Mad Max Fury Road
May. 16th, 2015 05:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alias_sqbrI overall quite enjoyed this film but there were definitely things I didn't like. My feelings are a series of ambivalences which average out positive.
The basic premise is that Max gets captured by a patriarchal warlord Immortan Joe and turned into a "blood bag" donor for his warriors with health problems (cancer?) He ends up caught up in an escape attempt by Charlize Theron's character Furiosa, one of Joe's lieutenants, who's rescuing a bunch of Joe's wives. I haven't seen the other films so have no idea how it meshes with them, but the basic "post apocalyptic world low on water and fuel" setting is explained efficiently.
First and foremost it is like 90% car chases. They are visually spectacular and well made but I'm just not that into car chases and got bored.
It has some amazing female characters, who get to be complex and badass, and Max is ultimately a sidekick to Furiosa. But a lot of the women are pretty young things in revealing outfits, it mostly makes sense because they are rescued "wives" but for example at one point supermodel Megan Gale turns up naked for VERY SHAKY REASONS. Idk the gender politics sometimes rubbed me the wrong way for reasons I can't articulate. But it does have the overall message that women are people, not possessions, and they have buckets of agency. Overall definitely a positive, I adore Furiosa and her arc, just prepare yourself for things to feel creepy at some points.
Max is psychotic and Furiosa is an amputeee, and this is treated really well. But while there's some sympathetic characters with mildly gross physical ailments, the really "weird" or sickly looking characters are all unsympathetic. I think the subtext was that they were parasitic. This can partly be explained by the most unsympathetic characters being old men who've had a chance to live long enough to develop more advanced problems, but all the sympathetic old women look 100% 'normal'. On the plus side, sympathetic old women and unsympathetic old men, no wonder the MRAs are angry :)
The very few POC get treated ok.
Nicholas Hoult is fantastic as one of many topless young male warriors but I feel weird about thinking the boy from "About a boy" is hot.
A matter of not matching up to my personal taste rather than objective flaws: It's incredibly visual and stylistic rather than dialogue driven or realistic. It makes a sort of fantasy dream sense but is not remotely hard sf. It's post apocalyptic. There weren't many Australians, and they didn't even let Charlize Theron use her South African accent.
There's a few things involving children/pregnancy which I thought worked from a storytelling point of view but that some people will find triggering. It is in general a quite visceral, violent movie with some disturbing themes. But I came out feeling a sense of catharsis and hope.
The basic premise is that Max gets captured by a patriarchal warlord Immortan Joe and turned into a "blood bag" donor for his warriors with health problems (cancer?) He ends up caught up in an escape attempt by Charlize Theron's character Furiosa, one of Joe's lieutenants, who's rescuing a bunch of Joe's wives. I haven't seen the other films so have no idea how it meshes with them, but the basic "post apocalyptic world low on water and fuel" setting is explained efficiently.
First and foremost it is like 90% car chases. They are visually spectacular and well made but I'm just not that into car chases and got bored.
It has some amazing female characters, who get to be complex and badass, and Max is ultimately a sidekick to Furiosa. But a lot of the women are pretty young things in revealing outfits, it mostly makes sense because they are rescued "wives" but for example at one point supermodel Megan Gale turns up naked for VERY SHAKY REASONS. Idk the gender politics sometimes rubbed me the wrong way for reasons I can't articulate. But it does have the overall message that women are people, not possessions, and they have buckets of agency. Overall definitely a positive, I adore Furiosa and her arc, just prepare yourself for things to feel creepy at some points.
Max is psychotic and Furiosa is an amputeee, and this is treated really well. But while there's some sympathetic characters with mildly gross physical ailments, the really "weird" or sickly looking characters are all unsympathetic. I think the subtext was that they were parasitic. This can partly be explained by the most unsympathetic characters being old men who've had a chance to live long enough to develop more advanced problems, but all the sympathetic old women look 100% 'normal'. On the plus side, sympathetic old women and unsympathetic old men, no wonder the MRAs are angry :)
The very few POC get treated ok.
Nicholas Hoult is fantastic as one of many topless young male warriors but I feel weird about thinking the boy from "About a boy" is hot.
A matter of not matching up to my personal taste rather than objective flaws: It's incredibly visual and stylistic rather than dialogue driven or realistic. It makes a sort of fantasy dream sense but is not remotely hard sf. It's post apocalyptic. There weren't many Australians, and they didn't even let Charlize Theron use her South African accent.
There's a few things involving children/pregnancy which I thought worked from a storytelling point of view but that some people will find triggering. It is in general a quite visceral, violent movie with some disturbing themes. But I came out feeling a sense of catharsis and hope.
