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I saw Mad Max yesterday and it was the most Mad Max-y story yet. Just one long car chase after car chase. Fire, fumes, explosions and sand. Lots of sand (wet, sand, dry sand and the most beautiful flying sand). It also has the best story so far and certainly the most women both in main and supporting roles. In fact for most of the scenes they outnumber men at least 2:1. This is the fun of it - it's both the very epitome of man movies - cars, speed, explosions, killing and a movie about women taking their own faith in their own hands and being badass. It's a movie with sex slavery but without constant male-gaze posing. "We are not things" is not something they only say within the film but also the film treats it's heroines like that. I don't want to spoil it because it's worth watching the fun unfold before you yourself but make sure you do. If there is enough of us there might be a film just about Furiosa.
Chalize Theron is wonderful as Imperator Furiosa. I hated that name at first but then we learn Imperator is a name Immortan Joe gives his highest ranking warriors. This made me think about all she had to to get there in a place run by men for men. I wonder if loosing the aarm was meant to make her unattractive to men like Joe. Because the alternative is becoming the wife. A pampered, beautiful object only existing for pleasure and procreation of it's owner. But when we meat them they already escaped with Furiosa. So I also wondered if Furiosa was allowed to meet them because she was a woman and therefore Joe didn't have to worry about not his sons. I thought about the stories they had to tell each other. The way they decided to go and try to make it to Furiosa's home. The Green she was kidnapped from as a kid. I wonder about friendship.
The Wives believe in values from a different world. No unnecessary killing. They seem to sheltered and delicate to survive in this world at first but they all have so much strength. The Splendid Angharad who shield Furiosa with her own body because she knows Joe won't hurt his baby growing in her. Toast the Knowing who takes care of guns and ammunition. Capable who finds Nux and fights Joes's men. The Dag who preserves the seeds. Even Cheedo the Fragile who uses her own weakness to trick their way onto Joe's rig.
It's not only the ability to fight that is part of that strength. They let the War Boy live because they understand he is, like all the others, fed a toxic ideology and used just like they were used for Joe's purposes. In their case disposable cannon fodder. One that dies gladly because he believes he's going to the afterlife. The toxic mix of more violent religion tropes used to hold to power by men like Immortan Joe for a long, long time. He and his allies. The 3 old men running that piece of the world just like they did before. All misshapen and sick but clinging to power by abusing everyone in their reach. The ones who killed the world and learned nothing from it. They even look like Capitalist caricatures from Communist propaganda.
I haven't even mention Max yet because he is just someone who stumbles into this story. He is forced into it by circumstance - another person used as an object in Immortan Joe's world. He's no hero. When he escapes his bloodbag situation all he cares is his own survival. He's perfectly fine leaving Furiosa and the Wives behind. But they strike a cooperation because only she knows how to make the truck work. And she trust him first. Trust him not to leave them behind again. And he helps them find the Green. We see the same gamble work with Capable and Nux later.
All the actresses playing Wives were great and Nicholas Hoult was wonderfully unhinged and childishly sincere in his need to please. Tom Hardy is pretty good as Max too. And Noranti (or Melissa Jaffer) was one of the Vuvalini (older women motorcycle gang).
The film is also beautiful. Dessert beautiful. It was mostly filmed in Namibia but you can tell it was made by Australian that understands the desert. The storm is a beautiful mix of all those pictures of Australian dust storms upped to 11 and mixed with Dune. The blue filter night is eeriely beautiful and unnerving at the same time. There is certain bending of physics in this too of course. I wasn't quite sure if Nux died as we saw so many people (mostly Max) survive impossible to survive crashes.
I wasn't convinced I want to see it at first but then I saw that MRA wank about this being a feminist movie and I knew I had to see it. I don't regret it. Go watch this film. It's as good as everyone says it is.
The Wives believe in values from a different world. No unnecessary killing. They seem to sheltered and delicate to survive in this world at first but they all have so much strength. The Splendid Angharad who shield Furiosa with her own body because she knows Joe won't hurt his baby growing in her. Toast the Knowing who takes care of guns and ammunition. Capable who finds Nux and fights Joes's men. The Dag who preserves the seeds. Even Cheedo the Fragile who uses her own weakness to trick their way onto Joe's rig.
It's not only the ability to fight that is part of that strength. They let the War Boy live because they understand he is, like all the others, fed a toxic ideology and used just like they were used for Joe's purposes. In their case disposable cannon fodder. One that dies gladly because he believes he's going to the afterlife. The toxic mix of more violent religion tropes used to hold to power by men like Immortan Joe for a long, long time. He and his allies. The 3 old men running that piece of the world just like they did before. All misshapen and sick but clinging to power by abusing everyone in their reach. The ones who killed the world and learned nothing from it. They even look like Capitalist caricatures from Communist propaganda.
I haven't even mention Max yet because he is just someone who stumbles into this story. He is forced into it by circumstance - another person used as an object in Immortan Joe's world. He's no hero. When he escapes his bloodbag situation all he cares is his own survival. He's perfectly fine leaving Furiosa and the Wives behind. But they strike a cooperation because only she knows how to make the truck work. And she trust him first. Trust him not to leave them behind again. And he helps them find the Green. We see the same gamble work with Capable and Nux later.
All the actresses playing Wives were great and Nicholas Hoult was wonderfully unhinged and childishly sincere in his need to please. Tom Hardy is pretty good as Max too. And Noranti (or Melissa Jaffer) was one of the Vuvalini (older women motorcycle gang).
The film is also beautiful. Dessert beautiful. It was mostly filmed in Namibia but you can tell it was made by Australian that understands the desert. The storm is a beautiful mix of all those pictures of Australian dust storms upped to 11 and mixed with Dune. The blue filter night is eeriely beautiful and unnerving at the same time. There is certain bending of physics in this too of course. I wasn't quite sure if Nux died as we saw so many people (mostly Max) survive impossible to survive crashes.
I wasn't convinced I want to see it at first but then I saw that MRA wank about this being a feminist movie and I knew I had to see it. I don't regret it. Go watch this film. It's as good as everyone says it is.
