Mallory and Shrill are friends who make each other see terrible movies. Also, there are some spoilers, and also someday you will die.
Mallory: I AM SO STRESSED OUT RIGHT NOW
my arms are still vibrating from the stress of this movie
Shrill: hello
Mallory: WELCOME TO THE STEAMPUNK FUTURE, SHRILL
THERE’S NO WATER BUT DON’T WORRY WE GLUED SKULLS ON EVERYTHING SO THERE IS THAT
so I guess let us discuss the water husbandry practices of our scarcity-plagued future economy
Shrill: yeah that’s one thing I love about this movie is the fundamental inconsistency between, like,
the movie’s bedrock worldbuilding
and what people actually do
Mallory: go on
Shrill: this is a world in which oil is extremely scarce but people spend most of the time crashing really extravagant vehicles
and water is incredibly hard to find but they distribute it to the people via artificial waterfall
Mallory: YES
Look, I am willing to suspend a GREAT DEAL of disbelief for a movie to look super cool
because honestly too great a commitment to realism would have meant that a third of Mad Max would be about heat stroke and the respiratory problems induced by constant dust storms
the fight sequences would be tender and raw and slow and wee because everyone would be so exhausted by dehydration
Shrill: yes and it’s so in your face that you have to believe it
Mallory: oh, I believed it
BUT
EVIL WARLORD GUY: if you are trying to control a populace through careful distribution of precious resources
then you ORGANIZE THE CITIZENRY INTO EASILY IDENTIFIABLE GROUPS who come get a carefully allotted amount of water at a specific time every day
you don’t just TURN ON A SKULL FAUCET and wait twenty seconds
Shrill: it basically would have been a movie about the Fremen
Mallory: most of that water was absorbed right back into the rock!
that was INEFFICACIOUS
Shrill: but it’s super effective if you’re more concerned with being ostentatious and flamboyant and putting on a display of your power
Mallory: this dude’s evil society was SUPER INEFFICIENT
which I think was my main problem
there was an ENORMOUS warrior caste
where are they getting the protein to bulk all these dudes up?
Shrill: here’s the thing, Mallory: who cares
Mallory: No, but I HAVE to care, not because I’m pedantic, but because they introduced the problem of food resources when they showed the most muscular character DRINKING HUMAN BREASTMILK FOR SUSTENANCE
that is such a poor use of resources!
you’d be better off just feeding him the calories directly, instead of feeding a bunch of women in that weird lactation chamber, and then feeding the subsequent breastmilk to him, there is a REASON women only nurse children for the first few months or years of their lives; you can’t nurse a platoon of grown men indefinitely! Even Rose of Sharon only nursed that one dying guy for like a MINUTE in Grapes of Wrath!
And then they sometimes use breast milk as an engine coolant! JUST PISS ON IT INSTEAD
Shrill: sure, but what’s the point of being a dictator/religious figurehead if you can’t have a few luxuries
Mallory: I GUESS
Mallory: In that vein, why was Charlize Theron allowed to drive the war rig and not be one of the wives?
as far as I could see this society had about eight women
also
if it were me
(and I think it’s fairly telling that I’m imagining myself as the evil dictator and not a member of the Resistance in this scenario)
I would not keep all my harem in the same room
where they could COLLUDE and ESCAPE together
I would have a beehive type situation
and keep each one in a separate chamber
so they could not conspire against me
that was his big mistake
Shrill: well, that’s because you see them as humans capable of collusion
Mallory: this is why i’d be an especially dangerous dictator
Shrill: and not very valuable breeding cows
Mallory: cows that can TALK, shrill
that’s what women are
Shrill: well
Mallory: like, cut off one hand and one foot each, you know?
problem solved
that way, they’re still perfectly healthy but they can’t get far without you
Shrill: oh my god
Mallory: I’M JUST SAYING
IF YOUR GOAL WAS TO KEEP THEM ON YOUR PROPERTY
FOR THE PURPOSE OF EVIL, YOU SHOULD REALLY COMMIT TO GOING FULL EVIL IF TOTAL CONTROL IS YOUR PLAN
I am not going to cut off any part of Tom Hardy’s body
Shrill: I think maybe he did not want to mar their beauty
Mallory: they DID get all the fancy white fabric
I appreciated that
Shrill: swaddling clothes and chastity belts
the new wave in post-apocalyptic fashion
Mallory: I do love how in the steampunk future the attitude is basically THROW WATER AND GASOLINE OUT THE WINDOW AND JUST SOLDER SKULLS ONTO EVERYTHING
they HAND-WELDED SKULLS ONTO THOSE CHASTITY BELTS
Shrill: yeah one thing I loved about it is how extravagant everything was
Mallory: this society had a real eye for pageantry!
a highly developed cosmology!
Shrill: frankly, I’m tired of the sort of dour, very serious post-apocalyptic movie that’s so popular
Mallory: I DO KNOW
I am thinking specifically of The Road
and I choose to believe this is an AU of Charlize Theron’s character in that movie
who abandoned Sad Viggo Mortensen to go run a biker gang in Australia
Shrill: I’d totally forgotten that she plays The Woman in The Road until you mentioned it
Mallory: yes!
and you know
THE Road
who is to say THE Road wasn’t FURY ROAD??
makes u think
Mallory: they implied, I feel like, all the Warboys had like…nuclear mutations?
or big tumors etc because of “the future”
and maybe that’s why they kept spraying their mouths with silver paint?
it looked cool, i guess
Shrill: no, they only sprayed their mouth when they were about to die
it was like consecrating themselves to death
symbolizing chrome
Mallory: but what about the tumors that Nick Hoult had
that he named
Shrill: dunno about that
Mallory: all right
I feel like the implication was the Warboys were all mostly dying already
and that’s why they were so gung ho about Valhalla and whatnot
Shrill: yeah, they talked about them “reaching the end of their half life” too
I loved that they didn’t bother filling in those details, though
Mallory: no, not at all
I do love in movies like this
Shrill: fill it in in your head, we have explosions to do
Mallory: how IMMEDIATELY after the world ends
everyone is just like, RIGHT, step one, let’s develop an INCREDIBLY DETAILED COSMOLOGY
there are new gestures for praying
new words for everything: The Salt, the Warboys, people named Cheedo
elaborate death rituals
that have NO CONNECTION to our current society
just like, CENTURIES of cultural development are presumably sped up by the nuclear fallout
Shrill: well that’s the thing that’s cool if you’ve seen the first Mad Max movies
Mallory: I have not!
this was my first Mad Max
Shrill: this is the best one IMO but
the first one is just a bit askew
second one gets a bit stranger
Mallory: ok so each version the world gets more far afield from how we know it?
Shrill: yeah
I mean in the first one there are still recognizable institutions
courts, police, etc
they’re just not in complete control, it’s like a Wild West kinda thing
Mallory: then this world has weird crow people on sticks
Shrill: yeah
Mallory: ugh, I just have so many QUESTIONS, like how did the fertile valley of Charlize Theron’s youth become a mud puddle in just 20 years??
that is some FAST desertification!
not angry questions, just that I would happily read a script bible about this movie that’s 300 pages long
also, if she was kidnapped from that valley as a girl, why was she taking them back to a place she knew FIRSTHAND was not safe?
Shrill: better than nothing
and the environment is obviously very off-kilter
Mallory: true
it was a BOLD MOVE, I think
at what could have easily been the end of the movie
for Tom Hardy to stop and say
“hey, hey. wait a second”
“what if we just…go do the whole movie again, but BACKWARDS”
“how would that strike you”
Shrill: yes
“I’m pretty sure there’s nothing that direction…but in THIS direction there are more crashing cars”
Mallory: that was a good choice
also, having Angharad the Splendid die certainly WOKE ONE UP
Shrill: gauntlet throwing move!
Mallory: I cannot think of another movie that has killed off a pregnant woman!
uhh, maybe that French one
that was about one woman trying to cut open a pregnant woman to steal her baby
Shrill: what
Mallory: INSIDE
yeah it was a French horror movie
but that was specifically about murdering pregnant women
so
it’s rare that I’m like, “good on this movie for murdering a pregnant lady”
but it worked, I thought
also they killed a lot of people
Shrill: also the child died, which was surprising
usually when they kill off a pregnant woman it’s in childbirth
Mallory: totally!
and this time they were just like, nope, this is the darkest timeline, whole family line ended
Shrill: yeah, and it was an interesting callback to Max’s own dead wife/kid
Mallory: who, I don’t know what happened to them
I assume they
died
of the future
Shrill: yeah they got run down by a gang
Mallory: I think i am going to give this movie a half-demerit
for its tired use of “here is a little person, to demonstrate how weird and corrupt our society is”
but only half because even though he’s the only remaining member of the evil ruling class at the end
the water peasants do not all throw him off a cliff like you are totally set up to think they are going to do
Shrill: yeah, I almost wonder whether that was one thing they considered doing, or even filmed, and then decided to scrap it
Mallory: it was totally set up that way!
because they zoom in on him
and he has that “oh shit” look on his face
Shrill: and everyone looks at him
Mallory: and then they just…don’t
which was nice
Shrill: that’s the only time the movie exercised any sort of restraint, and I’m glad
like, the reason why all the bizarre unexplained details work in a movie like this is because the movie doesn’t really rely on them
as opposed to something like
(ahem)
Jupiter Ascending, in which all the details are explained and treated as important
Mallory: YES
Jupiter Ascending was STUFFED with dumb uninteresting details
Shrill: which were absolutely crucial to understanding the plot
Mallory: but this movie could almost have been silent
and I mean that in a good way! this movie was excellent and I would see it again if my constitution could stand it
Shrill: yeah, the visual storytelling was very strong
nobody had to like explain what was happening in the action scenes because you could follow them
Mallory: for a movie with roughly eight seconds of downtime
it’s pretty rad that I did not flag
the action sequences were NON-STOP and NON-GREEN-SCREENED
which I appreciated
Shrill: yeah, the physicality of the practical effects as compared to something like
idk
the Jurassic World trailer
Mallory: YES
WHAT A DISAPPOINTMENT
Shrill: like, part of the reason Mad Max was so thrilling is because it felt very concrete and physical and real
you feel peril, you feel fear
Mallory: you might get SMASHED UP BY A CAR WITH SPIKES ON IT
Shrill: at no point during the Jurassic World trailer did I even feel a twinge of theoretical fear
Mallory: not disappear into a green screen
Shrill: EXACTLY
Mallory: God, I love that all the towns nearby had perfectly literal names
BULLET TOWN
going to get some bullets from BULLET TOWN
stop by GOGGLE VILLAGE later for my vintage DUST STORM GOGGLES
Shrill: I’m sure there was some CGI stuff, like when the people were being carried away by the dust storm
but it was believable because it was anchored in a physical world we already believed in
Mallory: yes!
has there ever been, by the way
a post apocalyptic movie
with a legend of a green or a safe place
where the safe place turned out to be real?
because I feel like it’s only ever mentioned
so we can see the main character have a big mental breakdown when they realize THEY ARE THE SAFE SPACE
and there will be NO REST FOR THEM
Shrill: The Great Valley from The Land Before Time
and that’s all I can think of, really
Mallory: god, for a world that was supposedly rationing gasoline
they treated that stuff like it was PISS
Shrill: DID NOT CARE
Mallory: blowing up dirt bikes and shooting flames out of a guitar
Shrill: THEY HAD A GUITAR THAT SPAT FIRE
yes
Mallory: that guitar guy LIVED TO SHRED
was it a weapon? was it a vehicle? SHUT UP
Shrill: that dude was really passionate about doom metal
Mallory: he was only fighting Mad Max to get his guitar back
once he had the axe he didn’t care if Max blew up the whole car
Shrill: I felt like it was a futuristic version of the drummer boy from back in the day
Mallory: JUST LET ME ROCK OUT
there were drummers behind him!
which, again,
Shrill: he started playing IMMEDIATELY after he got his guitar back
Mallory: do you really have so many warriors and resources that you need an entire band corps??
there is an entire war rig dedicated to carrying around THEIR BAND
that’s so much gas!
Shrill: I’m pretty sure that enormous Burning Man drum corps/guitar amp thing was the largest vehicle there
it was like a story tall
Mallory: like, I could understand having ONE MUSICIAN maybe, tagging along on a vehicle that’s already carrying warriors
or like
a CD!
I don’t know
Shrill: I bet that guy is really passionate about his craft too
Mallory: it proper owned, though
like this movie was straight COOL as SHIT
fake gold noses and guys going blind and a bunch of shotguns
Shrill: the guy with the bullet teeth
Mallory: and everyone’s names were SINISTER AS HELLFIRE
Shrill: the biker gang of grandmothers
who were all deadeye shots
Mallory: YES
and who had just been living among sand dunes for 20 years waiting for a leader
Shrill: some of them apparently did their own stunts???
Mallory: IF we were going to do a feminist reading of Mad Max
WHICH WE ARE NOT
we could talk about how the caravan of wives was clearly meant to represent feminism’s third wave going back to acknowledge and honor the second wave feminist elders they left behind
but also to move ahead without them
clearly that was the filmmaker’s intention
(the crow people were Phyllis Schlafly)
(the green place of mothers was the failed ratification of the ERA, and the death of Angharad was the time my dad did the dishes without anyone asking)
Shrill: we could talk about them passing along the seeds for the future
again
IF we were going to do that
which we aren’t
Mallory: let’s talk instead about how everyone dressed like they were in a Die Antwoord music video
Shrill: Die Antwoord X the video game twisted metal
Mallory: amazing
can I say one last thing to you
Shrill: yeah
Mallory: I just still think it’s really WEIRD that you knew stabbing someone in the side was a cure for a collapsed lung
Shrill: lol
Mallory: and apparently considered it to be common knowledge
I just think it’s weird
that’s all
Shrill: I am laughing but with an air of mystery
Mallory: I JUST THINK IT’S WEIRD
MOST PEOPLE DON’T KNOW THAT, I DIDN’T KNOW THAT
Tags: Ezekiel Kweku, i don’t advocate chopping off anyone’s body parts, movies, shrill, yelling
How much would Tom Hardy charge to be mounted on the front of my Mazda Protege?
*titters* mounted *slinks away, still giggling*
$20, same as in town.
YESSSS!!!
I just love that Mad Max was basically just a hood ornament for 20 minutes of this movie. And that it just didn’t let up.
But yeah, the boy was very peeved at the waste of oil and water. Especially the water at the end. “Oh, great. Celebrate you’re in charge now by showing you’re JUST AS WASTEFUL.”
I mean, if you’ve got access to a big enough aquifer, and it’s fairly obvious that everyone’s dying of cancer anyways because of fallout issues, then wasting gas and water doesn’t really matter; you’re the richest people in the wasteland anyways thanks to the water, so you have all the gas you want, and, even with a decently sized population you won’t empty that aquifer for a while. And your population won’t be decently sized for long!
But it’s not even that it’s just wasteful, like, only about five percent of the people can get close enough to the waterfall to get any water in their buckets! It shows everyone else just STRAGGLING. Let them come in shifts!!!
You gotta keep the peons in check; you can’t go letting them think they deserve the water. You give them very stern warnings about getting addicted to water, because they really don’t have any water of their own, they only have water that’s given to them by their betters. You give them water in inconsistent spurts; none of them will get much, but some will have very slightly more than others, leading to a perpetual state of squabbling between them over the tiny fractions of the water that you allow them to have.
Yeah it made sense for the Big Bad to do it that way, I thought. I assumed that when they turned it on at the end, they let it run a good long time and really fill up the declivity at the bottom precisely so that everyone could get at it.
The gas thing I figured was either (a) a way of showing that this was super important or (b) maybe actually not as much of a big deal in this movie as in the previous ones (since I assume Gas Town is a refinery).
+1 for the Land Before Time reference.
Still my post-apocalyptic movie of choice. And probably my most rewatched movie. It was my babysitter for the first two years of my life.
It’s blown my mind to realize that the Land Before time is, in fact, a post-apocalyptic film.
I AGREE. I don’t think meta is quiiite the right word, but I am enjoying the logic puzzle of it being a post-apocalyptic and also pre-apocalyptic (as in, extinction AND whatever ends up wiping us out) film. All self-contained in one (well, probably more like twelve, now, considering the sequels) treestar-loving package.
Oh godddddd. I need to see this I need to see this I need to see this. It will be even better than that time in middle school when I saw Thunderdome on tv. Collapsed on the couch, hopped up on meds, in the middle of a fever, flipping blindly through channels, and then there was Tina.
Ah, just a stray observation, I reckon that the War Boys huffed paint for the intoxication (dying sucks), as well as a death ritual (becoming all chrome-y like the holy engine etc). Love your movie yelling as usual. :B
YES, this was my assumption as well! I loved how it took this thing that is pretty universally thought of as low status and turned it into this crazy weird purification ritual! (Also child soldiers — which I could never quite tell if the War Boys are supposed to be? — are often drugged before battles.)
This movie has only solidified my determination to marry Charlize Theron.
I laughed with joy every single time the guitar player came onscreen.
The guitar player’s official name is Coma-Doof Warrior and his truck is the Doof Wagon and thats great.
I KNOW RIGHT and the guitar was a real thing , honest to god, physical non-CGI flamethrower guitar with accompanying drum truck.
OH MY GOD IT WAS REAL?
IT WAS REAL.
(seriously I cackled with glee every time he showed up. Like, this movie was as COMMITTED TO THE ART as he was.)
Me too! I clapped joyfully at one point, like a child at a circus
The mythical land of peace and plenty is real in Waterworld too. Can anyone else think of any others?
It’s not a movie, but in Fallout 3 there was actually a place with greenery and trees and stuff. That said, there was a catch…
does “Logan’s Run” count?
also: THX1138???
In a sense, the movie version of Fahrenheit 451, if you replace “plenty” with “culture” or “literature”.
Chicken Run
Las Vegas, in the wholly excellent _Six String Samurai._ (A post-nuclear-apocalypse movie in 1950s America, in which people quite reasonably use _bicycles_ for transportation instead of guzzoline-powered vehicles.)
Also, I thought the extreme wastefulness (the cars, the band, the water) was a comment on the 1% situation we’ve got going on. Like, a world with deeply limited resources, but if you are in control of ALL of it, you can “afford” to waste it on displays of wealth and power (while everyone else is dying of thirst).
Also I think it’s a bit confusing because there are so many apocalyptic symptoms thrown in together and we tend to assume they’re just all relevant? But my read on the movie was that oil wasn’t actually scarce at all; clean water and clean soil were the limiting resources, and for the amount of people they had around, oil was plentiful. They have a whole functioning refinery (at least it has lights on it?), after all, and one of those things can probably put out an awful lot of fuel relative to the number for vehicles the three cities fielded.
fuel scarcity played a large part in the previous Mad Max movies. i has just assumed it was still scarce if not more so. but, like lizlabz says, if you have ALL of it, maybe you can be frivolous.
Also there were the parts with the leaders of the other towns when the People Eater read off a whole list of how much fuel and cars and whatever that they wasted on the mission and was clearly pissed about it, and then the judge-wig-bullet-guy (don’t know his name) was all ‘All this for a family squabble!’ so clearly it was regarded as irrationally wasteful way to operate by other characters in-world as well…like you say, another aspect of Joe being a tyrant
The War Boy who ultimately switched sides reminded me a lot of Voldemort from A Very Potter Musical, and I had a hard time taking him seriously because of that. Not that I think I was really supposed to take him seriously. But I never even learned his name. I just keep thinking of him as Voldemort
Oh my GOD that’s why he was so familiar. I know the actor and I’ve seen plenty of his stuff, but I still kept thinking to myself, what have I seen this guy in before? Mystery solved.
No, that wasn’t him. The Warboy (also don’t remember his name lol) was played by Nicholas Hoult, while the dude who played Voldemort in The Very Potter Musical is a different person. They just looked and sounded the same.
I called him Steve-O throughout.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie before where I was so transfixed. I’m not sure my body moved a millimeter the entire time. It was just so intense.
Also, randomly at breakfast this morning, I thought about Nux’s final “Witness me,” and, two days after seeing the movie, I teared up a bit. Is that a thing normal people do? Cause I have my worries.
YOU’RE NOT THE ONLY ONE! I got all misty-eyed at Nux’s end as he looks at Capable & says “Witness me” and to think, we got that much characterization for a relationship that had almost no dialogue
Its really pretty incredible. The whole “WITNESS ME!” thing goes from a violent boast to this soft, gentle prayer. So much characterization with no words.
Also I want to take a moment to note that even Rictus, Joe’s enormous but not smart son, got a moment of sympathetic characterization. “I HAD A BABY BROTHER AND HE WAS PERFECT IN EVERY WAY!” was actually super, super sad.
It felt like it was kinda being played for laughs – Rictus was clearly not all there – but yeah, there was definitely some pathos under that.
AAAAH I KIND OF LOVED RICTUS EVEN BEFORE THAT MOMENT THOUGH. The first time you see him is when he’s holding out the microphone for what-we-do-not-yet-know-is-his-dad delivering a speech (or at least I didn’t know it was his dad, I may have missed something in all the shouting), and I was SLAIN by his eager concentrating little puppy face as he tries to work out when Immortan Joe is about to speak so that he can position the mic just perfectly under the toothy mask.
And she answers with the hand gesture of the Vuvalini, that you’re not dead as long as you are remembered. I am still slightly teary, and in awe of a full-throated action movie with views on what happens after death.
Yeah, you know how sometimes you’ll watch a dumb movie and every time something dumb happens, you’ll be “what? WHAT?! Whaaaat. WHAT.”
This was like that, but the WHATS were pure, uncut joy. the bad guy lives on human milk WHAT? He has a huge truck to carry his personal guitarist around WHAT??!
I cannot wait to see this movie again.
YES
It was just as good the second time, not to meniton I caught wayyyy more of the dialogue and worldbuilding hints during my second viewing. It’s totally worth it.
I am seeing it with dear friends this weekend, at a movie theatre that serves you booze and food to your heart’s content. We will be three sheets to the wind before the movie even starts, and if I loved it tremendously while sober, I will ADORE it while drunk and surrounded by fierce feminist friends,
If you have to waste 8 hours, go here: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EvilOv…
The Evil OverLord List is now about ten Evil Overlord Lists detailing what you should NOT do if you wish to be a successful Evil Overlord.
My favourite is: ‘I will not turn into a serpent. It never helps.’
I am so excited to see this movie and also I stand with Mallory in not knowing how to treat someone with a collapsed lung.
i was ok with the collapsed lung thing because like Max was a cop so i figured he took like an EMT cert course at some point or something.
I knew! It happened once on House. So I guess I more like “knew”
It’s like to relieve pressure or some such, right? I think they did that on The 100…
I knew, can’t remember from what. I was v. smug in my knowledge, too.
I will read 1,000 feminist interpretations of Mad Max.1,000!
yes
the second time I saw the movie my mom leaned over and said “yeah that’s what ya’d do” during that scene
anyway my only complaint about the movie is the overwhelming whiteness, at least show us that the imperialist capitalist warlord is racist to explain why there are almost no nonwhite people in his empire, not everyone knows to assume that automatically somehow despite recorded history
Yeah the casting could have been a lot better in terms of POC, though happy there was Zoe Kravitz & Courtney Eaton (her modelling agency says she’s part Chinese/Maori which is a cool mix; I was curious bc she didn’t seem full “white” to me), not to mention the biker grandmas.
I got the impression that the movie did imply that Immortan Joe was a racist dickhead in part because many of the ‘downtrodden plebes’ we see at the beginning & end of the movie appear to be non-white & the town leaders WERE white; that one old man who gets some camera focus in the crowd for the waterfall appears to be Aboriginal? It’s very possible I was just reading too much into that though.
i kind of assumed all the warboys were Immortal Joe’s kids?
The wives had some pretty good diversity, I thought. As for the Warboys, who could tell with all the white paint and black eye makeup?
I heard that a lot of the Warboy extras were local Namibian teenagers. So you totally can’t tell!
Cool!
You might find this of interest: http://fangirljeanne.tumblr.com/post/119506756812…
It’s about how there are WOC/POC in the movie, but they are being read as white by North American audiences. A quick excerpt:
“Polynesians often are erased, or mistakenly seen as white passing often because White Western culture only teaches how to see black or white, ignoring or wholesale erasing all the many colors in between. […] There is a BIG difference between being white passing and having your ethnicity erase from mainstream awareness. People, even POC, default code Polynesian women as white because they only SEE the parts of our features that are stereotypically viewed to be ‘white.'”
Thank you very much for the link to that article.
It was Australia, wasn’t it? I’ve heard that Australia is overwhelmingly white, notwithstanding the Aborigines (who are probably living off the land)’and more recent Asian influx.
On the other hand, I simply didn’t notice it (apart from with the wives, who had exceptions), either because of privilege, or because things were always shouting and racing and exploding.
I like how I didn’t know what movie this was for a while. I liked how Mallory just casually name dropped it in the middle of the first exchange.
But also: I like how Jupiter Ascending was all exposition and It Still Didn’t Make Any Sense. Oh, I do love that movie.
Yes, also, how exactly is it that Tom Hardy’s blood had been draining out of his body for what appeared to be many hours, and he was still able to have a rip-roaring fight once he was able to free himself from hood-ornament status? Without so much as a sip of water or an iron supplement?
He’s described as akin to a feral dog. When you’re reduced to just the basic instinct to survive you have all that adrenaline and desperation pushing you to destroy more trucks in an implausible yet awesome manner.
So basically, he is PCP.
Okay I’m really sorry but I’ve gotta get some explanations going.
Immortan Joe’s waterfall of… water: most of his water goes to his intensive hydroponic crop system that in turn feeds his half-lifes, who are the dudes who do his stuff. He pumps the water out of the ground, has a substantial talc mining operation, plus some serious mechanical operations, all that takes a lot of cancer-ridden mind slaves to manage. So the water waterfall of ostentatiousness is just to keep the totally mutated and weirdo people who congregate outside of the Citadel happy-ish. They’re not really part of the society.
Also the breastmilk isn’t for nutrition? So Immortan Joe’s softheaded son tastes it, but they’re not really drinking it – it’s what they trade to the People Eater, the guy who runs Gas Town, the refinery down the road. He’s a cannibal and in the freaky fetish way, so drinking breastmilk is something he gets off on in a major way. That’s why the War Rig is a tanker full of the stuff.
Furiosa gets to drive the War Rig because she’s not perfect. Immortan Joe will only take perfect wives because he is fixated on having healthy children. In a world full of mutants (half-lives), unmutated people (full-lives, Furiosa, Mad Max, etc.) are highly valued. So far Immortan Joe’s children have all been flawed – his soft-headed son, the dwarf – and that’s why he’s trying so desperately to breed with his harem of perfect sexy gauze-wrapped lady ladies.
Also his two sons were a pretty cool throwback to MasterBlaster in Thunderdome!
Likewise the people all followed Immortan Joe because he presented himself as an immortal full-life, even though he most definitely was not and had some serious radiation sickness, so when his body was shown dead everyone who had bought into his mythology was like OH SHIT YOU ARE A LYING DEAD GOD GOD IS DEAD LET’S LET THESE HOT HEALTHY LADIES BE IN CHARGE NOW.
Also yeah stabbing someone in the side is totally great for pneumothorax if you stab them in exactly the right part and you have a hot virile O- Tom Hardy to hook up to them. Tom Hardy blood is the cure for all ills, if those ills are lymphoma or exsanguination.
I had read that also Furiosa was infertile, and that’s why she was able to drive a war rig–she wasn’t even considered a woman anymore, because she couldn’t have children.
oh my god I didn’t know that and now you’ve sent me down another mad max google spiral
NO THIS IS ENORMOUSLY HELPFUL
WAIT WHERE WAS THE SCENE THAT EXPLAINED THE PEOPLE EATER LIVED ON BREASTMILK FETISHES??
WAS I IN THE BATHROOM FOR THAT???
This is the problem with an action movie with this much subtlety, you just miss enormous amounts of shit! I picked up on the People Eater being a cannibal because A) he’s called The People Eater and B) I read a paper once I think that talked about lymphodema problems in a tribe in Papua New Guinea who ritualistically ate their dead? I AM NOT A DOCTOR WHY DO I READ SHIT LIKE THIS
In order to keep knowledge from being concentrated in an elite group of specialists? Random trivia and weird research FOR DEMOCRACY.
Just FYI the CDC puts out a weekly newsletter called Morbidity & Mortality Weekly Report (or MMR) and it is FASCINATING. A couple of years ago for their Christmas issue they decorated by adding a tiny sprig of holly to the masthead and featured an article on accidental deaths resulting from celebratory gunfire in Puerto Rico. SO CHEERFUL
Oh my god, I worked as a secretary for an infectious disease researcher as my first job out of college and I read the M&M report cover to cover EVERY WEEK. I mostly learned that there are an infinite number ways to die.
Oh man, that’s fantastic.
the CDC puts out a weekly newsletter called Morbidity & Mortality Weekly Report.
The fact that you made me actually go look this up myself instead of including a link of how to subscribe? SHAMEFUL.
Here’s the RSS feed, y’all.
You’ve put me down the rabbit hole again… from the CDC, women aged 45-64 years most likely to be total martyrs and not take their meds to save money. SURPRISE
*subscribes*
This is so up my alley they should just rename the alley after me.
Yes this was totally a chapter in Sam Keane’s most recent pop science book; it was on neurology and i can’t remember the name. The brains were diseased and then the people who ate the brains got diseased.
I think that was talking about prion diseases? Like mad cow or cruetzfeld-jakob? Which are totally horrible and yeah, it’s a REALLY BAD IDEA to eat human brains because it’s a great way to get one of those diseases which are just the worst.
If that kind of thing is up your alley I highly recommend The Family That Couldn’t Sleep, a book about Fatal Familial Insomnia which might be the absolute worst way to die.
You are exactly right about the diseases, thank you. And thank you for the recommendation – I will check it out right now. It is definitely up my alley, which I fear is occasionally a very morbid place.
Yes, it’s called Kuru and shows up in societies with ritualistic cannibalism (the kind where you eat your dead family members).
Dear God, I _knew_ that it was called kuru because Dack Rambo on The Love Boat fends off a marriage proposal on grounds that he is dying of kuru. (He isn’t.) I haven’t eaten human brains since.
Excellent book. You’ll be sure you have all the symptoms,even if you’ve never had family with congenital insomnia or eaten human brains.
“Tom Hardy blood is the cure for all ills, if those ills are lymphoma or exsanguination.”
You didn’t need to apologize anyway, but if you had, this sentence would cover a multitude of transgressions.
I straight up did not catch 90% of the names. My boyfriend and I were just calling them “Guitar Hero von Pajamas,” “Lumpy Scarface,” etc.
A lot of names weren’t really mentioned? Like, The People Eater was. But I only know that Guitar Hero von Pajamas (seriously so glad to know that red flannel onesie pajamas will still be available in the postapocalyptic future) is named Doof Warrior because of obsessive googling. Nux I got off of his car pedal. But like, Rictus Erectus (man child) and Corpus Colossus (dwarf child) – how were we supposed to figure those out if not IMDB?!
Yeah, the end credits were…really confusing. WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?
I assumed that Furiosa realised the situation she was in and clawed her way to the top, but now seeks redemption for what she had to do to get into a position of respect.
BLESS YOU FOR ALL OF THIS INFORMATION.
Also, very important, WHERE DID YOU FIND IT ALL? I want to wrap myself in the canon of this setting and just absorb it until I finally understand it all. Because there was SO MUCH going on in the details of this movie — it was brilliant and smart and I just want to know more.
Some of it I picked up at the movie because I was HYPER. FUCKING. FOCUSED but mostly varied and sundry googling. Seriously, so very much googling.
Also I have a gift for you – the backstory for Immortan Joe and Nux, with others to come for Furiosa, etc.
I’ve always been terrible at picking up subtle details in narratives — I latch on to one thread or character or event and miss a lot of details about everything else. Like, my boyfriend and I will talk Game of Thrones and I’m like, “Am I even reading the same books? I didn’t see any of that.” TL;DR: I am ultra impressed at your attention to detail, and also a bit envious. 😀
Also, !!!!!!!!!!. To the Amazon!
It seems like somebody should/will (has? anyone have a good link?) do a feminist analysis on the movie. It’s clearly made for it (even if Eve Ensler was only brought in as an acting consultant to the wives, Miller and the other writers brought their own feminist ideas to the script).
I don’t have a lot of the background reading to name names right now but, despite being a little boy’s big truck action movie, Fury Road feels like something a 1970’s Ecofeminist wrote. Men killed the world and enslaved women, the emphasis on fluids – water and gas, but especially bodily fluids like milk and blood. I imagine feminist critical theorists would find Max’s use as a blood bag very significant. I’d love to see somebody elaborate on that line of thinking.
I would love to read something like that!
And yes, the blood is fascinating, especially how he uses it at the end. I feel like there’s symbolism in him being a universal donor? And that the blood is life-giving, making Max a sort of analogue for the milking mothers?
I’ve seen some complaints about those milking mothers, btw. But I tend to think it wasn’t the woman who were depicted as being grotesque, but what was done to them. And I love that they got their act of rebellion at the end.
I’ve seen some complaints about those milking mothers, btw. But I tend to think it wasn’t the woman who were depicted as being grotesque, but what was done to them.
Now isn’t that interesting? I agree with you. My first thought when I saw them was FUCK YEAH FAT LADIES and how awesome that was. I didn’t think they themselves were portrayed as being grotesque. And they all looked SO HAPPY when they got to turn on the water at the end. I think someone who complains about them maybe needs to do a bit of self-analysis to determine why they were bothered by seeing powerful, fat, naked women doing something on a movie screen.
i didn’t think of them as grotesque but simply as human analogues for milk cows.
There’s a little bit of a start on a feminist analysis in the comments on the Metafilter Fanfare thread–Nux’s character arc shows that the patriarchy is bad for men, too, and the young boys working the winches that operate the Citadel’s platform are literal cogs in the machine.
In the same vein, what do Max and Nux’s roles/arcs in the group say about male allies? Haven’t thought through any implications here (will pay more attention next time through the movie) but seems like a relevant line of questioning?
I’ll try. 😀
Max being a universal donor is a symbolic subversion of most gender stereotypes, making him a life-giver, as fertile as the wives, the milk mothers or the seeds from the old ladies (Vuvalinis).
Nux and the other War Boys were objectified by Immortan Joe on the same level as the Wives. Whereas he used the Wives for “breeding”, he used the War Boys as “battle fodder”, as the wife Splendid put it. Using them for his own selfish needs, tricking them to believe false promises of glory. It’s kind of what Emma Watson touched upon in her “He for She” speech, about how oppressive and outdated machismo patriarchal ideas doesn’t just repress women, but also men, especially young men, too.
Nux only broke free from Joe’s oppression when he decided to make the remainder of his life meaningful, and aided the Wives gain their freedom through his sacrifice. Not just because someone told him he would get some kind of imaginary glory in the afterlife, but because he made a conscientious choice to give his life so that another, like the redhaired wife who showed him compassion, could give.
Someone has written a quick thing on liquids and feminist themes, but I’m sure there will be more!
I mean the enemy in the movie is a guy dressing up like a big muscle monster and using the wealth he’s hoarded to manipulate and force toxic masculinity on everyone, the movie makes it clear they could just live off of what they had there, instead they center their society around brainwashing boys into raiding murderers who use the already scarce resources to try and take more from whoever else is alive
somethign something imperialist capitalism
also I’m glad the movie wasn’t the boring nerd pandering nostalgia fest it could have been under a different team like gross mra fake geek boys wanted.
max kills endless dudes with his Epic Car you remember from before and the shotgun you remember from before, no one cares about boring explosions on screen, roll credits
This is so spot on, especially since the new Terminator trailer played before Mad Max. I’m expecting some of Arnold’s catch phrases to pop up in a Taco Bell commercial, they’ve been so overplayed.
Re: the little person – he’s actor and disability advocate Quentin Kenihan (possibly also a comedian? Maybe just really funny in interviews) who has been on current affair shows and comedy panels a bunch. So for an Australian viewer, it was less “a little person” and more “oh man, Quentin Kenihan’s in this! Awesome!!”
Or in my case, because I’m bad at names, “oh man! That guy! From the shows! Awesome!!”
A lot of the other actors (e.g. The People-Eater, the Doof Warrior, The Bullet Judge guy) were played by iconic Australians who you’d never expect to see in roles like that, so I feel like casting QK was just a part of that general “oh my god, it’s that guy!” thing. I don’t think he was meant to be any weirder than the rest of them were.
That is cool! I was mostly thinking of how the way he’s shown on film corresponds with a couple of tired old tropes, but I’m glad to know more about Quentin.
But you suspended disbelief enough for SNOWPIERCER!
never saw it, just read the plot description and saw the ending on youtube
Man, wasn’t it weird how for a month everyone pretended that Snowpiercer was a Serious Commentary On Capitalism, rather than just a Silly Movie With Axe Fights?
I thought there was enough subtext there to suggest that Furiosa maybe WAS a wife? Like briefly, and then she lost her arm or was barren and otherwise imperfect and not worthy of being a vessel for that dude’s babies.
I also thought the War Boys tumours were just regular skin cancer, cuz you know, I’m sure the ozone is shot to shit.
There is apparently talk of either doing a Furiosa comic or movie, so I hope either comes to fruition because she clearly has a compelling backstory.
She is for sure getting at least a one off comic, I saw it on Twitter on the weekend! (Here: http://www.vertigocomics.com/comics/mad-max-fury-…
That’s more or less what I figured — it gives her a reason to be in contact with the wives, and trusted by them, and it would also sort of make sense for the big bad to give her (what seemed like) a high status role within the citadel.
I feel like the thorax stabbing thing has been in a ton of movies. Three Kings for sure, and I know one or two more recent ones. I thought it was pretty common knowledge too.
The second episode of Daredevil features it. I guess thorax stabbing is having A Moment in media right now.
I knew about it as the worst part of Trauma: Life in the ER that I watched obsessively as a high schooler
I’m so torn. I’m sure this too violent for me. I have no tolerance for movie violence (I can handle Matrix type stylized fighting but that’s about it). I saw the first Mad Max back in the day and it was too violent for me.
But. But. But. I really *want* to be able to watch a feminist post apocalyptic blockbuster. Even though I know I’d be hiding my eyes the whole time.
In the second half of the movie, there are several people who get stabbed or have parts of their body ripped off (especially villains, but also one of the protagonists and one of the old ladies we’ve come to love in less than 15 minutes of screentime). But in the first half, it’s mostly vehicles crashing into each other and exploding in fireballs, or people shooting at each other from afar – you don’t see a lot of direct interpersonal violence. So you might be able to make it through the first hour and a half all right and then just make judicious use of not looking at the screen during the final chase scene when it’s getting real serious.
I am also having this problem. Less with the violence, but more generally with some of the imagery – the milking mothers and breeders, the face masks, some of other stuff I’ve read about, all of which provokes a super-creeped out and really uneasy reaction in me. But I want to go! I WANT TO!
But you know all the weird creepy imagery is exactly why you want to go!! And the blind guitar shredder guy, who is awesome. Just go see it already, it’s a great movie.
I had the exact same fears going in, down to being unable to watch the first Mad Max because too much violence. I was VERY pleasantly surprised by how little I had to cover my eyes! One of the happiest things was that despite the backstory of Big Bad Immortan Joe keeping captive women as “breeders”, there is not a shred of sexual violence on screen at any time during the whole movie.
Going into mild spoilers, I won’t say there isn’t violence against women, because there’s a whole bunch of women involved in big fights and exploding car stuff, and some of them don’t make it out alive. But! None of that violence is women-specific? And another happy thing for me was that a bare minimum of violence was perpetrated on vulnerable individuals incapable of defending themselves. There is one very brief scene in the beginning where Max is being held down and forcibly tattooed, but the camera doesn’t linger on the moment. He is also threatened with a brand, but (phew!) the action cuts away before it lands without as much as a fade-to-black scream.
If you don’t mind more spoilers, here’s a list of moments I tensed up in anticipation of badness happening, and how they played out – all based on my own perception, of course.
– Everyone’s mentioned the women being used for their milk – this was way more upsetting to me in theory than when it was shown on screen. What we see looks like a hair salon setup with women sitting around waiting for their hair to set – except there are some sort of weird cables (probably with skulls on them!) clamped over their nipples. No closeups on the, uh… contraptions, and while it’s a grotesque concept, the women seem bored rather than suffering.
– Max get used as a blood donor, and there’s a bit of jabbing him with a needle. He is not exactly volunteering, but there’s no lingering shots of stabbing needles or beatings or whatever.
– At one point Max really wants to get a cuff of somebody else’s arm, and seems about to do GROSS VIOLENCE in order to make it happen. I hid in anticipation, and then he was interrupted by chance! Twice! So there might have been a bit of attempted mutilation, but no follow-up.
– There’s an old tattooed woman we see early on and in flashes through the movie. She is threatened with violence, but (unless it happened so quickly I missed it?) we do not see her come to a bad end.
– When a “doctor” is about to do surgery on a dying person, what is happening is deeply unpleasant, but when I peeked at the screen the camera wasn’t panning down on any gory bits. It’s an upsetting moment because of what is happening, but there is no lingering body horror, if that makes sense?
– Speaking of body horror, there are random quick shots of mutations, swollen limbs, flaking skin, oozing sores, piercings and such. These are all part of other scenes, and will literally be gone from the screen in the blink of an eye.
– There is one scene that telegraphs (with a flaming torch, even) that someone is about to do something painful to their own eyes. Then they do. I did not look, and so cannot tell you how bad it was, but it’s a short scene.
– …I have vague memories of turning away before something bad happens to another set of eyes later on in the movie, but now I can’t remember the specifics – probably because I wasn’t watching? Or because it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be?
– The big bad goes down pretty graphically during the climax of the movie. You’ll know when it’s coming – to me it was probably the most violent/graphic shot in the whole movie, but it was comparatively quick (and extremely well-deserved!). I definitely hid my face for a couple of seconds, but then it was safe again! His shrouded corpse does make a brief appearance at the very end, and they do pull the shroud aside to show what’s beneath, but it’s got plenty of setup and is not used for shock value, so you can turn away before it’s shown on screen for a few moments.
– A whole bunch of people get flung off exploding cars, sucked into storms, shot by a variety of projectiles and have similar action-movie badness happen to them. That is all very cinematic, with not one closeup of the aftermath of someone getting caught under the wheels or similar. Thinking back, there’s actually very little blood on screen – there are a couple of minor injuries that make characters bleed, but other than the notable exception of the climactic fight late in the movie there are no split skulls or bleeding fleshwounds or other things that would have had me retching on the floor…
In conclusion, while I’m sure I’ve forgotten some moments that might be shocking (sorry!) I was very pleasantly surprised by the level of gross violence (as opposed to cinematic violence) and hope that other sensitive souls will find it similarly possible to get through.
The torch thing was not actually for harm: the old guy couldn’t believe he had gone blind with the explosion and kept ordering his henchmen to get the torch closer to his face to check if he could see it, but the henchmen were like ‘um, it’s already in front of your face, sir’. So, no weird self-burning rituals, just a newly blind tyrant in disbelief.
OH AND who on earth is birthing these legions of warboys? Given that, as Mallory correctly noted, there are like 8 fertile women in the Citadel.
This movie left me with SO MANY QUESTIONS.
This was the stretch of realism that bothered me most too! Were we meant to infer they were taken from the population of water beggars at the base of the Citadel?
I think a lot of people can still have kids, but most of them are going to be mutants (half-lives).
I thought that there were only a few fertile really hot women in the Citadel, and the Warboys were the product of all the other fertile women from the crowd who weren’t pretty enough to be in the harem. After all, the crowd doesn’t seem to have many children in it, but they’re all sticking around, so I figured that all the healthy-ish male infants were being swiped for Warboy indoctrination (or given up–at least you know your kid will live a few decades that way!) and so forth.
There were a lot of War Boys. There was also a lot of human breast milk.
Anyone else feel like this was super German Expressionist?
Yes, someone also agrees that this could have almost been a silent movie and lost nothing!
The thing I’m kind of quibbling with is: why waste resources feeding half-life warboys that are too sick to fight half the time and maintaining them with full-life blood transfusions when you can just have those healthy full-lives fight for you instead? Are half-life people easier to brain-wash into your cult because they’re going to die young anyway?
Also, how do people here in the comments know all this about The People Eater and breast milk? Was this part of the earlier movies? Is there supplementary reading that has to be done to fully understand this one?
I’m pretty sure there’s nothing in this movie that you need to have seen the previous movies to know – at least that’s what people are saying. I think they mentioned who they were selling the milk to in the dialogue when they show the breast milk pumping going on, but I’m not sure. I saw this movie twice and the second time I caught WAY more of the dialogue than the first time, but that scene was still too grunty and Australian (sorry Australia) to understand.
One of the cool things about this movie is that they waste no time explaining things to the viewer with redundant dialogue. If two people in the movie both know something, they just talk about it like people who already know something, and leave us, the viewers, to figure out what the heck they’re talking about by inference. 100% show not tell. It’s glorious. But it does require multiple viewings, probably.
this could have almost been a silent movie and lost nothing
I have hearing issues and neglected to get a headset for myself and I was fine loved it more than any movie I’ve seen in a long time possibly ever.
There’s way fewer full-lives than half-lives, so I think that kind of makes sense actually — Max is more valuable as a bloodbag keeping multiple half-life warboys alive and fighting than he would be as a single warboy, even if you managed to brainwash him such that he’d be a useful warboy in the first place. (I know it’s sort of implied that he is Nux’s PERSONAL bloodbag and not shared with other sick warboys, but that’s stupid so I am disregarding it.)
I assumed that he was only being referred to as Nux’s bloodbag because he was at the time? Like, clearly he would get more use than that, but it looks bad when the dude currently attached to your arteries starts murdering people.
(I am so late to this comment party)
re: the silent movie thing, I remembered reading this in some article about the original MM trilogy and found the quote- “Miller has said when he set out to make Mad Max, his goal was to make a modern silent film with sound. “The kind of movie that Hitchcock would say, ‘They didn’t have to read the subtitles in Japan.’” And he totally achieved it!
what, you write about earlier MadMax movies and fail to mention TINA TURNER???
I love this movie and reading reviews of this movie but goddamn, it’s NOT. STEAMPUNK. We have the word “dieselpunk” for a reason.
Um, it’s not Dieselpunk either??? Isn’t Diselpunk mid-century (40s/50s) inspired?
The vast majority of cars featured in Mad Max are actually 40s/early 50s era cars, with a few notable exceptions (Max’s Interceptor for one – harking back to the original trilogy) With that in mind, it isn’t fallacious to label Fury Road as Piecraftian dieselpunk.
I love and respect you but I will never learn to distinguish between the various -punk subcultures; I will sooner learn the difference between a loom and a spinning wheel.
I am SO interested in Furiosa’s backstory, since she appeared to be the only non-breeding woman in Immortan Joe’s employ. How did she stay alive? How did she become an Imperator? Did she plan to escape alone or did she always plan to take the wives with her?
I think my favorite moment was when the rig was stuck and Capable was just like, “Hey look, I tamed a Warboy. He can drive now, right?” And everyone is just like, “…yeah. Sure.” His reveal could have been a whole dramatic to-do, but they were so fucked at that point that letting a guy who’d spent the first half of the movie trying to to kill them drive the War Rig seemed like a decent idea.
I loved this too. They skipped over a LOT of conversation about how trust is earned between people just because that is how fucked they were. Same with Max! We went from “I’m going to hold this gun on you” to “Here, drive the fucking tank” in the space of about 10 minutes, because either you turn out to be all right and we might possibly live, or you turn out to be an asshole and we die, but if I don’t trust you to do something we definitely for-suresies die.
Apparently part of the back story is that she’s infertile, and so isn’t even looked upon as a woman anymore, which is how she was able to become a war rig driver.
It is mostly violent in terms of cars smashing into each other and eye-popping HOW DID ANYONE LIVE THROUGH THAT stunts. There isn’t all that much actual person-on-person combat or even all that much blood. And stuff blows up real good, too.
ETA: Reply system, why won’t you put my comment as a reply to Cleo like I meant it to be?
Just saw it last night.
I’ve been laughing for straight on about five solid minutes at, “that dude was really passionate about doom metal.”
Also, one wording quibble. That guitar EJACULATED flame. Spit just isn’t good enough.
The funny thing about our current oil economy is that we use petroleum for fuel not because it is rare, but because it is so abundant. It only gets expensive because there are so many people in the world and we all use petroleum. Also, due to labor and extraction costs, drilling in some places only makes sense once prices hit a certain level. But say you cut a few billion people out of the population, demand will plummet yet fuels supplies will remain the same. There would be way more fuel per person, especially given that most folks won’t drive around for daily commutes, there’s no more commercial vehicles or airplanes, etc.
Even if you cut out the worldwide drilling and refining infrastructure, there’s currently enough fuel in storage around the world to keep the economy humming for a bit in the case of interrupted supplies. And even after that, maybe it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to say that humanity could have established some small-scale infrastructure even in the post-apocalyptic Mad Max. Shell got its start in the 19th century setting up drilling and refining operations in the middle of the Sumatran jungle, which was pretty darn deadly for Europeans.
I have guesses on some of these!
The wastefulness – I got the impression this was like “See these fucking men? This is how we wound up in a fucking wasteland, they aren’t even TRYING to sustain life.” And then the rest on the road was just, hey, we trying to survive here.
The harem – There were actually a lot of women in the crowd of people at the base of the cliff! Seems Joe just picks out the prettiest ones and uses them in his harem. As to how Charlize never became one of them, I think someone has a good explanation above.
Turning back – I read a Wired interview with the director where he said he has two more stories to tell all ready to go if this one does well. Five bucks says Max’s next two adventures involve finding some kind of promised land. Which is why we couldn’t find it NOW, because then we wouldn’t have anywhere to go in the next two movies.
I think what you’re missing here with the Doof Wagon is that, in a society built almost ENTIRELY on the very idea of toxic masculinity, of COURSE they would piss away life-changing amounts of precious gasoline just to have some dude with a flame-throwing electric guitar and his band of totally sick backup drummers in the war party, dude.
I just read in an interview that the Doof Warrior’s backstory is that he was a music prodigy whose mother was beheaded in front of him. He was fount by Immortan Joe, who raised him to be his “drummer boy” who rallies the troops. His mask is his mother’s face.
Also, he worked down in the mines where it didn’t matter, and was even an asset, that he was blind, and he got scooped up by Immortan Joe when his sick guitar playing was overheard.
I can’t find any sources to back up my theory, of course, but did anybody else read the mouth-spraying as a nod to the ancient warriors who would spray foam on their mouths to look rabid in battle? Vikings maybe…? I swear I read this once somewhere. And of course it makes sense that in the post-apocalyptic speed-freak future the foam would be replaced by chrome spraypaint.
Since Valhalla is also from Norse mythology, this would make sense.
Imperator Furiosa is the post-apocalyptic Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSuat6MSwT4
The Internet has got us covered, friends.
Marry me.
Can someone explain to me the convo where Max asks Furiousa if she’s done this before and she says Yes but her next line about finally driving a war rig and maybe never having the chance to do this again makes it seem like, in fact, no she has never liberated a harem before?
I thought it was the chance to try to escape and make a run for it. Like she had planned it before or made at least part of the run before.
Yeah that confused me too! What was she saying that she’d done before- drive a war rig? Liberate a harem? Something else?
I thought that “this” was finding the way back to “the green place”. Since she was snatched from there, I thought that she saw what a dire fate she faced at the Citadel and clawed her way up into a position of respect and stood on a lot of people to become an Imperator. This possibly includes returning to her home as part of a raiding party to take more captives, which is why she seeks redemption by freeing the wives.
I thought ‘I’ve done this before’ referred to ‘I betrayed/set up against each other several employers before this’, not ‘I took a bunch of people on the road to freedom with me several times’. I thought it was implied in the way she interacts with the wives that she is not used to being in the position of helper.
She’s driven a war rig before,but never mutinied.
Just as a general comment, I have been waiting with bated breath for there to be a Toast Conversation about Mad Max and now it is here! I knew you wouldn’t fail me and it is everything I had hoped
Can we also talk about how perfect the part was when Max was trying to shoot and then he just straight up unquestioningly handed the gun over to Furiosa without her even asking AND THEN served as a human armrest while she casually blew away the bullet guy?? And the fact that there were a bunch of 70-year old women who got to be total motorcycle badasses and do their own stunts? And like, as someone else said, how this was a non-stop thrill ride action movie with 70’s ecofeminist ideals at its heart as well as absolutely RIDICULOUS world-building and details like a dude with a flame-guitar on a giant bungee cord who is named the Doof Warrior? (and like, also the phenomenon of Tom Hardy’s super beautiful lips is a thing, too, but that’s secondary). Sorry I am so excited! This movie is like everything my nerdy little heart needs to survive
Yes yes! I think the gun shoulder bit was my favorite scene. SO satisfying.
“has there ever been, by the way, a post apocalyptic movie, with a legend of a green or a safe place, where the safe place turned out to be real?”
Waterworld!! And it’s great because while in most of these I feel like they really want the viewer to believe in this place, Waterworld makes it seem like there’s no chance the land is real. What a good movie.
THANK YOU! People think I’m crazy when I say that Waterworld is a good movie!
Zoe Kravitz’s character is named TOAST THE KNOWING, y’all.
The 1986 classic post-apocalyptic movie Solarbabies, starring Jamie Gertz, Jason Patrick, and Lukas Haas, had an actual oasis. And they were all on roller skates the entire time. TOP THAT.
And also……Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome has an actual oasis too.
OMG! Someone else has seen Solarbabies! I saw it with my bad movie club in college and it is so delightfully Bad (except for the baby dude from Heroes pretending to be Native American. Because Indians and nature and the apocalypse and stuff)
If Solarbabies hadn’t been on cable recently, I would have though that I had hallucinated seeing it in the 80s.
Didn’t it also have one of the dudes from 21 Jump Street? (from the 80s, not the movies)
When I saw this movie with Boyfriend, MD, he punched me in the arm, he was so jazzed when they punctured Charlize’s side. It’s how you can tell that George Miller was a doctor before he made the first movie.
FIRST OFF
THE GUITAR MAN IS “THE DOOF WARRIOR” AND HIS SOUNDCLASH RIG IS “THE DOOFWAGON” PLEASE RESPECT OTHER CULTURES
SECOND OFF
THE LITTLE DUDE IS CLEARLY GOING TO BE THE NEW DOOF
NEW EGALITARIAN UTOPIAS STILL NEED POWER CHORDS PLAYED AS LOUD AS POSSIBLE AT ALL HOURS OF THE DAY
as for post-apoc fiction in which the oasis is real… lord forgive them for how quickly they forget Waterworld
My favorite two theories:
1. Max isn’t the original character; it’s been so long since the events of the first movie (where there’s still intact cities and a police force) that Mad Max is a sort of outback legend and Tom Hardy’s character assumes the identity after he’s been alone so long he’s forgotten his own name.
2. This isn’t after the apocalypse; this is what happens when you run out of gas in the outback, today.
Won’t work, sadly – He’s flashing back to the original Mad Max’s wife and child.
I figure this is one of a collection of “Mad Max Events,” in no particular chronolgical order; Max is the roaming icon of story-telling. When Max shows up, some shit’s going down… and when it’s done going down, Max fades away to go fuck-up someone else’s peace and quiet.
In other words: When you see Max show up, give him supplies and show him the road as quickly and gently as you can – Or a thundering horde of dieselpunk assholes are going to show up and have a off-road kettledrum-and-fire-ejaculating-guitar post-apocalyptic Burning Man party all over your hard-won sanctuary.
I don’t know what to say other than this is brilliant and hilarious. Thanks!
I've always been terrible at picking up subtle details in narratives — I latch on to one thread or character or event and miss a lot of details about everything else. Like, my boyfriend and I will talk Game of Thrones and I'm like, "Am I even reading the same books? I didn't see any of that." TL;DR: I am ultra impressed at your attention to detail, and also a bit envious. 😀
Also, !!!!!!!!!!. To the Amazon!
Agreed. That was easily my favorite part–and again, the fact that she didn't have to bully him into it or even have to ask. There is no time for anyone on the War Rig to get hung up about the small stuff; if you can do the thing that will help us survive, then please do the thing. Btw, have you guys seen the "Hey Girl" Mad Max memes going around? Because they make me smile so much…
Chicken Run
Damnation Alley, ca. 1978. The heroes fight off giant cockroaches to get to Albany, NY, because it's the only green place they know of. (And it is!)
This post and comments are just the gifts that keep on giving. Thank you lord Toast.
This post and comments are just the gifts that keep on giving. Thank you lord Toast.
I called him Steve-O throughout.
I knew, can't remember from what. I was v. smug in my knowledge, too.
Excellent book. You'll be sure you have all the symptoms,even if you've never had family with congenital insomnia or eaten human brains.
She's driven a war rig before,but never mutinied.