Valkyrie can’t be sure that this hasn’t been happening for days, weeks, perhaps even months. After all, one day amongst the shifting sands of the dunes is much like the one that came before and the one that follows. At some point however, she realises that the sensation of those few seconds where she loses the power to move…act…decide…is familiar. And at some point when she wakes because the first light of dawn is creeping beneath the edge of her blanket she knows that sensation was only a few instants earlier.
She starts to notice things. A particularly fine, meaty lizard that she kills with a dart appears at around the same time each day. She starts to observe more closely. A distinctive cloud is in the sky each time she pushes back the blanket in the morning.
She never knows when the blackness will overtake her though. Most days it comes later and later, although nothing Valkyrie does or doesn’t do seems to affect it.
The first time she makes it to dusk seems significant. The night is falling. Surely if she gets through the night, when she wakes it will be a new and different morning. But the stars are scarcely visible against the night sky before the familiar pull exerts itself on her again and she resets once more.
She begins to reach the night most days. Sometimes she even finishes her watch before Smithy relieves her and sends her to take her turn sleeping. But still she wakes and it is the same morning.
For a while she tries to stay awake during the night, but all that changes is the fact that she is aware of the moment when she is pulled back.
At last there comes a morning when she wakes and the cloud is not there and the only lizard she sees is a runty thing that is scarcely worth the effort of chewing. And it is most definitely a different day. They haven’t seen a dust plume in the distance for weeks says Keeper, although Valkyrie is quite sure that for her (at least) it has been more days than that.
Her bike is hidden behind the dunes. Her clanswomen lie in wait. And Valkyrie climbs the pylon to bait their trap. The dust suggests something bigger than a motorbike and that would be a rich prize for the Vuvalini, especially if it’s not running on fumes.
She screams her lament and pleads for help, and cannot believe her ears when she hears the words recited by the figure who steps down from the truck.
Valkyrie calls her tribe. She slides, she shrugs into her wrap, and stumbles across the sand in disbelief towards her Furiosa.
Another night passes, and they turn back but it’s still a new day. There’s another night, another morning, and still no slice that disconnects Valkyrie from the progression of time. Things have changed.
Then Valkyrie finds out what anchors her to the loop. She watches the War Rig overrun by Warboys and Polecats faster than she can reload and when she sees the headshot that claims Furiosa her two thoughts as she is yanked backwards once more is that at least it was quick and now she knows what if not why.
At least that gives her a strategy she thinks. The days when she sees the cloud, kills the lizard, goes to sleep, and waits for a plume of dust that never comes only to wake again are agony. But some days are good and the truck rolls to a stop at the bottom of the dunes.
The look of fragile hope on Furiosa’s face is the same every time, and Valkyrie can feel that the hand threading through the thickness of her hair is doing it for the first time. She tries to run faster than the bikes, to get to Furiosa, to tell her that she knows her, to end the doubt even one second earlier.
Then she tries to work out what she needs to do to stop it repeating.
Sometimes they get close to the canyon before Joe stops them and Furiosa’s life ends along with Valkyrie’s temporality. Sometimes they’re not even within sight of it when the Gigahorse becomes their main obstacle and Furiosa dies when she tries to remove it from their path.
Valkyrie realises that the two are connected. Furiosa needs to live. Furiosa also needs to kill Joe.
Keeping Furiosa alive, keeping the nameless fool alive to keep Furiosa alive, is Valkyrie’s new focus. It still doesn’t work. She tries every position on the Rig. Takes out every person who hurt either of them on a previous iteration. And still the cycle repeats.
Finally she disagrees as they plan their run. She needs to be on a bike, be mobile, take out threats unexpectedly. Furiosa argues against it. She explains how motorbikes are good for a few hits but are the preserve of War Boys reaching their half-lives because they rarely make it back. Valkyrie insists.
It seems like Furiosa was right when Maadi takes a harpoon to the face and they topple to the ground. Valkyrie takes aim at the Gigahorse and watches four shots fair and true leave mere cracks in the glass. As the monstrous vehicle passes over her, she jumps to her feet and keeps firing.
Valkyrie isn’t stupid. She knows there is an entire War Party coming up behind her, but she keeps firing at Joe’s car. The last thing she remembers is one of the Imperators on the back falling to her rifle as she keeps firing. She hopes it’s enough.
The next morning is a new day, but Valkyrie doesn’t wake to see it.
Oh my god THAT’s why she’s willing to sacrifice her crew, because she’s tried any variation of telling them, of asking their help, and there’s always somehow a weak link, they’re not good at secrets, at acting. They don’t even come away from the Citadel, or her crew is suddenly replaced by Joe, or she’s taken off the War Rig, or– In desperation she tries not telling them one time, and it’s gut-wrenching, but then she gets much further, and now she has to get them killed over and over again, punch Ace off of her running board like he’s one of the Wretched over and over again–
She only ever reaches the other Vuvalini once, on their final run, which is why it was so crushing when she found out that there were only a few left, and that her home was gone. The run through we saw was the furthest she ever got, after hundreds of times watching her crew and the sisters die in different ways. Maybe she even killed Max many times before, or left him to die in the desert.
What. Make him stay?? That would probably make him run faster, especially given the ‘I just known you for three days’ thing and ‘who is this wierdo’ and ‘wtf is there about me to like, they’re clearly looking for something’ and ‘what the hell kind of person even says those things’, and y’know, instant escalation of doubt and distrust.
But what if more things happened in one of those runs than just what we saw. Is what I’m getting at.
But wait…what if the new loop doesn’t restart with him offering her his hand on the Plains of Silence? What if it starts with “can I talk to you?”
That means she’s had endless versions of this conversation. That little half-smile she has on her face when he says “I’ll make my own way” is because she already knows he’s going to say that. Because he says that every time.
Maybe she learns that if she’s too honest about wanting him to stay, it scares him off and he doesn’t come back the next morning. In some of those versions, they ride across the salt until they run out of food and water. In others, someone figures out they have to go back–maybe Furiosa figures it out herself, or Val suggests it, or Toast does, or Nux and Capable have been talking on the back of their bike and come up with the idea. But it never works without him there.
Then, one time, almost by chance, she says the right thing and he catches up to them the next morning, and they get much further, and she realizes, oh. She can never make him stay, but if she’s cautious and lucky, he’ll figure it out himself and come back to her. It’s still a hard day, a really hard day, and she does it hundreds of times over, and she always dies, but slowly she learns all the other pieces that have to fall in place.
She doesn’t realize until the last time through that the reason he needs to be there is not as an extra fighter, although that helps, but so he can give her his blood and keep her alive to reach the Citadel. Because the part at the Citadel never works without her.
And she still can’t make him stay.
….I hate all of you.
And every so often, she says/doesn’t say just the right thing under the blazing stars in the safe shadow of the war rig. And he does come with them, even though he knows it’s probably fatal; he’s given up hoping for any other outcome than death, and he’s okay with that - in the company of these people he’s okay with letting go of hope.
So gradually - as they ride for days across the glaring salt, spend nights cold under the thousands of cold stars - his guard comes down. And gradually - in quiet minimal conversations over water-breaks in the desert, watching meteors leaning back on the sand - she gets to know him. She gets the opportunity to value him for himself, not just for his abilities or his strength or his damage. And day by day she gets to see him heal, just a little, in the quiet companionship of everyone around him.
And then they run out of water.
And she’s standing behind him, as he tucks away his map, in the sheltering dark of the war rig, carefully crafting the words she’ll say this time. This is the moment, this is the fulcrum, this must be where she can change the outcome to life rather than drying to husks in the desert sun…but words that make him stay end in that outcome, words that make him come with them end in that outcome; and she doesn’t know, she can’t imagine what this fulcrum moment hold within it that will bend their destinies to some future without endless circling back through death to past-life to death again.
And this time, in her despair, she doesn’t bother bargaining with him or needling him or soothing him or gentling him or any other other strategies she has tried over the cycles. And when he chases them down over the hot salt…he has a plan.
And this is utterly new.
god damn you
There’s one version–
There’s one loop. A loop where he leaves with them across the salt.
They keep to their course, and they get to know each other, and they
save their water and their fuel and they balance it, speed before they
run out of water and steady before they run out of fuel. They gentle to
each other, and he speaks more and she touches more and Valkyrie holds
them together when she can’t, and they manage it. They reach a new green
place.
The cliffs are high, and they have to keep going around, until they
find a place where they can go up onto the green. There is a weathered
sign saying ‘Tapotupotu camping place’
There’s sweet water and green and they cry like they didn’t know
their bodies still could. They have made it. They set up camp on the
bank of the stream and can’t comprehend their fortune. It takes a long
time to fall asleep that night, she, Max and Valkyrie curled around each
other.
When the loop resets and it’s dark and desert and Furiosa feels
herself form the words ‘Can I talk to you?’ she holds them back. Walks
into the desert instead and screams at the sky for the next three loops.
*flings self on the sand*
*screams*
why? whyyyyyyy did it reset? were they all bitten by vipers or something? was there a flash-flood? whyyyyyy?
this fucking fic man…
[I’m sticking this here, cause it originated in my tags but could be the set-up for that AO3 entry someone (cough I’m lookin’ at you primarybufferpanel & bonehandledknife :D) could will compile:
I’m really loving all the different options for where/for whom the cycles happen. I like to imagine they ALL happen - maybe sequentially, maybe simultaneously - they ALL happen and repeat and repeat….until they converge on the life outcome, and all the cycles cease.
This whole fic contains within it no contradictions in that case - it ALL HAPPENS.]
It reset because what breaks the loop isn’t them all surviving; it’s overthrowing Joe’s reign.
Which means the convergence of all the cycles that finally breaks the loop is not the same combination as “everyone lives.” Maybe it’s impossible to have both.
Oh THAT - now that is PERFECT.
Max says it himself: if you can’t fix what’s broken, you’ll go insane (..with having to relive things over and over..)
I randomly want to see groundhog day fic in Fury Road but have no idea what that would even look like.
I’ve been following this thread with great fascination! I started thinking about what would happen if the loops begin much earlier and only happen when specific conditions are met, and realized it starts resolving backstory questions in interesting ways. Here is an opening bit:
____________________
The first time Furiosa runs away from the Citadel is seven days after her mother dies. She doesn’t have any time to prepare, she just sees her chance, kicks a war boy in the crotch, and fangs it for the horizon. On foot, no water, no weapons. She sprints through the crowds of the wretched, faster than the war boy, trying to plan. She has no supplies. Even if she can outrun them, she can’t survive in the desert without a few tools.
She trips over a wretched woman and they both go sprawling, and the answer presents itself - the woman has a knife tucked into her belt. She grabs it, jumps up, and runs on, ignoring the woman’s yell. The wretched have very little - she may have just taken a survival tool that meant as much to that woman as it now does to her. She doesn’t let herself think about it.
She takes an empty water bladder from another wretched. Furiosa knows how to collect water in the desert from dew or from plants, all Vuvalini do, it’s slow but she can do it. She runs into the desert until she hears motorbikes - the war boy and friends, coming to find her. She scrapes frantically at the side of a dune and curls up where the wind will pile more sand against her, and it works. They go past her.
That afternoon, a storm blows in. With no water supply and no shelter, she does not expect to survive it. I’m coming to find you, Mother. She thinks as the dark sand closes in and her world shrinks down to her body, her knife, and the water bladder. She’s not sure if it’s sleep or death that takes her.
She wakes up in the breeder’s pens in the Citadel. She blinks, confused, and then shakes her head vigorously. Hell of a dream, Fury.
The day plays out exactly like her dream, as best she can remember. The same war boy - she remembers the motorcycle chain carved into his skin - takes her from the breeder’s pen and past an open staircase that leads down. She can smell fresh air coming up it, and she almost kicks him again.
She doesn’t. Her mother’s last words were that she would protect her, even after death, and Furiosa isn’t going to disregard her warnings. The war boy takes her on to the healer, a man with a shock of white hair who laughs at his own jokes and looks between her legs. No-one’s looked there since she was old enough to bathe herself. She bites her lip and reminds herself to wait. The storm hits the Citadel that afternoon.
Oh my god THAT’s why she’s willing to sacrifice her crew, because she’s tried any variation of telling them, of asking their help, and there’s always somehow a weak link, they’re not good at secrets, at acting. They don’t even come away from the Citadel, or her crew is suddenly replaced by Joe, or she’s taken off the War Rig, or– In desperation she tries not telling them one time, and it’s gut-wrenching, but then she gets much further, and now she has to get them killed over and over again, punch Ace off of her running board like he’s one of the Wretched over and over again–
Oh god it got better worse.
This time isn’t the first time she’s encountered the Fool, although he often doesn’t show up. The life of a bloodbag, well - “life” is the issue, isn’t it? He only started appearing after she got out of the Citadel, and at first she hadn’t paid attention, so she doesn’t really know how her choices affect his survival but she knows it’s not good. Unlike everyone else in this infinite Hell (but at least she’s doing something, at least these three thousand days have been each different, each unlike the previous three thousand - and when she says “plus the ones I don’t remember” it is hard to know if she means the blur of this endless day merging into itself or the blur of the thousands of days before, each sameness so like the previous that she forgets, she forgets) - unlike everyone else, the Fool is unpredictable.
Oh my god THAT’s why she’s willing to sacrifice her crew, because she’s tried any variation of telling them, of asking their help, and there’s always somehow a weak link, they’re not good at secrets, at acting. They don’t even come away from the Citadel, or her crew is suddenly replaced by Joe, or she’s taken off the War Rig, or– In desperation she tries not telling them one time, and it’s gut-wrenching, but then she gets much further, and now she has to get them killed over and over again, punch Ace off of her running board like he’s one of the Wretched over and over again–
She only ever reaches the other Vuvalini once, on their final run, which is why it was so crushing when she found out that there were only a few left, and that her home was gone. The run through we saw was the furthest she ever got, after hundreds of times watching her crew and the sisters die in different ways. Maybe she even killed Max many times before, or left him to die in the desert.
STOP THAAAAAT
*claws at face*
And he never once told her his name.
and the thing is, furiosa doesn’t think it’ll be the last run. she got unlucky with three war parties trailing her, she wasn’t able to kill the war boy which means he’ll show back up with a gun or a knife eventually, the fool shot angharad and now she’s fallen, gone under the wheels. she’ll keep playing along because giving up isn’t an option but she’s really just biding her time, waiting for the night to dissolve back into the walls of the citadel or a lucky bullet to land true and blot it all out.
it’s not until the sun rises and the fool come up swinging that she realizes she’s still driving. she’s still in the rig, in the light of a brand new day, and for the first time in countless days home is on the horizon
But that means that everything after that is final. No fifty different ways to find a path where Valkyrie lives. No alternate solutions to losing all but two of her people. What happens now is what happens. And she should be glad for that…
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)
I feel like if you look at the body language in the (potentially) problematic shots, it is made very clear that sex or seduction is the furthest away from any of their minds. They could have had any of the women act it like they thought seduction might give them an edge, but it’s clearly not present at all
Oh my god THAT’s why she’s willing to sacrifice her crew, because she’s tried any variation of telling them, of asking their help, and there’s always somehow a weak link, they’re not good at secrets, at acting. They don’t even come away from the Citadel, or her crew is suddenly replaced by Joe, or she’s taken off the War Rig, or– In desperation she tries not telling them one time, and it’s gut-wrenching, but then she gets much further, and now she has to get them killed over and over again, punch Ace off of her running board like he’s one of the Wretched over and over again–
She only ever reaches the other Vuvalini once, on their final run, which is why it was so crushing when she found out that there were only a few left, and that her home was gone. The run through we saw was the furthest she ever got, after hundreds of times watching her crew and the sisters die in different ways. Maybe she even killed Max many times before, or left him to die in the desert.
I heard there was a Hogwarts/Mad Max AU floating around?
Here’s my two cents for that. *throws* This is what happens when I decide to marathon the HP movies over the week and also have a “Little Witch Academia” anime poster in front of my work space.
*lies down* I have spent too much energy and time on this.
Since I know there’s probably a fair amount of you out there who haven’t seen the first three Mad Max movies, I’m here to tell you a li’l secret about them:
All the people complaining about how Max “isn’t the main character” in Fury Road are big ol’ Fake Fanboys cause Max’s primary character trait in literally every movie is “I hate this, why is it happening, please leave me alone to brood in the desert in peace”.
He’s much more the central focus of the plot in the first movie but in Road Warrior and Thunder Dome he basically just gets kidnapped or beat up by wankers in weird bondage outfits and spends the rest of the movie trying to leave as soon as possible while other people are like “please solve our absurd post-apocalyptic problems”. There is not one single point where Max actively seeks out being a hero until it is forced upon him. He ACTIVELY TELLS PEOPLE WHO ASK HIM FOR HELP to take a hike.
Mad Max himself would like nothing better than to never, ever, ever be the main character.
He would also like for people to stop stealing his fucking car.
