It is a moral imperative that at some point during the summer months, every citizen must go to a movie theater, gobble an enormous amount of buttered popcorn, quaff a sucrose-rich beverage, and watch a motion picture that is, to put it in the nicest terms, aimed more at the central nervous system than the mind.
It is a moral imperative that at some point during the summer months, every citizen must go to a movie theater, gobble an enormous amount of buttered popcorn, quaff a sucrose-rich beverage, and watch a motion picture that is, to put it in the nicest terms, aimed more at the central nervous system than the mind.
Though it’s only May, the best bet for the Northern Hemisphere’s summer is Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, the fifth film in Australian auteur George Miller’s survey of post-apocalyptic society, with a primary emphasis on explosions, dust storms, frothing madmen with metallic codpieces screaming at one another, and motor vehicles challenging the basic laws of physics. As with the other entries in this franchise, the action sequences in Furiosa operate at the highest level of cinematic craft, and the chaotic production design brims with playfulness and creativity. And there is, thankfully, a smidgen, a soupçon, of intellect to the story, set as it is in a world turned violent during a time of immense scarcity. Put bluntly, if one must watch automobiles smash into one another at preposterous speeds, one should at least do it thoughtfully.
On the off chance that you’ve missed out on Australia’s finest export since the eucalyptus cough drop, the good news is that you don’t really need to have seen any of the other Mad Max movies to “get” this one. As before, there are warring bands of Antipodean marauders fighting over resources (water, cabbage, bullets, and, most importantly, “guzzolene”) and caught in the middle of it all is a force for righteousness who, when pushed, will best any foe with superior vehicular maneuvers. Just when you think the mayhem has reached its apogee, some new miracle of stunt work will lower your jaw even further.
But for returning fans, the latest movie forges new ground in that there is direct connective storytelling tissue. Furiosa is a prequel to 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road, a deserving winner of six Oscars in technical categories but also a nominee for best picture. As with Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which passed the baton to what we now call Star Wars: Episode IV—A New Hope, this picture, which stars young Alyla Browne and then Anya Taylor-Joy as the Wasteland’s Furiosa, hands the gas nozzle over to the earlier Fury Road, when the character was played by Charlize Theron.
At age 79, Miller has earned the right to break his own rules. Since the 1979 debut of the independently financed first film, simply called Mad Max, there had been a defiant lack of continuity between the movies other than “there’s been some kind of war, and now the world is a little nuts.” The elliptical nature has always been part of the magic, with us in the audience piecing together what little backstory exists to learn how society crumbled. Beginning with the second movie (released in 1981 as The Road Warrior in the United States, Mad Max 2 everywhere else, and now branded as Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior on streaming services), Miller has used the screenwriting crutch of voice-over, suggesting that these adventures were simply tall tales remembered years from now. Max’s need for a leg brace following a shootout in the first film was the limit for consistency for the follow-ups; the character even changed actors between the third and fourth films, from Mel Gibson to Tom Hardy.
For those of us nerdy enough to find the sociological aspects of the Mad Max saga as compelling as the explosions, this is a boon. Furiosa begins with a view of Earth from low orbit, zooming in on central Australia, a place that cinema has convinced me is absolutely terrifying. (See: Wake in Fright, The Cars That Ate Paris, the recent The Royal Hotel—even the classic Walkabout, and that’s ostensibly set just a short drive from Sydney.) Here, in what’s known as the Wasteland, there is a hidden, fertile area where a group of mostly women live in a land of relative abundance. A young Furiosa plucks an apple bursting with symbolism just before she is snatched by gross bikers who take her to Dementus (Chris Hemsworth), the leader of a particularly cruel gang who rides a chariot hitched to three motorcycles, like Ben-Hur meets The Wild One.
At first Dementus is hoping the young Furiosa will tell him where the mythical land of plenty lies, but when she refuses to crack—even when her mother is tortured to death—he decides to keep her as something of a pet. Witnessing the atrocities of this group, she yearns even more for independence and a return to her home but also picks up a thing or two about the warrior lifestyle. As Dementus’s star in the Wasteland grows, he becomes a challenger to Immortan Joe, the leader of the Citadel, a feudalist community that has a chokehold on water and vegetables (mainly cabbage).
The other two realms are Gas Town, where oil is both pumped and refined, and the Bullet Farm, where metal is mined and transformed into armaments. These are three independent fiefdoms, but Immortan Joe is chief among equals, thanks in large part to the dominion of his fleet along the connective Fury Road, kept safe by his devoted War Boys.
All of this is in Fury Road if you pay close attention, but it can be hard to do so with all the high-velocity car crashes and whatnot. Furiosa takes a page or two from the series Game of Thrones (or The Expanse or the recent Shogun) to give us a few scenes of clan negotiations and scheming. It’s risky to pump the brakes on a Mad Max movie like this, but the characterizations are so over the top and the dialogue so filled with WWE-like bombast that it’s almost as fun as the automotive madness.
And this is key to Miller’s success. Maybe it’s due to the realities of climate change or the COVID-19 pandemic or just the state of current politics, but there’s a distinct lack of fun in the phrase “post-apocalyptic” these days. Recent series such as The Last of Us, films such as Children of Men, and books such as The Road, to pick just a few, show the end of the world as a real downer. While I would never choose to live in the Wasteland, Miller understands that if the world must end, watching it do so should at least be extremely exciting.
To that end, a ticket to Furiosa is a valuable use of your resources, even if you find yourself with stagnant wages in a time of inflation. I’d even suggest paying a little extra for a “premium large format” screening such as 4DX if it is available to you. Those revving engines doubling as a lower back massage pair nicely with a drink refill.
The post The New ‘Mad Max’ Makes the End of the World Fun Again appeared first on Foreign Policy.
