fuckyeahisawthat:

cactusspatz:

cygnaut:

pinstripesuit:

I’ve been thinking a lot about the part in Fury Road where Max goes off into the night with a can of guzzoline to blow up the Bullet Farmer’s car, and I think it’s the only point in the movie where Max does a cool, heroic thing on his own… and we never see it! We see him walk away from the War Rig, there’s a big explosion in the distance, and then trudges back carrying bags of guns and ammunition (and a boot for Nux).

In any other movie, the camera would have followed him, and him blowing up the car and taking out the baddies all by himself would have been a big set piece. But in Fury Road, it’s an almost comical BOOM in the distance. And it works so well within the context of the rest of the movie.

Throughout Fury Road, we basically never see Max do badass, heroic things on his own. It’s always within a group (Furiosa, the Wives, the Vuvalini), and always to help or assist others – never for himself, never to make himself look cool. Furiosa gets to do cool stuff on her own, the Wives get to do cool stuff on their own, the Vuvalini, but not Max.

I read Fury Road as partly a wonderful deconstruction of the “loner badass (male) action hero” narrative – which was an incredibly popular narrative in 80s action movies, of which Mad Max is one of the granddaddies. In the old Mad Max movies, Max gets to do cool badass stuff on his own all the time. The movies center around him Getting Shit Done which driving a cool car and shooting baddies.

But in Fury Road, he is always working with others. In Fury Road, he is a hero because he learns cooperation and empathy and works for the safety of others – and unlike the other Mad Max movies, where he exchanges his help for guzzoline or other supplies, he does it for no goods in return, other than regaining his own humanity.

Yessss, I love that moment. It’s a minor cliche – badass guy going off to do some unseen badass thing that is comically only shown in a MASSIVE DISTANT EXPLOSION – but in the context of the movie it deemphasizes Max’s lone heroism to reinforce the importance of his working with the group and in a supporting role. Max helps, especially with his hope/revelation, but you never doubt Furiosa and the others would have sucessfully escaped without him. 

I’m always struck by the difference in Max when he leaves and when he returns.

When Max leaves, he has his longest and most complex conversation in the movie at that point with Furiosa (three sentences! with different words in them! yeah, we’re grading on a curve here). He makes a request, speaks clearly, stands upright, makes eye contact for most of the conversation, and otherwise acts more engaged and human than we’ve seen him yet.

When Max comes back, he’s hunched over and only meets people’s eyes in darting looks for brief moments. He seems confused when they ask him questions, and when he speaks, he’s monosyllabic and slurring his words. His main acts of communication – giving the wheel and boot to Nux – are entirely silent.

Basically, after going off to enact an epic feat of violence, Max returns distinctly worse than he left. He’s not physically injured, but the violence he committed did him visible psychological damage. (Knowing George Miller’s abiding interest in telling stories about what violence does to humans, on both sides of the equation, this was no accident.)

And Furiosa recognizes it – the way she watches Max, the hushed tone when she says “That’s not his blood,” her very careful body language. She’s been there: she knows what he did and what it cost him. (and she’s probably a little grateful he didn’t walk up to the War Rig with a machete that first time)

It’s just such a great, subtle moment that completely subverts the normal way an action movie handles this sort of scene – not only by withholding the actual action and undercutting ‘lone heroism’, as discussed so well above, but by telling us that it’s not a triumph. It’s not a moment of glory. It’s not shiny or chrome.

It’s a necessary killing. And it hurts Max to do it.

This is Furiosa’s face when she recognizes that it’s Max walking toward them out of the fog:

When she says “It’s not his blood”:

Watching him carefully as he washes the blood off:

She’s glad he’s alive, sure, but there’s nothing triumphant or high-five-y about this scene. She knows what it cost him.

And actually, the film is constantly undercutting the idea of heroic, triumphant violence, all the way through.

The sandstorm chase, which Nux thinks is going to be his heroic triumph, ends with a flare sputtering out impotently in the dust.

The fight against the Rock Riders, which feels the most classically heroic–in which we see Team War Rig working together as a group for the first time–is undercut by Angharad falling off the Rig, breaking the team as soon as it’s assembled. The moment where everyone should be high-fiving over their surprisingly seamless teamwork, they’re grieving instead.

Even the climactic moment of the film–yay, we killed the Big Bad!–is undercut by the fact that Nux dies and Furiosa is gravely wounded.

While this movie produces an incredible adrenaline rush (at least it did for me), we never get to just revel in that rush and vicariously enjoy these characters’ competence at violence (which is what we go to action movies for) without awareness of the consequences. They’re always reminding us of the cost.