing people on the cheek don’t touch me
• nux still referring to max as “blood bag” even after he’s part of their little makeshift family & how it’s another illustration of nux’s weird innocence. ‘cause “blood bag” isn’t inherently a derogatory term in his head it’s just stating a fact and he doesn’t have anything else to call max so it doesn’t occur to him that maybe max doesn’t want to be called “blood bag” but here we are
• “tree thing”
• the fact that the wives know what trees are even though they’re around the same age as nux (or younger) but they’ve got books/have probably read about trees & deduced that that thing is, in fact, called a tree
• “stay where you are little joe. it’s kinda lost its novelty out here” dag pls
• “warlord junior. gonna be so ugly” “it could be a girl” KEEPER OF THE SEEDS PLS
• the way they light max’s eyes in the “hope is a mistake” scene 
• when max tells furiosa his plan about cutting back through the canyon and blowing it up behind them and the kEEPER. OF THE SEEDS. SAYS “KABOOM”
• aND MAX SMILES AND POINTS AT HER LIKE “she gets it”
• that black-top in the final battle trying to intimidate furiosa by hissing at her and she roars and head butts him so hard dickhole probably ain’t got a face anymore
• furiosa and max’s last fights being edited together because parallels and also punches n stuff being timed w/ drumbeats because the actual hero of this movie is punk rock 
• when furiosa and the wives are pulled up on the platform at the end and they pull other people up w/ them (as opposed to those people being beaten down at the beginning)
• the closeup of the dude w/ the facial growths who gets pulled onto the platform and is open-mouthed smiling so hard while gazing upwards idk he just makes me happy
• the women who were hooked up to the milking machines being the ones to start the water flowing once they see immortan joe is dead
• all the “fuck capitalism” content in this movie culminating in one big happy “NO SERIOUSLY FUCK CAPITALISM” final scene

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