Coma-Doof Warrior plays some chords and expels some fire in George Miller's 'Mad Max: Fury Road'
It's the year 2015, and the future isn't exactly the place many have dreamed about. While we might be
cooking the world into an apocalypse, at least we haven't
nuked it into oblivion (yet). The present-day smartphone puts a
Tricorder to shame, but still no domed, crystal cities,
hoverboards or flying cars. But do you really want to live in a world where some drunk asshole can zoom over your house in a
flying DeLorean? Looking at people's conceptions of the future, in design, fashion, literature, etc., for a given time period can tell one a lot about that society. And it's not only a function of science fiction. Many
political treatises propose new societies that will solve all of the world's problems, remove want, and usher in peace and brotherhood. But there's also the visions of how we're going to destroy ourselves, the planet, and end up
eating Soylent Green.
With George Miller's Mad Max movies, each film depicts a society either in a death spiral, or hitting rock bottom. The movies are notable for basically re-imagining the Western in a post-apocalyptic setting with steampunk-esque gas guzzling machines instead of horses. People are fighting over resources in a barren wasteland. There's the freedom and anarchy of a lawless world, divided between roving bands of marauders and the people they prey upon, with a reluctant hero (Max Rockatansky, played by Mel Gibson in the original trilogy and by Tom Hardy here) that comes to their aid.
It's been 30 years since Miller has dabbled with Mad Max, instead focusing on sheep-herding pigs and dancing penguins. But his return here expands the vision of the original movies, with the help of a budget in the nine-digits, to achieve something as close as Miller can get to the perfect synthesis of a film dystopia with a subtext and balls-out action movie. That subtext has not been without controversy. Some members of the He-Man Women Haters Club have objected to the depiction of women as action heroes within the movie, instead of being in their "traditional gender and biological roles."
Continue below the fold for more.
Charlize Theron as Imperator Furiosa
From Mandalit del Barco at
NPR:
"I was very interested in a female road warrior," says director George Miller. "And here she is, a character exactly equivalent to Max. They are protagonist/antagonist. They're the ones who go at it from the beginning. She is on this mission, and Max is a wild animal, trapped. And both of them are about their own survival. This is an uncompromising world. It's kind of forward into the past. We regress to a neo-medieval dark age where there are no rules other than to survive."
Fury Road is not really a sequel, prequel, or reboot of the
Mad Max series. Miller calls it a "
revisiting" of the original material. The result is a visceral film, where practical effects have been favored over CGI and are on full display in some amazing stunts and pyrotechnics in a world of "fire and blood." This is a chase movie. It doesn't bore you with exposition explaining every little thing (or much dialogue at all), and a lot of what's on-screen goes with style and awesomeness over logic. The plot is simple: bad guys chase good guys across the desert. But this is visual storytelling, with cinematography (by Oscar winner John Seale, who came out of retirement for this project) and thematic pacing that excel at making it all work as a bizarre but believable tale. Most of the character development comes from knowing glances, long stares, and nonverbal cues, while the situation and the action is literally in the driver's seat telling the story. Because not only is this movie about things exploding in the desert with spectacular fashion, but its core message is also about sexual politics.
The first Mad Max depicts a world where gangs control the highways, a deteriorating government can barely deal with it, and the oil is running out. The film became a cult movie from Miller, who was then a medical doctor, and his producing partner, Byron Kennedy, with it being inspired by the 1970s energy crisis and accident victims Miller was seeing as an emergency room physician. Then 1981's The Road Warrior takes things up a notch, with the destruction of most of the world through nuclear war, and factions fighting for control over the last drops of gas. According to Road Warrior, after World War III the only clothes available for the survivors will be leather dominatrix gear and the football pads from a high school JV team. And if you're trying to survive in a world where gas is scarce, be sure to roam the Australian outback/wasteland in the last of the V8 Interceptors with its big-ass blower that probably gets 6 MPG. Interestingly, 1985's Beyond Thunderdome slows things down a bit. Instead of trying to go bigger, the film mostly concerns the societies that form after the end of everything. Whether it be at Bartertown, where Tina Turner's Aunty Entity makes a place that runs on pig shit and dispenses justice in the "two men enter, one man leaves" way, or through feral children who worship the artifacts of the world that was.
Like other dystopian genres (e.g., the zombie apocalypse), the Mad Max franchise plays on a seductive survivalist fantasy of excitement and independence. No more worrying about financial statements and credit card bills. No more of the banalities of everyday living. And you don't need anyone or anything beyond your wits to master any challenge, and can become the lord of your local Super Walmart after everything falls apart. A future disaster becomes an opportunity to demonstrate superiority. However, the truth is usually far different from the imagination of Doomsday Preppers. Disasters and struggling to survive are not "fun" events. And if everything collapsed tomorrow, most people would not exactly be equipped to deal with thugs in assless chaps.
Hugh Keays-Byrne as Immortan Joe
Each movie in this series positions a gang leader, warlord, ayatollah of rock and rolla, etc., as the ultimate antagonist that needs to be overcome. And
Fury Road, with its script by Miller, Brendan McCarthy and Nico Lathouris, is no different. The disfigured Immortan Joe (played by Hugh Keays-Byrne, who was bad guy
Toecutter in the first
Mad Max) runs an empire built upon slavery, pasty white makeup, and love of music. Ruling from his citadel, Joe sustains his empire by withholding water and keeping his human property on the edge of starvation and thirst, while raping women and forcing them to bear his progeny. His legion of "War Boys" and fleet of tricked out battle vehicles search for resources, who run down and imprison Max, putting him to use as the forced blood supply and hood ornament for one of the War Boys, Nux (Nicholas Hoult). Theron's Furiosa is a lieutenant in Joe's army who decides to rebel and takes Joe's harem of sex slaves with her. From there, the chase is on, with Furiosa and Max eventually becoming allies.
Going into Fury Road, one of the questions has been how Tom Hardy, who was magnificent in Locke and probably best known as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, would do in replacing Gibson in the title role. The answer is that Hardy does fine as the anti-hero. His Max is mostly a terse force of destruction that does what's necessary for the moment. The character's backstory of being unable to save his family, when violence and stupidity destroyed the Eden of Earth, grounds things and makes his choices believable. It's from there that Max holds on to a fundamental decency that pushes him in the right direction, even in a world that's turned to shit. But overall, this is not really Max's story. Even though the film has "Max" in the title, the character that is more front and center to the audience is Furiosa, with many likening Theron's performance to Sigourney Weaver's in Aliens. Furiosa is a battle hardened heroine that been forced into a situation not of her choosing, and longs to return to a society she was stolen from. This story decision also ties into one of the larger themes of the movie: patriarchy. Fury Road is a film where oppressed women, with agency, rebel against a society led by a rapist, who wants to dictate their ability to reproduce, and tries to enforce his authority with the dumb male zealots that follow him.
Riley Keough, Abbey Lee, Courtney Eaton and Zoë Kravitz as the wives of Immortan Joe
In Miller's world, there is chaos and madness. But it's madness with meaning and style. This is a movie that goes from A to B to C, with craziness in-between. But the decisions made by the characters have consequences, and the story always stays true to the rules of its world. And while the story is centered around a common trope (i.e., damsels in distress needing to be saved from a repugnant shithead), the movie treats its female characters as real people, with feelings, desires, frailties, and abilities, similar to any man, even a mad one.
- Bond, James Bond: The name "Max" is only uttered 3 times, and there are very few references to the other movies in this franchise (e.g., a music box carried by one of the "wives" is similar to the one Max gives to the feral child in Road Warrior). The switch from Gibson to Hardy is not explained, and how the events of this film fit into a larger continuity isn't either. As mentioned above, Miller has categorized the movie as a "revisiting" of the character, with it being similar to the different iterations of James Bond in the 007 movies. There are different actors playing the same character without explaining how it all fits together, and the audience just goes with it.
- Wasteland: While Tom Hardy has apologized to Miller for being difficult on the set, his frustration isn't going to stop from coming back for more. Hardy has reportedly been signed to star in 3 more Mad Max films, with Miller saying the next movie will probably be titled Mad Max: The Wasteland. However, it's an open question as to whether Theron will return, since she's stated some reluctance to doing another movie.
- The Vagina Monologues: Eve Ensler consulted with Miller on the script, and provided workshops on sexual violence to the cast and crew.
From Eliana Dockterman at TIME:
Eve Ensler: I think [director] George Miller heard me give a talk on human rights in Sydney. He asked me if I would be willing to come to Namibia for a week where they were shooting and work with the cast members—particularly the wives. He wanted me to give them a perspective on violence against women around the world, particularly in war zones.
I read the script and was blown away. One out of three women on the planet will be raped or beaten in her lifetime—it’s a central issue of our time, and that violence against women relates to racial and economic injustice. This movie takes those issues head-on. I think George Miller is a feminist, and he made a feminist action film. It was really amazing of him to know that he needed a woman to come in who had experience with this.
From Sean O'Neal at the
A.V. Club:
As noted by The Mary Sue, the MRA blog Return Of Kings—the online paper of record “for heterosexual, masculine men” to declare their dominance, by making a safe space where they don’t have to talk to women or gay people—has proudly asserted its masculinity with a blog post complaining that a movie’s use of female characters threatens it. Specifically, writer Aaron Clarey believes men could find themselves “duped by explosions, fire tornadoes, and desert raiders into seeing what is guaranteed to be nothing more than feminist propaganda, while at the same time being insulted AND tricked into viewing a piece of American culture ruined and rewritten right in front of their very eyes.” How, he asks, could Australian director George Miller have so ruined and rewritten George Miller’s creation in such a way that so blatantly disregards this Australian franchise’s proud American heritage? America is where men live.
While Clarey admits that he has not actually seen Fury Road—obviously not wanting to have his penis ripped off and replaced with a Betty Friedan book—he just knows that the film is feminist propaganda from seeing the previews, which prominently feature Charlize Theron’s character, Furiosa, talking and doing things. “Charlize Theron sure talked a lot during the trailers,” Clarey laments, but even more egregiously, “Charlize Theron’s character barked orders to Mad Max. Nobody barks orders to Mad Max.”
- African Desert Instead Of The Australian Outback: While Road Warrior and Thunderdome used the Mundi Mundi Plain and the Sturt Stony Desert in New South Wales, Australia, Fury Road filmed in the Dorob national park, in the Namib Desert, for six months. The use of the Namib desert was controversial, with concerns over the environmental impact of the production.
- The War Drums And Guitar Player: Over 80 percent of the movie's visual effects were done practically, with stuntmen, makeup and real settings. The Coma-Doof Warrior, who's a blind mutant, riding on the back of a truck made of amps and speakers, playing a flame-throwing guitar that serves as part of the band playing Joe's war music, is one of the more outlandish parts of the movie. But it was all done for real, and that entire rig actually works.
From Alex Zalben at
MTV:
MTV: So wait, the whole thing actually worked?
Production designer Colin Gibson: You bet your sweet… George — unfortunately — doesn’t like things that don’t work. I have in the past built him props that I thought were just supposed to be props, and then he goes, “Okay, plug it in now.”
The first version of the guitar which — I think I put too much into the flame thrower, not enough into the reverb. And yes, the flame throwing guitar did have to operate, did have to play, the PA system did have to work and the drummers… Unfortunately, I did get practice in all positions and I’ve got to tell you, the drumming was very uncomfortable at 70 [kilometers] an hour, eating sand.