Key frames from the War Rig Crash Scene (requested by ourfuriosa) showing that Nux is safely inside the very robust cab of the Rig and Rictus gets thrown off the bonnet and goes under the truck as it flips (probably getting crushed).
Sorry about my shocking photoshopping just wanted to be quick!
I’m in love with you people for going through this movie carefully and proving that people totally survived.
And by “aesthetic” I mean “what you need to wear to survive in a brutal post-apocalyptic wasteland”.
1. MATERIAL
Contemporary retailers are full of lightweight knits and wafting synthetics. Be assured that these materials would not still be around 45 years after the end of civilization–they would fall apart under heavy wear.
The Vuvalini favor thicker, durable fabric, such as military-weight canvas for their topmost, protective layers. In some cases their sleeves appear to be sweatshirt-style jersey.
If you’re cosplaying, it will take a lot of wear and/or distressing to get new fabric to drape this way. One alternative is linen, which is suitably durable, but much less densely woven than most of the fabric onscreen. It will hang nicely right off the rack, and keep you cool. Plus it’s regaining enough popularity in more interesting cuts than the traditional tropical suit that you might even be able to find something Vuvalini-ready in a discount store.
Jeans will work for Vuvalini pants, provided they are adequately distressed. Unnamed Vuvalini #4 wears cargo pants.
Given that there have probably been no large animals in the Wasteland for some decades, they use very little leather. The pieces we do see are ragged edge cuts, like on the Valkyrie.
One of the cleaner exceptions is Unnamed Vuvalini #4′s cowl:
The top portion resembles an aviator cap, but it bells out and might even be attached to the part that covers her shoulders.
There’s also Keeper’s suede vest:
By the same token there is very little wool, which is a shame because it regulates body temperature and keeps you quite cool once you sweat through it. It’s also easy to repair… provided you have more wool. I’ve only spotted it on Unnamed Vuvalini #2:
And the vest they gave Cheedo.
2. LAYERS
Layers, layers, layers!
The least clothed we ever see one of the Vuvalini is Valkyrie at the tower; otherwise they’re positively bundled. They are all about coverage and protection, which adds up to probably at least three layers on each of them. A few of them do wear clearly detachable sleeves.
3. ZIPPERS = NO. BUCKLES = YES!
Sand and zippers don’t mix. I haven’t spotted a single visible zipper on the Vuvalini. Instead, there are loads of buckles.
So if nothing else, wear multiple belts over your top layer. Which brings us to…
4. ACCESSORIES
Nearly everything the Vuvalini wear is in drab earthtones, but they squeeze in swatches of bright color and patterns in their accessories, like the woven pieces at UV4′s hips, Maadi’s headband, and UV3′s and Keeper’s scarves. And of course, the bikes–so much brocade! If you have a scrap of cloth that makes it look like your first priority after the fall of civilization was looting an antique store, find a way to attach it to you. Then go roll in the dirt.
Almost nothing the Vuvalini wear seems to be purely decorative; even UV4′s necklace looks like it might double as a flask. And of course any pieces would be handmade of readily available materials, or possibly passed down from one generation to the next. When in doubt, if your item would be significant to your character, wear it.
Get ye some goggles! I daresay no Mad Max cosplay is complete without a pair. They’re not limited to the Vuvalini either:
If you can’t find any you like for cheap, look for spice tins with glass lids (check World Market if you have one near you). Punch a hole in the side of each lid, wire them together, and wrap the whole shebang in leather.
Everyone also has some form of wrist guard or wrapping. The Valkyrie has one full glove, probably for the purpose of doing zany shit like this:
Their boots are all calf-high, or else augmented with spats.
5. MODIFY EVERYTHING
Seriously, everything. These ladies have been living in the desert for years, and they have modified and repaired their clothes numerous times. Check out the side panel on UV4′s vest:
The only visibly whole items they have were clearly packed away for a long time before they gave them to the Sisters:
There are lots of ways to modify store-bought items–look up creative mending to get ideas.
And one more resource: this link has simple, easy-to-modify patterns for a leather cowl and spats!
But lets get to the most controversial scene in Mad Max in terms of feminist theory, the infamous Water scene. I’ve been frankly putting this off because if you get into the larger visual, narrative, and thematic context of this scene, this post will never end. This is even before delving into the the meta-context of genre and tropes. So I’ve decided to narrow the scope of this post down as far as I can in terms of pure composition and practical concerns. However, if you have meta on these topics, please let me know by ask or via reblog and I will add as a footnote below the cut-tag.
Let me first point out though that we have spent the few minutes prior to this scene with Max waking up from the sandstorm (having flashbacks), getting freaked out by the needle in his skin, and about to shoot a man’s wrist off to get free.
He then has another flashback, notice the sound effect, but the flashback is triggered by a very specific thing:
Girl’s voices. Like Glory. Like, say, voices he finds when he turns around the corner, of the Wives:
A note on why I use both Golden Rule and Rule of Thirds: The Golden Rule, while is more effective/precise is ridiculously hard to eyeball on-the-go and while filming moving images. Rule of Thirds is often ‘good enough.’ Film as a medium is not photography or painting, it’s a medium intent on capturing moving objects, and sometimes the demands of the shoot means that you end up with the ‘best try,’ especially if it’s an action shot containing either internal or external movement (ie. either in-camera objects moving or the view itself moving). What is more likely to be specifically composed are still shots, wide shots, or the beginning/ends of shots/pans.
Which you can see here. Look at how BOTH the Rule of Thirds and Golden Rule lines up with the landforms at the horizon. Look at how precisely the War Rig lands on the major diagonal.
Now look at what happens when the camera lands in it’s final position and the Wives come into focus:
Nothing lands on any of the 8 major sweetspots (the crosshairs of the Golden or the Third. The Dag’s back bent over the boltcutters is centerframed. And check out what falls on the horitzonal Golden:
The water. Angharad is bent over and covering her face, Toast’s head is blocking Capable’s chest. Look at that space between the vertical Third. It’s the chastity belt.
I am telling you right now that it would be easy as pie to take that belt and put it past the lower third where it wouldn’t be seen or to the far left. If they really hated it they could have told the people who erase wires in visual fx to erase the belts or to move them. It’s position is not an accident.
For some comparison here is some concept art of the scene (found in The Art of Mad Max Fury Road):
Even if they were more clothed, look at how more objectifying their poses are, how the butts are subtly (or not subtly) turned towards the viewer instead of slightly away from our gaze (compare Toast and Angharad to the two wives on the right in the art) and how Furiosa was supposed to have been freeing them, instead of the wives freeing themselves.
Here’s the full picture:
Notice the absence of the belts and the placement of the hose. Look at how Furiosa and the gun are on the Golden.
Let’s go further into the movie itself however. (warning, lots of pictures)
Benefits of having OTPS that can double as brOTP:
Always together (platonic or romantic)
Nobody can deny they aren’t important to each other
Their fucking friendships are a precious thing
A good relationship
Communication comes relatively easy
Simple things can’t shake their unbreakable bro-ship
Cons:
Did you mean MAX ROCKATANSKY AND IMPERATOR FURIOSA.
Closure, yes. Logically I know the religion of the Citadel can’t be based on American white Evangelicism because of little details like it taking place in Australia, but comparing “Witness me/I live, I die, I live again” vs this gesture I was reminded of nothing so much as Slacktivist’s commentary on Rapture theology. It’s not about dying, it’s about evading or bypassing death. Same with Valhalla. It’s not about dying in glory but instead about being escorted to the gates (pearly or chrome as it were) and living forever.
This hand-to-heart gesture is not about living forever. It’s about accepting death, accepting its inevitability and absoluteness. And the grief that comes with that.
I apologize for coming into this thoughtful conversation with only one cry to shout but: CHARLIZE THERONS’S EYES!
/stomps around, flailing arms excitedly/ There’s so much in them in this movie. She does so much work with her gorgeous, amazing, talented, brilliant eyes and face.
Her acting here absolutely blew me away. You know without words that this is the first time she’s been able to grieve her mother. You know it in your bones. Just like you know holding Vaylkie in the Vuvalini embrace was like being able to breathe for the first time in decades for her.
And then when she learns that the Green Place is gone, spoiled and ruined…
I legit tear up remembering it.
The thing about Furiosa is that she is a woman of strength but not a Strong Female Character. Her strength is equal to her vulnerability. Her rage is equal to her love, it exists because of her love. Tears come to her eyes more than once, she loses a physical fight… she’s allowed weakness but it is portrayed as an organic part of her and her courage and strength. If she wasn’t the kind of person who had the love left to tear up when Angharad is lost she wouldn’t have been the woman who risked everything to help the sisters escape.
I’m repeating myself but… there’s a Green Place in her heart that has not been spoiled, has not gone to ruin, and Max’s advice to turn back around and take the Citadel only works because of what these people have in their hearts. Because of the way we, as this gesture shows, live in and remake each other’s hearts.
Because Furiosa knew the love of her people and hid it deep but never let it die; because of the freedom the sisters gave each other learning with Miss Giddy, fashioning new ideas, liberating their minds; because they were able to reach Furiosa out of that and turn the key on her heart, a group of women speaking to the child of a group of women as only they could; because the Vuvalini endured and survived and kept their ways, and that alone is enough of a victory to make change possible, enduring and surviving; because of the gift of kindness Capable gave Nux out of that; because Furiosa helped lead Max back to himself. So much so that Max, after warning against hope, comes back and asks them all to hope and give their lives for it.
Everyone liberates each other, everyone holds each other in their hearts. The kind of witnessing Nux asks for and the kind that Capable gives is about holding someone in your heart. Which is a recognition of death, but it’s also a recognition of relationship, the way people change each other, which is something Joe did not want - he wanted everyone to fruitlessly seek after relationship with him as their demi-god; only he could lead you to Valhalla, only his approval meant anything, etc, etc.
People connecting with each other and touching each other’s hearts is how liberation happens. And ALSO. This is an action movie, yes?
But if none of that work had been done–if, for one exmaple, the sisters had not mentally liberated themselves w/ Miss Giddy before escaping–the whole effort would have failed. It doesn’t matter how far you run or how hard you fight, if all you have is brute strength you are not free.
It really, really honors the kinds of non-physical work the sisters did and the relationship work the characters do for each other. Furiosa reaching out to Max is as important as any fight; the sisters changing Furiosa’s mind is the most important moment of all. And all of that happened in conversation. Relationship.
No wait you started on Theron’s eyes and came back to QUALITY ADDITIONS TO THIS THREAD OF META how did you do that?
What’s that Mary Shelley quote? “I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.” I think that encompasses Furiosa excellently. Stolen from her family, she finds herself cut off from satisfying the depths of her love. In indulging her rage, though, she manages to claw her way up the ranks to the point we see in the movie, where she fights her way back to a place from which she can love.
I swear Fury Road is made up of 90% dramatic/ironic/painful echoes by volume.
For instance, Max and Angharad both fall off of the Rig after rescuing the driver (Angharad using the boltcutters on the harpooned wheel, Max body-checking multiple polecats away from Furiosa).
And both times Capable and Dag try to save them by reaching out from the backseat. They only succeed once.
It occurred to me the other day that Angharad dies in the back of the Gigahorse, where the Organic Mechanic does his impromptu c-section. The same place where Furiosa almost dies but is saved by Max.
one thing though - what the Organic Mechanic does is not a c-section imo. a c-section is a surgery during which the woman/pregnant person is treated as a person/a patient. what the Organic Mechanic did was cut a woman open like breaking open a Christmas cracker to get the goodies inside. He’s treating her as a thing, an incubator whose only worth is to create a male heir.
It’s dismemberment, not surgery.
The reason why I’m pointing this out is that it’s not just that Angharad dies in that palce and Furiosa lives, but that Angharad is treated as a thing by OM whereas Max… revisits his own physical exploitation and being treated as a thing to treat Furiosa with infinite care.
The thing that remains the same btw is that a woman/women are with both Angharad and Furiosa, loving them and grieving them. Miss Giddy holds Angharad as she passes away, always seeing her as a person; the Vuvalini and the sisters comfort/hold Furiosa.
The major difference is the definition of humanity/masculinity the man involved is working from - are you capable of giving life of yourself or do you just take from those who can, ripping it out of them?
The final note is that OM is the man that violated Max’s body, though it’s Max’s choice that makes him different/in community with the women there not merely having been victimized.
AND ANOTHER THING
The 3 people helping Max save Furiosa are the Dag, Capable, and the Vuvalini played by Melita Jurisic. Each of them lost someone they were particularly close to during the final chase–Dag lost Keep, Capable lost Nux, and while I’m arguing Joy Smither’s Vuvalini was ‘Melita’s’ BFF we might, even if headcanon fails, say she’s lost her sisters as a whole (Valkyrie and Maadi, too!). And I’m very into the symbolism and emotional punch of having the people who are grieving most being the ones to keep Furiosa from dying, too.
I really loved that bit about Angharad being treated like a thing but Max revisits his own exploitation. Like you know when Slit throws a lance past Max’s face at the beginning, kinda using him to aim and later Furiosa uses the same side to make that awesome shot? This reminded me of that. But seriously there is so much deep thinking going on and my thoughts are just ‘I wonder if the war pup at the beginning is taking Max’s hair so he can make some kinda cuddly toy for himself’.
cygnaut asked: If Max Rockatansky was your boyfriend, he would never ask if the symbolic black scarf you gifted him is a male imperator scarf or a female one.
Look at the 2nd gif and tell me that doesn’t seem like part of some desperate wasteland wedding ceremony (also enjoy Toast, Cheedo, and Capable as the world’s most appalled flower girls.)
I’m just over here, dragging hands slowly down my face and giving up on any sort of pretense of objectivity.
I never noticed that he put his hand on the back of the metal one in that second gif, until you pointed it out. What. Even.
…true talk tho, the only way that arranged marriage fic might happen to these two is if there’s literal guns pointed at literal heads, and there’d need to be hostages involved, possibly multiple, and perhaps (given this universe) cannibalism, maybe some electrocutions.
And at least three explosions.
And a pint of blood.
Forced-Marriage-Vows Boy, bleeding gently: “By your command, shiny and chrome Immortan, we told Furiosa and the feral of your plans to force them into marriage and breeding.”
Immortan Joe, glaring: “AND?”
Forced-Marriage-Vows Boy, swaying due to blood loss: “The good news is, casualties were minimal and the pair did appear to be bonding as they stole a vehicle and fled into the desert.”
Immortan Joe, glowering: “THE BAD NEWS?”
Forced-Marriage-Vows Boy, curling into a fetal ball in a pool of his own blood: “There’s fire everywhere.”
Okay, dudes, so I saw mad max yesterday and AM STILL REELING.
Like, I had heard all the feminist hype about this movie and was very excited to go see it, but I had the secret fear that it would still let me down. Like, I was afraid it had been OVERhyped. So I tried to go in calmly. CALM, COOL, AND COLLECTED. That was me.
WAS.
WAS IS THE KEY WORD THERE. Because I walked out of it FUCKING GRINNING AND I WAS NONE OF THOSE THINGS ANYMORE BECAUSE MAD MAX WAS THE GREATEST THING EVER!!!!!
Here are the ways that Mad Max was AWESOME (not comprehensive and in no particular order. Putting it in list form just makes me look like I am a little less crazy than I actually am. Note: there are spoilers! and cursing- lots of cursing.)
So the beginning is kind of what I expected. Max captured by weird dudes, Furiosa is like the most honored warrior and in charge of driving the biggest truck (coolio) and the escaping wives are very explicit in their message (also coolio. gotta be explicit with these things) but, still, LETS SKIP FORWARD TO THE GOOD PARTS:
In the first meeting of Max and Furiosa- THEY BOTH TRY TO KILL ONE ANOTHER. Like… there is no instant friendship of “I will help you with these women” or “We need your help because we are women.” NO. THEY BOTH ATTACK. FURIOSA THROWS THE FIRST PUNCH.
Also, THE WIVES FUCKING TAKE PART IN THIS FIGHT! They are not fighters and don’t know what they’re doing but they fucking GRAB THE CHAIN that is attached to that fucker’s head and START YANKING. WOMEN WHO DON’T HAVE THE SKILLS STILL FIGHTIN BACK. oh god, just… it’s too good.
Within like a DAY of meeting her, Max is following Furiosa’s orders like it’s his MUTHAFUCKING JOB. Just does whatever she says. he is still holding a gun on the wives UNTIL SHE TELLS HIM TO GET UP AND DRIVE. and then he does that. Because she’s a badass. and you listen to the badass.
Okay, this is one of my biggest things in life so maybe other people won’t even notice it- but BOTH MAX AND FURIOSA DRIVE. Like, it’s not assumed that because Max is the man, he is going to drive all the time. It’s her car. She can drive it. He can take a nap in the passenger seat. GAH, YAASSS.
The gun scene. You’ve all already heard about it. Max is a bad shot. Furiosa is a better shot. HE JUST LETS HER USE HIS SHOULDER. Just take me up now. I am done.
Okay, but don’t take me up because then i would miss this next part and this is great. This might be my favorite part. Are you ready? Because Mad Max, the title character of this movie, is about to go on a solo-mission. A dangerous, manly mission by himself to beat one of the big bads and steal his supplies. He’s going alone, as men do, into the night. It’s probably going to be violent and badass and - OOPS NO WAIT. WE DON’T EVEN SEE IT. Like… I don’t think people realize what a big deal this is. Because it’s harder to see things that aren’t there but… BUT GUYS. This could have been a BIG FREAKING DEAL. MAX’S SOLO MISSION AND IT IS NOT IN THE MOVIE. Like, let that sink in. Nope, no solo mission for you Max. We don’t even care enough to watch that. That’s boring. It’s been done. WE DON’T EVEN NEED TO SEE IT.
Anonymous asked: Nux actually having a very sweet singing voice as Nick Hoult is a lovely singer. Slit can't sing for shit, all raspy growls and off-key crowing (he thinks he's good). Ace can rap like hell.
Yeah but what would he rap about? I mean hes 60 and its been 40 years since rhe apocalypse
“You boyz yall know what Im talkin bout Got cars, got guns, got chrome in your mouth Ya’ll think life is great, yall think life is shine But Im just standin here, outta my mind Holla! Yall fuckers are kami crazy Make my head feel dazey Gotta try and keep up But these tumours got me all hazy Back in the day- you wouldnt believe! Life was worryin bout rent, car payments you cant even conceive Now you lance screamin’ fukushima, Blowin’ to shredz And im the last one alive Tryin to live instead
WITNESS THIS MOTHERFUCKERS MY NAME IS ACE IM ALIVE CAUSE I NEVER SPRAY CHROME IN MY FACE IM THE LAST PIECE OF SHIT TO REMEMBER THE DAYS WHEN YOU DIDNT WANT TO DIE JUST TO ESCAPE SAY WHAT *drops mic*
Anonymous asked: That look that Max gets when he picks up Furiosa kills me every time, he looks so terrified. Poor hobo man doesn't want to loose his queen
do you mean this face anon?? this face?? because yeah. yeeeah. that is the face of the most frantic, most terrified, tiny baby ever to roam the wasteland.
or maybe you mean this face, where he’s realising exactly how hurt she is (and cheedo’s in the background like eh, tis a scratch).
or maybe you mean this face, which i like to call The Worst Face, because of how terrible it is. this is the face you make when you realise that you have to bail soon because you’re having feelings and that hasn’t happened in A Long Time.
