I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve watched Fury Road by now, but there’s always a few random things I notice or focus on more than the last time around. This time it was:
1. The way the exposed pipes on the front of the Gigahorse look like the tubing on Immortan Joe’s mask.
2. Slit saying “He was scanning the horizon” always always sounds like a Monty Python line to me. There’s just such a specificity to it that it makes me laugh every time.
3. The first glance between Furiosa and Max when he’s strapped to Nux’s car. Furiosa’s expression is not super easy to read here, but I think there’s a tiny flash of pity. Not like she’s about to help him–she’s got her own problems–but at least a genuine, “sucks to be you.”
4. The way the movie unites Max and Furiosa in action before they’ve ever interacted. They both almost get decapitated by the Buzzard buzzsaw and both have a moment when they breathe a sigh of relief, one right after the other, after it’s taken out of commission.
5. The transitions between diegetic and non-diegetic sound in this movie are siiiiick. The one I’m thinking of is the way the hollow bangs of Furiosa knocking sand off the Rig become part of the soundtrack as Max approaches the Rig.
6. When Max first rolls up to the Rig, Furiosa isn’t automatically hostile. Her first expression is wary and maybe a little curious? Even when he’s pointing the gun at her.
She only shifts into kill mode after he threatens Angharad with the gun.
7. Speaking of which…I can’t believe I never put this together before, but Max is basically using Angharad as a human shield when he’s drinking the water, making her stand between him and Furiosa with the gun pointed at her. Another instance of the taken by force/willingly given pattern.
8. “I saw it all. My own bloodbag, driving the Rig that killed her.” I find all the different interpretations of Angharad’s fall off the Rig fascinating. It’s such an important moment in the story, but there’s so much ambiguity in it. Of course Nux wouldn’t think to blame Joe for any of this, but he doesn’t even seem to particularly blame Max–he doesn’t show any hostility toward him at any point later. It’s more like he blames the machine, specifically, for failing her.
9. It’s impossible to pick a favorite action sequence in Fury Road but the nighttime stuff in the bog has a particular sense of terror to it. We know exactly how pissed Joe is now that Angharad’s baby is dead; the Bullet Farmer is coming for them and they keep. getting. stuck. It’s the most horror-like of all the sequences and it’s totally appropriate that it takes place at night.
It’s also the only time we see anyone firing any kind of rockets or mortars or really using any kind of long-range weapon (other than Furiosa’s sniper shots, which unsurprisingly also factor into this scene). Pretty much all the other weapons in the movie are things that you have to be close enough to your target to see them before you can fire. The mortar rounds are very effective as a scary escalation at a point when our protagonists already seem completely fucked.
10. Meeting the Vuvalini. The scream in the desert is the climax of the scene, but the thing that always gets me in the feels is moment after, “I can’t wait for them to see it.” “See what?” “Home.” There’s just this long beat of silence and you think oh no.
11. The tiny little crack in Max’s voice on “…you’ll go insane.” Just kill me now.
All of this very much (god, the crack in his voice just fucKING KILLS ME), but particularly the one about Nux’s perspective on Angharad’s death–that he almost seems to blame the War Rig rather than Max (who was driving) or even Furiosa (who’s really at the center of this whole thing). I’ve kind of abstractly toyed with the thought before that the War Boys seem to consider cars/vehicles a nigh-living force in their world, and I’ve had a lot of trouble putting it into words but I’m going to give it a shot.
In their world, the War Boys seem to view themselves as one half of Joe’s army: the half with thumbs, the half that drives. The other half, the sacred half, is the V8 engine, the car itself that they drive. Nux is VERY protective of his position as driver of his particular car, both because of the status it affords him (obviously) and maybe because he considers the car…almost an ally? A comrade in arms? It would make sense, given the society that Joe sets up. So maybe he does blame the War Rig. Maybe there’s a part of Nux–a part that he knows is objectively foolish because he’s a blackthumb, he knows that cars don’t have thoughts or wills of their own, but a part that persists nonetheless–that thinks quietly that Furiosa betrayed them all and somehow convinced the War Rig to side with her. The great and beautiful creation of Immortan Joe, THE War Rig, betraying him (and isn’t Furiosa a great and beautiful creation of Joe too, from that angle, all the parts ripped to pieces and put back together as something dangerous and unstoppable that he does not control nearly as much as he might have imagined?)
I was going to be like “an AU where all Leia writes all her official dispatched he exact same way that Carrie Fisher tweets,” except I think we all know in our heart of hearts that this is in fact canon, and the first thing you learn in the Resistance is a basic fluency in emoji
One time the First Order manages to intercept a few official communiques and they’re all like “wtf is this code” while Kylo Ren is standing to the side just dying inside because MOM GOD THIS IS SO EMBARRASSING
darth vader would never write like this
THIS IS THE MOST VITALLY IMPORTANT THING I HAVE BEHELD OH MY GOD
if u donuts wanna start shipping new star wars characters then be my fucking guest but mama din’t raise no fool. im waitin til i know who related to who so i don’t have to spend the next ten years in the shower praying for forgiveness. fool me once, george lucas.
It always pisses me off whenever fic writers forget that Steve Rogers also had a shit-ton of Bad Things to happen to him or at least marginalize it because Bucky had it worse.
Look, I’m not arguing that it isn’t true. Bucky’s definitely had the worst end of the whole deal so this isn’t and this shouldn’t be a contest in which, “Your pain and experience is worse, so you should get help and we’ll just ignore the other guy.”
Consider the shit Steve’s gone through:
a. Has PTSD. Possible suicidal tendencies. Depression.
b. Has no other family or relatives to go home to - by the time Steve wakes up, any possible support system he might have had is long gone. The Commandos are either dead or too old. Peggy Carter is the same. Bucky, of course, is out of the picture. Steve has never come home from his war. Never.
c. Was apparently isolated by SHIELD in the first few days of his awakening and then pretty much manipulated into joining the group. Also, the first thing SHIELD does to him is lie. Nick Fury also lied to him about Phase 2 and while I don’t doubt Fury’s got better intentions than someone like Alexander Pierce…. that is not a good way to treat a man who’s led covert ops and been around spies in freakin’ World War II.
d. SHIELD is actually HYDRA and has been torturing and brainwashing and fucking over Steve’s Best Friend and Only Family. So basically, Steve died for nothing.
e. The entirety of the whole Winter Soldier mess.
f. Everything special about you came from a bottle. I honestly think those words still haunt Steve, especially in the wake of the whole Winter Soldier shitstorm.
g. Is still expected to be Captain America, beacon of hope and justice and right and he still pushes on, even as he deals with a world that’s vastly different from what he knows, with people who constantly remind him that he’s out of touch and out of sync, even if it’s in a good-natured, teasing way, even as he comes to grips with the fact that Bucky, his best friend, will never be the man he’s known and the fact that he should have jumped after his friend on the train, even as Bucky, with his memory all FUBAR’d, jumped after him on the helicarrier. TL;DR - Steve deals with a poison stew of grief and guilt and anger on a daily basis.
Seriously, the only one I’ve seen who pretty much just comes close to understanding the crap he’s gone through is Sam Wilson. Who gets that it’s not a contest of who got the worst experience - just recognizes that Steve is also in pain and hurting and shouldn’t be shuffled aside and told to “walk it off” because Bucky is the tortured POW, not him. TL;DR: Steve Rogers also needs a hug. A LOT of hugs. A LOT of kindness and understanding. Especially from the people who are supposed to be his friends.
