lies:

personalspaceshow:

Overture is a massive ship, 448 meters in diameter and 1,100 meters long. She’s the only ship like this in existence, and it took a concerted effort to build her. 

Now we’re talking. :-)

We get to see the pusher plate, yay! And more of that curved-arm thingy that does who-knows-what!

Excuse me; I’m going to need to go stare at this for a while…

Sparing the dashboards of long-suffering followers by putting my latest thoughts about Overture below a cut.

As I previously discussed, I’m pretty sure the curved-arm thingy is Overture’s radio antenna for talking to Earth.

Lately I’ve been thinking about another aspect of the ship’s design. Overture accelerates (and presumably decelerates) by setting off nuclear bombs beyond the drive plate at the bottom of the ship. They set off a bunch of them, one after another, a few seconds apart. But there’s a problem: The force of those explosions pushes the ship all at once, which causes too much acceleration for the crew to withstand. Those abrupt pulses must be converted to smooth acceleration via some sort of shock-absorbing mechanism.

At first I thought the shock absorber would be down near the drive plate. But looking at that part of the ship, I don’t see anything that looks like one.

Today, though, I realized that it would make more sense to put the shock absorber at the other end of the ship, up near the crew quarters, where it can be easily accessed and maintained. And there’s a great candidate for it up there: That massive tapered central hub that receives the long mast extending up from the drive plate:

I can imagine the mast sliding up through that hub when a nuke explodes, with some kind of braking mechanism being used to transfer momentum to the crew quarters. Then the hub would climb back up the mast using some kind of energy-consuming process (electromagnetic induction?). You’d probably try to engineer it so the initial braking stored energy, with that energy then powering the second, “climbing back up” phase. Like regenerative breaking in an electric car, only on a slightly (ahem) larger scale.

Looking at the top of the central hub in the overhead image, I don’t see anything that looks like a place where the mast would exit, but maybe it has a cap that we’re actually seeing here:

I’m still trying to wrap my head around the concept of Overture’s mission and how it would be experienced by the crew. With 25 years per shift and 1200 years to their destination, there are 48 shifts, and nearly 200 astronauts, each of whom has volunteered to be frozen for all but 25 years of the flight. Later shifts would be emerging into a world many hundreds of years in the future from their pre-cryosis perspective. But technologically they’d be flying the same (now ancient, by contemporary Earth standards) ship. In a way it’s like technological progress would stop for the crew on Overture, since they would be cutting themselves off from developments back home, other than what they could acquire via radio.

But would the crew evolve in step with Earth culturally? Would they try to use the materials on Overture to match the latest fashions they see in videos from Earth? Would their language evolve in step with changes back home? I imagine later shifts would face significant culture shock in trying to make sense of what they were seeing in the transmissions. Earth would become less and less real to them, their friends and loved ones dead and gone, the culture and language evolved until they were barely recognizable…

Would it draw them closer to their fellow crewmembers, who would share their Rip van Winkle experience and would be, after all, the only people they would interact with directly throughout their 25 years on watch?

I wonder, too, about the passing of the baton between crewmembers with corresponding responsibilities: commander to commander, doctor to doctor, botanist to botanist, engineer to engineer… You spend 25 years dealing with just three other people, none of whom share your background, then have a brief time during which you finally get to talk shop with someone who understands you.

Jeff Lipschitz, the first engineer, would have had a special role, one that subsequent engineers (until the last one) would not have had: firing the nuclear pulse drive. The Expanded Universe content the show creators have been including in the Kickstarter updates included a seriously cool mention yesterday of Lipschitz preparing to fire the first nuke as Overture completed its gravity-assist maneuver at Jupiter.

I wonder what that would have looked like. I love the fact that Tom and the other creators of the show care enough to make the technology of Overture believably complex, so that things like the communication antenna and the ship’s shock-absorber mechanism don’t necessarily jump out at first glance, but are instead visual anomalies, their form dictated by the actual engineering demands of the ship, rather than being dumbed-down versions more immediately recognizable but ultimately less interesting.

My favorite storytellers have always been those willing to carry their world building beyond the point where a less-obsessive creator would have stopped. I dig that obsession. I want to live in those richly imagined worlds. The more I see of Personal Space, the more I look forward to spending time there.

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flamethrowing-hurdy-gurdy:

redshoesnblueskies:

deep-space-diver:

For those of you who couldn’t tell the difference between slang from a post-apocalyptic desert wasteland and the stuff they made up for the Mad Max movie.

Aaah!  Thank you so much for doing this deep-space-diver!  And beautifully, too :)

Oh la I didn’t realise you’d posted this, my antipodean friend :D Good on you :)

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redcandle17:

floatingpuppy:

That piece of clothes/scarf(?)!!

I have been wondering when did Nux wrap it around his wrist?

At first I thought it was after he met Capable in the cab; but it seems like he wrapped it around his wrist when he tried to get in the rig? For the sake of convenience I guess?

Anyway, still love the fact that her stuff ended up in his hands

I know the real reason he initially kept it is because these people waste nothing and everything is precious. But it still makes me a happy shipper.

I never noticed before that you can see Capable react to the tug on her scarf. Nux grabs it in his effort to stay on the rig, and she winces for a moment as the strain comes on her neck.

This movie. There was so much visual storytelling going on that you can slow it down until you’re literally going frame by frame and find new, meaningful story information the whole way.

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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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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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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.

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icarus-suraki:

Illustrative gifs from this set (x) Please reblog it!

So I’ve been thinking about the guys who wear black foreheads in the Citadel and what it means within this imaginary world. I haven’t gotten my hands (eyes?) on anything that actually says “It means this in this case and that in that” as yet so this is just fan speculation based on one tiny costuming production note. I also don’t know that putting black foreheads on some actors and not others isn’t just a way to add visual interest to a crowd scene–it certainly could be. But given how much world-building and purely visual storytelling happens in this movie, I feel like I’ve got a leg to stand on here. I’m just making observations and trying to piece a pattern out of them. 

Remembering, of course, that we’re pretending that this imaginary world is as coherent and complete as the real one. (And someone may have totally thought of this already, but I’m going to make this post anyway.)

So. Black foreheads. Or: How do you spot an Imperator?

Keep reading

Nothing about this analysis I don’t love.

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Favorite world-building elements: Language

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didnt-want-to-sleep-anyway:

lies:

Favorite world-building elements: Realistic depiction of trauma

One of the things that makes Fury Road so immersive is the way it presents the result of violence. Unlike movies in which characters shrug off what in the real world would be horrific injuries*, the inhabitants of the Wasteland experience the full effect of the bad things that happen to them.

Some examples:

• Angharad’s graze wound. When Max shoots The Splendid Angharad in the leg, we see a close-up of the injury. When Furiosa asks her how it feels, she says, “It hurts,” and it apparently is a factor in her subsequently slipping from the war rig and being crushed. In the world of Fury Road, even a relatively minor injury can have severe consequences.
• Avoidance of gratuitous on-screen gore. At the same time, the film avoids depicting injuries just to be shocking. When Angharad is dying and Immortan Joe orders her cut open to try to save the fetus, we see the scene unfold – but we don’t see the actual procedure. The movie only shows enough for us to understand what’s happening. That restraint reflects a maturity in how the film approaches trauma that contrasts with the adolescent gross-out porn of other action movies.
• Realistic emotional responses. The inhabitants of the Wasteland carry both literal and figurative scars of past experiences. Angharad has a history of self-harm. Max exhibits a degree of PTSD that leaves him unable to speak. I ship Max/Furiosa, and there’s a side of me that wants to believe there were sexy fun times in the back of the war rig during that one chance Nux and Capable had, but I appreciate that the film respects its characters and what they’ve been through enough not to force them into emotionally false situations.
• Furiosa’s chest wound. When Furiosa is stabbed with the gear-shift dagger, we see the pain of it in her face. Especially given how stoic she’s been up to this point, the increasingly desperate look in her eyes during subsequent events shows the effect it is having on her. Unlike less-realistic movies, where such an injury might lead to a) a quick clichéd death scene with a few coughs of blood, an exhortation or two, and boom, dead, or conversely b) lots of ass-kicking followed by a wince and some light-hearted banter in the denouement, Furiosa’s injury follows a steady and clinically realistic progression through increasing distress and eventual loss of breath function due to tension pneumothorax. That the true emotional climax of the movie centers on an act of healing, as Max decompresses her chest and then treats her subsequent exsanguination with a transfusion of his own blood, is a beautiful inversion of action-movie tropes.

George Miller financed the original Mad Max with his earnings as an ER doctor, and made the movie in part to explore the effects of trauma on people who encounter lots of it. Although he hasn’t worked as a physician in many years, his experience and willingness to hold the movie to a high standard adds greatly to the believability of Fury Road.

*No disrespect to Holy Grail. That shit’s hilarious.

You know what had me wonder? The transfusion. How did he know what blood type she had? If he had a wrong type of blood, she could have had a jello in her veins within few seconds.

Remember the scene when his back is being tattooed?

He’s blood type O-negative, which makes him a “universal donor”, i.e., able to donate to anyone. (I’m also O-negative. Woo! Universal donors represent!)

It’s also mentioned in dialog. When he’s being prodded out of his cage to be hooked up to Nux, one of his captors shouts, “Careful! He’s a universal donor!”

This movie. smh

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Favorite world-building elements: Realistic depiction of trauma

One of the things that makes Fury Road so immersive is the way it presents the result of violence. Unlike movies in which characters shrug off what in the real world would be horrific injuries*, the inhabitants of the Wasteland experience the full effect of the bad things that happen to them.

Some examples:

• Angharad’s graze wound. When Max shoots The Splendid Angharad in the leg, we see a close-up of the injury. When Furiosa asks her how it feels, she says, “It hurts,” and it apparently is a factor in her subsequently slipping from the war rig and being crushed. In the world of Fury Road, even a relatively minor injury can have severe consequences.
• Avoidance of gratuitous on-screen gore. At the same time, the film avoids depicting injuries just to be shocking. When Angharad is dying and Immortan Joe orders her cut open to try to save the fetus, we see the scene unfold – but we don’t see the actual procedure. The movie only shows enough for us to understand what’s happening. That restraint reflects a maturity in how the film approaches trauma that contrasts with the adolescent gross-out porn of other action movies.
• Realistic emotional responses. The inhabitants of the Wasteland carry both literal and figurative scars of past experiences. Angharad has a history of self-harm. Max exhibits a degree of PTSD that leaves him unable to speak. I ship Max/Furiosa, and there’s a side of me that wants to believe there were sexy fun times in the back of the war rig during that one chance Nux and Capable had, but I appreciate that the film respects its characters and what they’ve been through enough not to force them into emotionally false situations.
• Furiosa’s chest wound. When Furiosa is stabbed with the gear-shift dagger, we see the pain of it in her face. Especially given how stoic she’s been up to this point, the increasingly desperate look in her eyes during subsequent events shows the effect it is having on her. Unlike less-realistic movies, where such an injury might lead to a) a quick clichéd death scene with a few coughs of blood, an exhortation or two, and boom, dead, or conversely b) lots of ass-kicking followed by a wince and some light-hearted banter in the denouement, Furiosa’s injury follows a steady and clinically realistic progression through increasing distress and eventual loss of breath function due to tension pneumothorax. That the true emotional climax of the movie centers on an act of healing, as Max decompresses her chest and then treats her subsequent exsanguination with a transfusion of his own blood, is a beautiful inversion of action-movie tropes.

George Miller financed the original Mad Max with his earnings as an ER doctor, and made the movie in part to explore the effects of trauma on people who encounter lots of it. Although he hasn’t worked as a physician in many years, his experience clearly still informs his approach to storytelling, and adds greatly to the believability of Fury Road.

*No disrespect to Holy Grail. That shit’s hilarious.

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darciedailyscoop:

I think a lot about Mad Max’s bracelet. Is that weird? I think it’s one of those Paracord Survival Bracelet that once you unravel to use as rope, is almost impossible to make back into a bracelet. 

Is he saving it for some truly important moment? After all he’s been through, how has he not used it by now? Why do I care so much?

God I love that movie. I care so much about that man’s bracelet it’s giving me feels.

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Favorite world-building elements: The V8 salute

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clavisa:

thecandlewasters:

You’re invited

I really hope you film the actual meet-up as well! Can there be like a gazillion extras or something in the in-world Hero video?

I think it’s really cool how easy it is for in-world and out-of-world channels to co-exist without it being a big imposition on the viewer. Because as viewers, we want to maintain the illusion. We will totally work with you as a creator to make that happen. Just show us the respect of giving us a world we can play in that follows its own set of believable rules, and we’ll do the rest.

And then the line between in-world and out-of-world can be as easy as a row of dashes in the video description. There. Was that so hard?

No. It wasn’t.

Thank you.

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