Fully loaded. You’re more than welcome to come with us.
Okay I have writing promises to keep but I need to scream about this for JUST ONE MOMENT. (okay no first tho, ‘you’re more than welcome’ oh god what Furiosa what, what’s coming out of your mouth, do you realize Furiosa has like 100 lines in this movie, she uses short sentences, she doesn’t waste words. what is she. what is falling out of her mouth.)
And this bike tho.
Check out his bike.
Look at all the fabric on it. That’s not fabric scavenged from War Boys. That’s Vuvalini fabric. All except his new neck scarf, which the costuming behind the scenes notes indicate is a status symbol among War Boys. And he doesn’t appear to have it the night before despite the chillyness.
It’s the same fabric. Did she seriously just promote him secretly? Like, oh hey, here’s this scarf, you’ll probably find it useful. (oh hey, here’s this medal of honor, I think you can make use of the pin. oh hey, here’s this cop car, you should drive it. Oh hey wear this doctor’s lab coat… YOU JUST DON’T DO THAT.) Just imagine Max going back to the Citadel and the War Boys automatically calling him Imperator and his deeply deeply confused face.
But back to the bikes, even more, compare:
Nux and Capable in the back, then a trailer, then two bikes, another half-full trailer with a vuvalini riding it, then a bunched up group in front:
Now Max is the lead bike, Furiosa’s bike doesn’t have any gear on it.
For the most part there’s maybe half the amount of stuff on their bikes as that which’ve been crammed onto Max’s. Even taking into account the the amount that’s been crammed onto the trailers, you have to admit that Max’s bike is more than just “fully loaded”, if we assume a fully-loaded bike is the average bike you see here.
Now I just want you to imagine Max’s awkward face as the Vuvalini all try to press things into his hands and giving him head daps and Furiosa not even looking because she tried yesterday, dammit, and he already told her no and she’s busy checking things over kthxbye.
THERE MIGHT BE SIX PAGES OF DIALOGUE IN THE SCRIPT. MAYBE TEN IF THEY WROTE OUT TOM HARDY’S GRUNTING. IT’S GOOD GRUNTING, DON’T GET ME WRONG BECAUSE MOST OF TOM HARDY’S WORK HERE IS DIALOGUE WITHOUT DIALOGUE. MAX SAWS AT THE BACK OF HIS MASKED HEAD WITH A NAIL FILE SO FAST AND WITH SUCH INSANE ANGER THAT IT BECOMES A LINE.
CHARLIZE THERON’S EYES ARE EASILY HALF THE DIALOGUE IN THE MOVIE AND MOST OF THE LINES THEY SAY ADD UP TO SOMETHING LIKE “I’M ONLY GOING TO USE ONE BULLET ON THIS SHITPILE OF A WORLD BECAUSE THAT’S ALL IT DESERVES AND ALSO ALL I NEED TO KILL BECAUSE I AM THE MOST LETHAL TWO-HEADED LIZARD PROWLING THIS CURSED EARTH.” SHE SHOULD GET AN OSCAR. I AM NOT KIDDING AT ALL.
EVERYTHING THIS FILM IS DESIGNED TO DO DEPENDS ON IT OVERPOWERING YOU WITH THE MOST BASIC ELEMENTS OF HUMAN EXISTENCE: FLIGHT, PAIN, FEAR AND MAYBE HOPE. HOPE’S A MAYBE.
I love how most of these are just kind of universally accepted.
-Dad Max
-The Wives being referred to as The Sisters after the film
-Horrible family road trip
-Furiosa is everything
-The Doof Warrior was great
-Immortan Joe was a fuck
-Making fun of the People Eater and his intense nipple rings (seriously dude wtf)
-Capable working with the War Boys after the film
-Toast becoming a total badass warrior leader and possible Imperator
-The Dag and the gardens
-Cheedo becoming a political head or a healer
-If Dag has a girl she names her Angharad
-Furiosa does the forehead touch with Max when he comes back
-Keeper of the Seeds was best grandma
-You could probably summon anyone in the fandom with “WITNESS ME”
And so much more
Seriously I love this fandom. Everyone I’ve run into is so nice, I haven’t seen any hate, and everyone just loves this film and wants to share. You all rock.
I love how we all seem to be cheerleading each other’s stories and reading each other’s tumblrs. And how
- Ace totally survives
Is now also widely accepted. I’m still working on my ‘Miss Giddy survives and becomes the Citadel’s cover-up tattoo artist’ campaign. And as soon as I have a story I can work it into, I’m gonna start a campaign for ‘Valkyrie also survives’
-GASPING- I’m going to draw this! Im totally going to draw Miss Giddy tattooing all the war boys! :D
- War boys with boltcutter symbols over their brands (Ace has one) - Furiosa has a big coverup tattoo described in chapter 14 - milking mothers with flower tattoos - Max is getting a big ass cover tattoo on his back. (I’m not ready to reveal this, but send me an ask if you want to draw it and I’ll spoil ya :-)
Okay but can we take a second to acknowledge that Max is physically disabled along with his PTSD, like
he was shot in the knee. He wears a knee brace. From what I’ve read (and, granted, that isn’t a lot, but still) knee braces aren’t meant to be a permanent or solo solution. He has no access to physical therapy or painkillers out in the Wastelands, so he must be in pain. If not constantly, then frequently.
The male lead of a blockbuster action flick is disabled in more ways than one and I care immensely about Max Rockatansky okay
1. I was lucky enough to see Star Wars in the theater when it came out. I cannot TELL you how many scifi & film fans I’ve talked to since who deeply regret never having seen it on the big screen, let alone having had the chance to see it before anyone really understood what it was, what it would do to genre film, how that effect would ripple out to mainstream cinema. To see Star Wars before you were prepared for anything remotely like it…it wasn’t an experience that could be duplicated by watching it at home, or by watching an indie theater big screen showing years later.
Fury Road is that experience.
Don’t miss seeing it on the big screen. Don’t be all those people who say, ‘Damn, I can’t believe I didn’t see this game changer action art-house rock opera (say it with me now) FUCKING MOVIE…in the theater.’
2. By this point I sit in strung anticipation silencing my phone and tucking away my purse…and when the first soundtrack cues hit the speakers I slide down in my seat so that all I can see is the screen. It feels like a friend, like a presence. I am transported.
This is ridiculous. No other piece of visual media has ever done this to me. A few rare and precious fics and books, but nothing on a screen. Nothing through speakers.
But I have surrendered. I don’t care that it seems ridiculous. I just don’t care. Because it makes me so deeply deeply happy.
3. I had to get my phone fixed before I went to the theater today. I ended up striding around the store with out flung arms describing the practical effects to the phone guys. I think I alarmed them. (one decided to go on that recommendation. the other dismissed the movie as whatevs)
4. More and more I see this complete polarization in reactions to the movie, and I find myself wondering how much of it stems from visual processing differences and how much of it arises from..hmm..for want of a better term I’ll have to say film literacy (no intent to sound snobbish - some people do not gain any enjoyment for movies by saturating themselves in commentary tracks and comparisons of cinematography and such. either you’re obsessed or you’re not. those who are not probably have more peace in their souls.).
I can completely see how people who process visuals in a different way than I do, could look at the movie and see ‘motion, sand, more motion, visually full of sameness. also? sand.’
i can also see how people who haven’t spent endless fascinated hours pouring over the language of film, the intricacies of building a visual story, the subtleties of character development in acting rather than scripting, could look at this movie and say, ‘Plot? what plot? Character differentiation? There was none!’ They respond to a different kind of story telling, and Fury Road doesn’t hit the beats they need.
reaction A: ‘all I saw was sand’
reaction B: ‘UNBELIEVABLE. WORK OF ART. [say it with me now] THIS FUCKING MOVIE’
…not many reactions in between.
5. Similarly, I keep reading reviews that dismiss the ongoing obsession so many of us have with Fury Road under the heading ‘it’s all about the women for them - that’s cool, whatever.’
This is one area where I feel pretty heated - because its NOT about the presence of fully developed women in this film, or the lack of gender slurs in this film, or the absence of microagressions of any kind in this film, or the lack of male-gaze camera work in this film, or even that it passes the Bechdel test, the Mako Mori test or any other test one could care to drum up that denotes excellent representation of women in film.
I don’t love this movie because of those things - the cultural course correction of those things allow me to be completely undefended before this movie. I don’t have to have my genre-savvy-female-filter turned on. Because the movie isn’t hurting me, I am free to see the phenomenal piece of work that it is.
I love the movie for the movie itself - for everything it is as a visual masterpiece; stripped of all distracting character inconsequentials to reveal the people themselves; a story so fundamental to accumulated millennia of human myth that it resonates for absolutely anyone - the journey, the struggle, and the return home with new wisdom.
This movie welcomes me with complete integrity, with George Miller’s delighted child-like smile, ecstatic to share the experience.
‘Come and play!’ it says; and I do.
“ the cultural course correction of those things allow me to be completely undefended before this movie. “
That’s it, that’s what it was, you nailed it. That’s why it’s so relaxing even though it’s so violent???
I’m so relieved to see other people go as batshit over this film as I have.
And about film literacy- I actually think most people are far more film literate than the industry expects them to be, or is trying to mould them to be. I think even people without film degrees know when they’re being fed the same old stale crap over and over again. I think they, too, appreciate when the film isn’t “hurting” them with lazy plot devices.
I have a degree like that and I’ve worked on films, so my perspective is different, but I’ve also been resigned to consuming and being unsatisfied with what was given to me?
Because I believe in blockbuster cinema being important. It’s the one that reaches the masses, the one people know. Arthouse films are great and all but only a handful of people see them, and their development (both individual and collective) gets bogged down by budget constraints and lack of exposure and the need to define themselves as alternative and so on and so on. Then on the other side you have blockbusters that cost millions but don’t use them to make anything significant?
Cinema is supposed to be an exchange of ideas. An accessible exchange of ideas, too. Where was all that? Why was there such a gap between my desire to see a huge movie on a huge screen, and my desire to see a good story told on film?
I love movies. I really do. I love big movies that sweep you away. So I kept watching films on the big screen, films that were called ‘great’ and which all turned out to only be marketed as such.
I finally gave up. Stopped going to the cinema. I was disillusioned.
And then this FUCKING MOVIE came along and made me so happy.
I didn’t expect it to! At first I didn’t even know why??? But it was a shock. I finally felt like someone cared about what they were making, and respected me enough as a viewer not to just give me the standard formula. I’d learned not to expect this at all from action films.
I felt like a kid again, watching a film where nothing was certain and everything was unknown and fascinating, and I think that makes sense because action-adventure films were a whole different story when I was younger. At first, each one was an innovation, the genre and all its myriad rivulets had to be discovered. Then at some point they became the standard popcorn genre, a trusted formula emerged, and they all started feeling much the same. Everything was epic. Everything felt mediocre.
And this fucking movie suddenly made me realise what I’d been missing. Respect. Respect for the art form, for its potential, and for the audience come to watch it.
All the more immense because you know this could have been an uninspired, ‘safe’ remake and still been profitable. Maybe this is naive but it really feels like this wasn’t made for the money in my pocket, but to actually be an amazing work of art, first of all? That it wasn’t about ‘what works’ but ‘what story do I want to tell’?
(^ the above is not a documented study, it’s just my general impression of how cinema has touched me through the years. Sorry bout that, we can’t all be pros. :P)
I actually think most people are far more film literate than the industry expects them to be, or is trying to mould them to be. I think even people without film degrees know when they’re being fed the same old stale crap over and over again. I think they, too, appreciate when the film isn’t “hurting” them with lazy plot devices.
Yes!! You’re expressing this much better than I. :D I feel like I can’t quite unpack this idea. It’s confounding the info just a bit that there are people who are:
1. educated in film formally;
2. educated in film via unhealthy obsession with it; and
3. people with primarily a strong instinct for story telling as their compass
- who all fall into the category of “people who get what this film accomplished, as part of what made them love it.”
And then there’s the ‘George Miller paid the audience the high compliment of respect’ part of the picture. I agree completely - people have a well honed instinct for when a movie is patronizing them. They know when a movie takes them seriously, has faith that they are astute and paying attention and appreciate subtle elements over 2x4 exposition. They know when they’re seeing something quality. No one needs to be steeped in the history of film or the academics of good story telling to GET that. No one needs to be told when they’re being given respect - that’s something anyone can perceive, whether or not they can name all the academic film theory talking points, or would care to. Nail right on the head, hurdy-gurdy!
Now I want a pithy term that doesn’t carry snobbish connotations :D What encompasses ‘film literate’ and/or ‘knows what respect looks like’ and/or 'great instincts for a well told story’ ??
