Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
Immortan Joe: You will ride eternal, shiny and chrome.
Rock Rider Chief: You said, “A few vehicles in pursuit.
Maybe.” We count three war parties!
Furiosa: Yeah, well, I got unlucky. Let’s do this!

It’s been while since I’ve posted anything new, but Tyler
has convinced me that I should start up again, and that I should start with my
new obsession: Mad Max: Fury Road.
I should
start by admitting that I had seen some of Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome,
and wasn’t especially into them –they were strange and bizarre, and I just
didn’t
get them.
Well, Fury Road is also strange and bizarre,
but this time I get it.
It’s the best movie I’ve seen all year, and probably one my
favorites ever. I must confess that the
only reason I was initially interested in seeing it was because Charlize was in
it, and I liked her in Monster and Snow White and the Huntsman. When Tyler and I finished watching it, he
said that he liked it, and when I agreed, he thought I was joking, and I can
see why he would think that: I didn’t like the originals (he did), I don’t like
car-chase movies, it’s bizarre…but I loved it.

The plot (spoilers ahead) is that in a post-apocalyptic
world, Immortan Joe is a tyrant who controls access to the only major source of
water in the wasteland, at a place called The Citadel (He splashes it down on the
heads of his people periodically, which feels like a poor method of
distribution, but is definitely dramatic, telling them, “Do not, my friends,
become addicted to water. It will take hold of you, and you will resent its
absence.”).
Joe has five wives –breeders
he is hoping will bear him a healthy son and heir. The women are his prisoners and want
desperately to escape. Imperator
Furiosa, one of his top commanders, busts them out, concealing them in her war
rig when she is supposed to be going on a supply run. When Joe figures this out, he and his War
Boys (who worship him as a God) pursue her to get them back. Max has been captured and is being used as a
blood-bag (a blood donor for the sickly War Boys, as he is a universal donor),
and ends up strapped to the front of a vehicle belonging to Nux (one of the War
Boys) as he joins the pursuit (“If I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die historic on the
Fury Road.”). There is a great moment
where Nux pulls alongside Furiosa, and she, while in the middle of this flight
for her life, looks over and sees Max strapped to the front of the car. She has
a quizzical look on her face, like, “Huh.
Well, that’s new.” And he glares
back, like, “Shut up.”

The script is only like three pages long, which shocked me,
because it doesn’t feel that way. The
characters express so much with gestures and facial expressions. In particular, I do not know how Charlize
shows such an array of emotion with her face.
I was in awe.

For me, the best part of the movie is Furiosa.
Her character is so interesting and cool that
I was blown away.
She has buzzed hair,
one arm and the coolest prosthetic arm ever (just one of the many small details
that are everywhere is that you can see she keeps a wrench in her robotic arm),
and she smears grease on her forehead as war paint.
There’s a point where, after her scuffle with
Max, the grease has come off, and she takes a second to grab some more and
smear it on –just another small thing that really adds so much.
On a shallow note, I love her outfit.
She wears the best pants ever (I want a
pair).
I noticed instantly, of course,
that Joe wears a massive skull codpiece.
It took me longer to realize that Furiosa also wears a crotch skull –what woman does that?
I love
it.

The first thing I really enjoyed about the movie was watching
Furiosa interact with her men.
Her lead
War Boy, Ace, tries checking in with her to see why they are going off route,
and she just gives him a scathing look like he is totally pestering her with
stupid questions.
She finally vaguely
says “We’re heading east,” and he accepts that, no more questions.
On a side note, he is climbing around the rig
like a monkey, hanging off the outside of her door when he speaks to her, which
is great.
They all seem quite able to
climb around atop/beneath the vehicles no problem.
At one point, Furiosa does repairs on the rig
while it is motion, just hanging from the bottom, easy peasy.
I need to learn to do that.
Probably not safe, but it looks so badass
that it’s worth it.
 |
Repairs |
 |
A Buzzard vehicle. |
When Buzzards appear
to attack the rig (they drive fantastic spikey cars –actually, all the cars in
the movie make cars today look stupid and boring), she says they’ll just keep
going and fight them off themselves, no need to turn back and meet up with the
pursuing vehicles (her men have not yet realized that she has gone rogue), and
says, “No.
We’re good.
We fang it!”
The slang is altogether fabulous (“Medicore!”).
Immortan Joe has called for backup from the
Bullet Farm and Gas Town, and P.S. the flares he uses look so cool (different
colors against the brown/red background of the waste) –the whole film is a
visual treat; beautiful, with tons of details making it a feast for the eyes,
everything interesting and unusual.
 |
"Oh, what a day! What a lovely day!" |
Ace
finally figures out something is wrong when Furiosa turns them into a massive
dust storm (“What have you done? What have you done?”), and her men turn on
her.
Nux pursues her into the dust storm
(“I am the man who grabs the sun…riding to Valhalla! Witness me, Blood Bag!
Witness!”) and crashes when Max subverts his attempt to suicide-bomb the rig
with his car kamikaze-style.
End
scene.
The dust storm is so frickin
awesome I can’t even describe it.
Seeing
it in the theatre, the scene ends and you just go “WOW.”
Max wakes up still chained to Nux, who is unconscious, and
he sees the war rig stopped ahead.
He
approaches, and in a wonderfully comedic moment, is surprised to see five
gorgeous women washing themselves off in the desert while Furiosa does repairs
–clearly the last thing he expected to find.
 |
"You're dead." "WTF?"
"You tricked me." "Now I'm mad." |
Max quickly sizes Furiosa up as the dangerous one, and points his (useless,
but no one else knows it) gun at her, instructing the Dag (one of the wives) to
use the bolt cutters to cut the chain connecting him to Nux.
While the Dag attempts to comply, you can see
Furiosa watching him like a hawk, itching for the moment she can strike.
The second he glances away, BOOM, she has
closed the distance at a sprint and tackled him.
She gets the gun, pulls the trigger, and
nothing.
The look on her face when she
realizes that the gun doesn’t work is great –surprise, annoyance, anger.

Then begins a major scuffle between the two
leads.
The wives are trying to help, Nux
has woken up and is trying to assist Max, and Max eventually gets the upper
hand after a wonderfully choreographed fight.
Furiosa is so great in this scene.
Actually, great acting all around (Max, Nux, the wives, Joe, everyone).
You can see her frustration and desperation
when he finally pins her.
When he fires
bullets into the ground by her head to get her to stop struggling, she grimaces,
because she knows he might be about to kill her.
At the same time, she can hear the music from
Joe’s convoy (played by the guitar/flame-thrower playing Doof Warrior), and you
can see her calculating how close they are getting.
The wives are desperate to help (not useless
damsels, but helpful women, though not warriors like Furiosa, and clearly
fearful of Max, as he does look and seem quite feral).
Losing her would mean losing their best
chance of making it to safety (to the Green Place she was kidnapped from as a
child).
Nux is delighted that Max has
captured Furiosa alive (“Glory me, Blood Bag. We snagged her alive. He’s going
to shred her. Shred her!”), and that they can return the wives and get rewards,
but Max is not interested –he just wants to get away.

Nux: Oh, look at that. So shiny, so chrome. He’s gonna be so
grateful. We could ask for anything. I wanna drive the War Rig. What are you
going to ask for?
Max: That’s my jacket! [Taking the jacket Nux is wearing]
Nux: Sure. You can ask for more than a jacket.
When Furiosa realizes that Max neither intends to shoot her
or turn her in to Joe, you can see her mind working, and she quickly and
cleverly changes tactics, trying to convince him to let them all back onto the
rig with him. Because she has set a kill
switch in the rig, he eventually agrees (Very practical of her. If I put a passcode on my phone, it makes
sense she would put one on her War Rig.
Sensible):
Furiosa: Kill switches. I set the sequence myself. This Rig
goes nowhere without me.
Max: You can get in.
Furiosa: Not without them.
Max: So we wait.

Furiosa: You’re relying on the gratitude of a very bad man.
You’ve already damaged one of his wives; how grateful do you think he’s gonna
be? You’re sitting on 2,000 horsepower of nitro-boosted war machine. I’d say
you got about a five-minute head start. You want that thing [a metal mask] off
your face?
Let’s go.
Seeing the trust develop between the two out of necessity is
great. Initially, he is holding her at
gun point, and collects all of her many weapons from the front of the rig (minus
one knife that he misses). Quickly,
however, she is forced to put her trust in him by giving him kill switch, knowing
he may need to drive the rig (Furiosa: Hey. What’s your name? What do I call
you? Max: Does it matter? Furiosa: Fine. When I yell “Fool,” you drive
out of here as fast as you can.), and he ultimately reciprocates by giving her
guns back when they are attacked. Their
gun play as they flee is perfectly coordinated, and, I’ll say it, totally
sexy. He’s tossing her guns, shooting
between her legs while she shoots out the top of the rig. Terrific stuff.

There’s not much conversation between them, but Furiosa does
tell Max at one point that she is seeking redemption, and you realize that she
must have done some pretty bad things to rise so high in Joe’s army.
She had developed a bond with the five women,
and is determined to get herself and the wives to safety.
She is very protective of them.
When the Bullet Farmer begins firing wildly
at them (originally it’s “Just one angry shot for Furiosa!” so as not to risk
damaging the wives, but when she blinds him, he goes berserk), she shields one
of the wives with her own body, before getting them to safety.
Speaking of blinding the Bullet Farmer, I
loved when Max gave her the gun to make that shot.
There are three bullets left, he misses with
the first two shots, and she moves behind him, and is clearly itching for the gun,
as she is a very good shot.

His face shows
he is reluctant to give up the gun, as I don’t think he is accustomed to
accepting help, but he ultimately hands over the weapon, and she uses his
shoulder to steady the gun and make the shot.
All this without words between them!

Nux becomes a main character after failing Joe one too many
times and becoming despondent.
He forms
a bit of a relationship with one of the wives, Capable, who is very sweet to
him, and joins up with their little gang.
I like that he seems like just one of the War Boys, and then we get to
know him and he becomes a great character –it brings to the forefront that all
of the other War Boys probably have interesting backstories and are real people
too, not just disposable battle fodder for Joe.


When they reach Furiosa’s former tribe, the Many Mothers,
she seems a little awkward and out of practice at being part of the tribe, but is
clearly emotional and happy to have found them.
When she finds out that only a handful of them are left, and that the
Green Place is poisoned and now a swamp, she despairs –the hope she has been
holding onto for so long seems dashed.
More amazing acting.
After
initially saying he’s going to go his own way, Max decides to help them form a
plan to go back from whence they came and take Joe’s Citadel while it’s
undefended.
“It’ll be a hard day,” is
the understatement of the century.
The
Many Mothers (some of them quite grizzled, but still tough, ballsy, and awesome
with guns) join them.
I should take a
minute to mention that I really do think that this is, if not actually a
feminist action movie per say, definitely a female-friendly action movie.
It’s edited by a woman, and I can see that
she focused a lot on expressions, reactions –not just things blowing up, but
the people involved.
The female characters
(and there are many) are all unique and interesting, and have different
strengths and weaknesses.
The Splendid Angharad
is the leader of the wives, and even Furiosa listens to her when she tells her
not to kill Nux (“No unnecessary killing!” “This War Boy wants me dead!” “We
agreed! He’s kamakrazee! He’s just a kid at the end of his half-life.”), but
when Furiosa asks her to reload her weapon, it’s Toast the Knowing who steps
in.
Cheedo the Fragile, who appears the
most fearful, ultimately helps Furiosa by cleverly getting Rictus Erectus (that
name!) to bring her to Joe’s vehicle where she is able to help Furiosa climb
aboard.
Capable is gutsy, and shows
great compassion.
The Dag is a bit
peculiar, but quite funny.
Basically,
the female characters are complicated and fleshed out (not
one-dimensional).
It’s an action movie that
appeals to women as well as men.
Never
have I enjoyed car chases this much!
The final car chase back to The Citadel really shows how
much Furiosa and Max have come to care about each other in their own way, and
it’s pretty much all told with their eyes.
You see, when he’s in danger, the concern she feels written on her face,
and she saves his life multiple times.
After Max falls off of the rig, she catches him and hangs on, even when
she is stabbed.
When he discovers that
she’s hurt badly, you can see how desperate he is to get back to the rig and
help, though that’s easier said than done when Polecats keep plucking you away
(the stunts are amazing by the way, and I love that they are practical stunts,
not so reliant on CGI –I am not a big fan of green screen), and you have a
guitar that spits flames in your way.

Furiosa is in bad shape after being stabbed –not like in
some movies where the protagonist gets shot many times and is still fine.
She is in trouble and weakening fast, but
gives the wheel to Nux so that she can go after Joe.
I love that she takes Joe down herself, and
not in a big brawl, but with a quick growl (“Remember me?”) and a thrust of his
mask into the wheels, which tears off his face (not especially gory, despite
how it sounds –the movie is rated R, but really there’s no language, barely any
nudity (from a distance and obscured), and not much gore –though they do have
women they milk, which is creepy as hell).
Furiosa is badly hurt, and Max grabs her and helps her up,
then saves her life.
It’s super sweet,
because you can see that he has really connected with other people at last,
despite how hard he tries to avoid it, and that he cares about Furiosa.
Not enough to stay, of course.
He is still off like a shot after seeing them
back to the Citadel, but still.
I wish
he’d stayed, but Tyler assures me that that’s not who he is.
Awesome awesome awesome.
A fantastic movie. I have already
pre-ordered it on itunes so that I can get it August 11th (then I
can get the DVD with special features on September 1st), but that
feels so far away!
I would love so much to see another movie with Furiosa in it,
but it sounds like Charlize doesn’t want to do another one. Maybe now that the movie has made so much money
they can lure her back at some point with a hefty pay day, but I’m not getting
my hopes up. Tyler says they can make a
different cool female character, but I’m stubborn –I like Furiosa!
I’m sure there is so much more I could say, but this is
pretty long now. I hope Tyler will chime
in with his thoughts.