Max Max: Fury Road
May. 27th, 2015 11:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kerravonsen(Just as I had nearly finished writing up this entry... the neighbourhood lost power. So I ended up sitting in the light of one candle, doing luceting. Fortunately the power came back in less than an hour. And fortunately I had been writing to a file rather than straight to journal, so I didn't end up losing anything.)
I saw "Mad Max: Fury Road" today. It was good. It had what I expected of a Mad Max film: dusty desert, dust, desert, grit, dirty faces, oddball characters, leather armour, bristling armoured trucks, truck chases, explosions, exploding trucks, guns, guns, guns, flamethrowers, crossbows, knives, hair-raising stunts, chasing chasing chasing, forlorn hopes, sad deaths, hairs-breadth escapes, nail-biting action, betrayals, and heart-stopping twists.
It had that, and it went beyond it.
The bad:
* grossly obese villains with suppurating sores - ugh. It was bad enough in Dune.
* was the warlord-guy an albino? Were the war-boys all his children? I'm confused about that bit.
The good... will take a bit more talking about.
First thing I'm going to talk about is the ending. What amazed me was that it subverted the tropes that we got in the previous Max Max movies.
At the end of the first movie, Max drives away into the sunset, having turned his back on his former life.
At the end of the second movie, we have the settlers going off to their promised land in the north, while Max drives off into the sunset, a drifter.
At the end of the third movie, we have Jedediah and children flying off to their promised land in the east, while Max drives off into the sunset, a drifter.
In fury road, Furiosa was escaping (with Immortan Joe's harem) to her promised land, the "place of green and growing things", the home from which she had been stolen. And then finds, in a surprise twist -- which I suspected about one minute before it was revealed -- that her home is no longer; it, too, has become a wasteland, the soil poisoned and unable to grow anything. And as she prepares to go off searching for yet another promised land, across the salt pans, we get another twist: Max points out that they already know where a "place of green and growing things" is -- the citadel which they had been trying so hard to escape from. They could take it over, make it into the promised land they had been searching for.
I love that idea. That instead of always going off North, East, (South, West) trying to find a legendary better place, always always somewhere else, always always far away, that you build your better place right here right now, even though it was the place you were trying to escape from. No, it's not a new idea, but it's new to this kind of film, and that made it fresh and new. Like... the way it was presented, it was like turning despair into hope. Because it had been staring them right in the face, overlooked: the place was a good place, it was the warlord who made it into a hell.
There were two instances of overlooking going on here: that Furiosa had passed right through her old homeland without recognising it, because it had turned into poisoned swamp; and that the citadel, however hellish and hated, was also a place of green and growing things, right under their noses.
Second thing I'm going to talk about is the start. Here, unlike Mad Max 2 and Max Max 3, we revisit Max's madness, that he is so haunted by the deaths he was unable to prevent, that he sometimes hallucinates that he hears them, sees them, briefly; and of course they are always in his nightmares. I like how this is presented -- not as wooby-angst, but as something dysfunctional.
And then the little touches -- the two-headed lizard, and him crushing its neck, and then eating it; just those visuals show us how low he (and the world) has sunk.
Then we have the Citadel; cult and tyranny and the Wretched (that's how they were described in the credits: "The Wretched"). That there are worse indignities than being thirsty and starving -- and that is being treated as a food supply. Max the "blood bag", and those poor women who sit there all day with their breasts hooked up to milking machines. "Cows" and "Breeders". Ugh. (shudder)
One of the other subversions in this movie is that this time, the precious thing that was being chased after was not fuel (as it was in Max Max 2) but people -- people who are considered to be property.
There were all these good lines -- just enough to make you think, not like dropping anvils.
"We are not things!"
"Our babies are not going to grow up to be warlords."
"It's not our fault!"
"Who do you think killed the world?"
"Bullets... they are like anti-seeds. Plant them and watch something die."
I loved the old ladies who were the last of Furiosa's clan. Weathered and spunky. Oh, and the seed lady, yes. So sad when she died. So sad when any of them died. Interesting contrast in fighting methods too: the men waste bullets, shooting at random just to be macho and intimidating; the women make every bullet count. There were points in the movie after someone died when I was wondering if anybody was going to survive to the end.
Then there was the development of the pathetic war-boy who just wanted to die gloriously, was denied Valhalla three times, was offered grace, had something to live for... and ended up dying gloriously.
So much good stuff.
I saw "Mad Max: Fury Road" today. It was good. It had what I expected of a Mad Max film: dusty desert, dust, desert, grit, dirty faces, oddball characters, leather armour, bristling armoured trucks, truck chases, explosions, exploding trucks, guns, guns, guns, flamethrowers, crossbows, knives, hair-raising stunts, chasing chasing chasing, forlorn hopes, sad deaths, hairs-breadth escapes, nail-biting action, betrayals, and heart-stopping twists.
It had that, and it went beyond it.
The bad:
* grossly obese villains with suppurating sores - ugh. It was bad enough in Dune.
* was the warlord-guy an albino? Were the war-boys all his children? I'm confused about that bit.
The good... will take a bit more talking about.
First thing I'm going to talk about is the ending. What amazed me was that it subverted the tropes that we got in the previous Max Max movies.
At the end of the first movie, Max drives away into the sunset, having turned his back on his former life.
At the end of the second movie, we have the settlers going off to their promised land in the north, while Max drives off into the sunset, a drifter.
At the end of the third movie, we have Jedediah and children flying off to their promised land in the east, while Max drives off into the sunset, a drifter.
In fury road, Furiosa was escaping (with Immortan Joe's harem) to her promised land, the "place of green and growing things", the home from which she had been stolen. And then finds, in a surprise twist -- which I suspected about one minute before it was revealed -- that her home is no longer; it, too, has become a wasteland, the soil poisoned and unable to grow anything. And as she prepares to go off searching for yet another promised land, across the salt pans, we get another twist: Max points out that they already know where a "place of green and growing things" is -- the citadel which they had been trying so hard to escape from. They could take it over, make it into the promised land they had been searching for.
I love that idea. That instead of always going off North, East, (South, West) trying to find a legendary better place, always always somewhere else, always always far away, that you build your better place right here right now, even though it was the place you were trying to escape from. No, it's not a new idea, but it's new to this kind of film, and that made it fresh and new. Like... the way it was presented, it was like turning despair into hope. Because it had been staring them right in the face, overlooked: the place was a good place, it was the warlord who made it into a hell.
There were two instances of overlooking going on here: that Furiosa had passed right through her old homeland without recognising it, because it had turned into poisoned swamp; and that the citadel, however hellish and hated, was also a place of green and growing things, right under their noses.
Second thing I'm going to talk about is the start. Here, unlike Mad Max 2 and Max Max 3, we revisit Max's madness, that he is so haunted by the deaths he was unable to prevent, that he sometimes hallucinates that he hears them, sees them, briefly; and of course they are always in his nightmares. I like how this is presented -- not as wooby-angst, but as something dysfunctional.
And then the little touches -- the two-headed lizard, and him crushing its neck, and then eating it; just those visuals show us how low he (and the world) has sunk.
Then we have the Citadel; cult and tyranny and the Wretched (that's how they were described in the credits: "The Wretched"). That there are worse indignities than being thirsty and starving -- and that is being treated as a food supply. Max the "blood bag", and those poor women who sit there all day with their breasts hooked up to milking machines. "Cows" and "Breeders". Ugh. (shudder)
One of the other subversions in this movie is that this time, the precious thing that was being chased after was not fuel (as it was in Max Max 2) but people -- people who are considered to be property.
There were all these good lines -- just enough to make you think, not like dropping anvils.
"We are not things!"
"Our babies are not going to grow up to be warlords."
"It's not our fault!"
"Who do you think killed the world?"
"Bullets... they are like anti-seeds. Plant them and watch something die."
I loved the old ladies who were the last of Furiosa's clan. Weathered and spunky. Oh, and the seed lady, yes. So sad when she died. So sad when any of them died. Interesting contrast in fighting methods too: the men waste bullets, shooting at random just to be macho and intimidating; the women make every bullet count. There were points in the movie after someone died when I was wondering if anybody was going to survive to the end.
Then there was the development of the pathetic war-boy who just wanted to die gloriously, was denied Valhalla three times, was offered grace, had something to live for... and ended up dying gloriously.
So much good stuff.
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no subject
Date: 2015-05-27 05:29 pm (UTC)I loved the "going back and change the place we came from" instead of escaping into a faraway utopia twist! Very refreshing.
no subject
Date: 2015-05-27 11:10 pm (UTC)The other cool twist about it is that if "overthrow the warlord" had been the original goal, then the whole movie would have been about that, about death and killing and replacing one warlord with another warlord. But here, "kill the warlord" was a secondary goal necessary for their freedom, but not the be-all and end-all of it all. Which gets back to "no more babies growing up to be warlords" thing. Seeds versus anti-seeds.
no subject
Date: 2015-05-27 07:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-27 11:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-28 06:29 am (UTC)