Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Yoda's rebuttal was a beautiful thing.

While Mr. Green may be talented in the art of discussion, I’m fascinated by setting the scene for when the response was given.

Was this an espresso day? Did the dog barf in the bed in the middle of the night? Are the neighbor’s Christmas lights still up?

Give what’s his name credit for provoking a response, cause that’s about all you can.

Ouch....

I have no interest in this movie; it seems very predictable. Fury Road already showed us where Furiosa came from, and it hinted that she tried to rebel against Immortan Joe, and that's how she lost her hand, but because she was such a badass, she eventually regained Joe's respect and he made her essentially the general of his army. Personally I would have rather moved on from Furiosa and the Citadel and followed Mad Max on another adventure.

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Boldly going.

3rd week in theaters and it's already out of the top 5... WB not getting a hit this summer, definitely nothing remotely like Barbie

Jodie Comer confirming she was considered for the part of Furiosa

Going to watch this here in a little bit. Looking forward to it as I loved Fury Road. I have a couple reservations about a prequel without Mad Max (Tom Hardy), as I think prequel's open an interesting pandora's box into what walks the border between solid writing or in the worst cases, fan fiction... but I have a feeling it'll be a decent film. If it ends up being the "Rogue One" of the series, that ain't a bad thing at all.

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bravo

The Tom Hardy one was exhausting. How many car chases can you watch before it gets old?

We just got back from watching Furiosa... I'll give a brief review later when I get more time. It's not as great or singular as Fury Road, a film which made my top 15 list of films from the previous decade (2010-2019), but it's still darn good and lives up to expectations.

Fury Road is actually my second favorite Mad Max film, behind the original. Just real quick general ranking of them all:



1. Mad Max - A+
2. Fury Road - A+
3. The Road Warrior - A-
4. Furiosa - A-
5. Beyond Thunderdome - B (although to be fair, it's been over 20 years since I watched this in full and likely it's due for rewatch)



So yeah, Furiosa is a well done, expertly crafted (great framing of the shots, tight editing without going all over the place so the audience can't follow every moment of action, and the CGI - while at times obvious, never felt intrusive or artificial to the point it took me out of the story). It's just a fun, fun action film and unlike so many action films, it doesn't contain loads of stomach churning and mood disrupting expository dialogue (basically every comic book film these days). Furiosa... Mad Max or no Mad Max... yes, yes I know the "cameo" is more than worthy of your time and dollar and it lives up the Mad Max time and its predecessor from 2014. It's too bad it didn't do as well as one would hope. There's still time and I hope word of mouth catches on and it makes a ton of money, because one thing I do know... I would love another Mad Max film AND I would love Tom Hardy to fill the role again.



George Miller is a wonderful director and the writing is top notch because the dialogue is so minimal. Great world building and imagery. It's clear Miller has learned a trick or two when it comes to how framing is done from the likes of classics like Lawrence of Arabia and The Searchers... the colors... the orange hues of the sand and desert contrasted against the deep blues of the sky just make for a wonderful color template. That was true of both John Ford and David Lean's film and it's true of George Miller's.



Oh and any criticism of car chases or the action getting old... I can understand that and in the hands of a lesser director who doesn't know how to do action as well (ahem... Chris Nolan... I know, I know, but it's true) I would agree. George Miller knows how to frame action and is an expert at it because each action piece contains narrative, progression, and character development. Case in point... there's a... just by my guess 30-35 minute chase in the middle of Furiosa that is beautifully done BECAUSE we the audience know exactly what is going on... where the characters are and the stakes involved AND in the middle of this huge set piece... we're actually seeing Furiosa become Furiosa and there's character development and dynamic between her and the first big rig driver... not sure the actor of character's name, but the dude who resembles Tom Sizemore a bit, at least to me he does.

It's how you tell a story and of course all these Mad Mad films post the original film... owe a debt of gratitude toward the grand daddy "action on the go" sequences in Buster Keaton's The General. Fury Road and Furiosa owe a debt of gratitude to The General... as well, as Stagecoach... and that's a good thing.

Yeah this film needs to make waaay more $$ than whatever the latest Marvel junk is being released. So thems is my two-cents worth... and here I start this post intending to be brief.

One other quick note to add since I was it was brought up in an earlier post. As far as any discussion on whether or not audiences are exhausted of "girl boss" films or that whole arc... I honestly couldn't care less. I don't inherently like or dislike "girl boss" movies. If the story and narrative and characters are worthy of the action, then it's perfectly fine. Now, I'm the last person who wants a feminist narrative preached to me... believe me, however Furiosa has ZERO preaching or obnoxious beat the audience over the head, "girl power!" stuff going on. It's just a well done revenge narrative action film and what you see is what you get and it's also done by a filmmaker who knows how to tell a damn good fun story!



And here's a link to Buster Keaton's The General for those who haven't seen it. The inspiration is as clear as day:

a, it's a prequel. b, it's part of a film series where the apocalypse happens in the 1980s so wi-fi or various forms of renewable energy never existed in this world. c, thunderdome showing exactly one town built around methane is not indicative that everyone in the entire wasteland would automatically switch over to it, especially when road warrior and fury road and furiosa establish that refineries not only continue to exist but repeatedly become major factors in their respective plots.

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It is blurry. The films themselves are vague (most likely intentionally so) about how and when all this stuff happened. Do we ever get a title card telling us what year it is? Do we ever get an expository sequence with specific years mentioned? When did all of this happen? Mad Max was made in 1979, but it was set in an undefined future. How far in the future? We don't know. If I am part of a modern audience, what am I told, what is my impression? When does the 22-year-old viewer think things broke down in these movies? Probably some time after "today" (because you can look around outside and everything is fine). Batman comics have been on sale longer than we have been alive, but Bruce Wayne is still in his mid-thirties. Today's Batman lives in a modern Gotham. Today's Max lives somewhere between old and new audience impressions of "when."
The first three films are a tight trilogy in terms of time. We have the same actor playing Max. The films were made within a six year period (Mad Max is '79, Thunderdome is '85). We see Max age in these films (graying and limping). In Mad Max, we see the twilight of the old world after some unnamed trouble or set of troubles. In the Road Warrior we witness the low point of Max and the world in the wasteland. In Thunderdome, we see the world rebuilding. What we are shown in these films is "the world" of Max. It's not that everyone should be on methane, but rather that large communities would be forming, technology would be reappearing, and it wouldn't just be giant toy cars that look more like monster trucks than wasteland relics. The first three films show an arc moving from the death of the old world and the birth of the new. Awful, but moving forward.

The new films, however, implausibly ground themselves in the aesthetic in of the second film (The Road Warrior) and turn the volume up to 11. We have Pimp Your Ride logic of "Yo we put an engine on yo engine and a body on yo body"



We have a moving soundstage



We have superchargers stacked on superchargers



We have all this, but we don't have, electric lights, agriculture, indoor plumbing, radio, television, etc.?
An internal combustion powered car is not just steel and petrol. It is rubber (gaskets which crack and fail) plastic (which breaks) all sort of fluids (radiator, transmission, brake, none of which you can simply pump out of the ground), electronics (spark plugs, distributors, fuel injectors, etc.), all carefully integrated into a technological wonder. A gas-car requires an advanced industrial society to produce and maintain. You need a heck of a lot more than a mythological refinery converting crude into the precious juice in the outback. You need a wide array of production facilities, distribution chains, and logistical coordination. If cars were easy, the Romans would have been hot-rodding.

I watched it last night. I thought it was fun. The chase sequence, though similar to the earlier flick, was brilliant to watch.
The biggest plus point of this movie for me was Chris Hemsworth. I thought he was good.


However, the movie lost me in the last act. I thought it wasn't executed well.

leaving aside the external context of the latter films being part of a long-existing franchise, you piece it together from what's provided. a key example in fury road is the old women having to explain to the young women what a tv satellite is, implying that the latter grew up only knowing what the wasteland is (a factor also consistent with the tribe of kids in thunderdome whose only understanding of the old world comes from the mangled fairytale they tell each other). the car styles are also too old to place this anywhere near what a 22-year-old would consider the present.

we also have the citadel, a fortress located over a water supply that allows them to perform agriculture (to say nothing of the green place while it still existed) and has a pump system capable of distributing water to immortan joe's subjects (can't remember if there are electric lights since the vast majority of those movies take place out on the open road, which also defeats the purpose of questioning why they haven't brought back television, much less radio - and wouldn't setting up networks for them consume considerable resources and soldiers in a world where day-to-day survival is the top priority?). in any case, it's kind of the point that joe and his peers are willing to let things stagnate in a way that allows them perpetual control and that fury road is about furiosa wresting that control from them.

how much of that can be hand-waved away by this setting being one built on scavenging old vehicles for spare parts, though (or even something more fantastic like the near-future world producing more durable parts). in any case, i think the vehicular stakes get condensed down into concerns about fuel (whether it's petrol or methane) for the sake of an economical narrative - to worry about every possible thing that could go wrong with a car is to slow things down.

And their parents might have told them. Oral tradition is a thing. Also, this does not let us know if this world should have WiFi or not. If the older women were born at the turn of the 21st century, then this world should have WiFi. If the older women were born in the 1920s, they should not. There is considerable ambiguity here.

We don't know what year it is. We only know that the world is collapsed and collapsed many years ago, probably decades.
The tank car rests on a chassis that was designed in the 21st century. The Kenworth W900 (the War Rig) is still in production. The Vulvalini bike is a 2010 Yamaha. One of the Caltrop cars is a Nissan Skyline, a vehicle made in the age of WiFi. If I am 22 and I see a Skyline, then I probably know that car from Gran Turismo or the Fast and Furious series

Also, it is quite obvious that the film has an aesthetic and that the wastelanders have an aesthetic. Their cars are highly stylized and modded. Older cars have a more iconic style and these people are rebuilding cars with amazing technical proficiency. It is hard as hell to keep a regular car running well in harsh conditions with no auto-parts stores and these people have engines stacked on engines and superchargers stacked on superchargers as their "daily drivers." If you're putting that much work into your ride in a auto-Viking culture with a certain "swag," then it is plausible that you might plop an old Cadillac frame on a modern chassis.

When we are is getting fuzzier with each new entry into the series.

However, even if we grant that we're loosely in some post-1980s Apocalypse, we should see everything but WiFi restored in this world. We should have proper towns, regular air traffic, radio and television broadcasts, sovereign authority of a state larger than a tribe, robust trade routes, manufacturing and distribution.
Right, they have guns and gas. They have ridiculous cars and a rudimentary water supply.
Where is everything else?
But we have been with Max in the wasteland in other films. We have seen more than just Immortan Joe's place. We see no advanced technology (apart from what would be needed to create and sustain the car-force) in this world.
That's my point. Turn your brain off and you can hand-wave away all of it.

The first three films were much more plausible in that the cars had a more scavenged/duct-taped look. When we get to the new films, however, the volume is cranked to 11 and its obvious that the aesthetic has overtaken realism. Again, this is fine, but the question did pop into my head with these new films, where it did not with the old ones.
If we're in a future world with parts that last for decades, you're going to have to tell me why we don't have WiFi. Because if you're making the cars our of duranium, plazsteel, or unobtanium, there should also be WiFi.

That's not the plot of this movie, but okay.

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Why didn't they hunt her down after she went missing from the harem?

I'm watching it now. I bought it digitally for 9.99. I'm an hour and 24 minutes into it and it isn't very exciting or entertaining so far.