Mad Max Beyond Max

This started off as a Facebook post, but I wrote some things to expand upon it here, and to make it a little more widely available to invite discussion.

So first off, I know there are people whose chief complaint with Fury Road is that the character of Mad Max Rockatansky is sidelined in his own outing….but….I never really got that. After the first Mad Max, Max becomes far less of a traditional character with a developmental arc so much as an embodied archetype. The reluctant wandering hero. The amoral Ronin whose scarred heart is touched by something or someone he finds in the chaos which induces him to act, but in the end, never participate in the humanity he fights to preserve. The Road Warrior does not go north with the Gyrocaptain and the tribe. Mad Max does not join the kids beyond Thunderdome. These stories are not about him per say. He is the agent of change that facilitates and acts as a catalyst for the narrative. The Road Warrior is about Papagalo’s people escaping the refinery. Thunderdome is the Crack In The Earth kids, Pig Killer, and the Aviator and his son finding a new life. Fury Road is Furiosa and the women escaping and ultimately breaking the power of Immortan Joe. Max always remains in the wasteland, like Godzilla sinking into the Sea of Japan to be awakened again at some later date when someone else bumps into him or some other need for him arises. So….yeah, the take that Max is not the main character in Fury Road…feels like an uninformed criticism. Plus, if you wanna dismiss one of the most innovative and visionary action movies of the last two decades because Mel Gibson isn’t in it or Tom Hardy isn’t in it enough….OK, man. Take feels pretty hot, but you’re entitled to it.

All that out of the way, Furiosa is not a Mad Max movie, or, it’s more akin to the first Mad Max. It’s an origin story with a compelling main character embarking on a vengeful journey, often surprisingly literate. In Furiosa George Miller greatly expands the world he has created over decades, dropping tidbits that I know made RPG writers who watched this champ at the bit to create a sourcebook around it. I’m sure it’s coming. But…it’s not done in a lazy or distracting way and nothing is overtly handed over in some long exposition. We just hear about Gas Wars and Water Wars and glimpse the inner workings of the Bullet Farm and Gas Town, only name dropped in Fury Road. I really loved the inclusion of Furiosa’s mentor/nominal love interest Praetor Jack (he reminded me of Robert Ginty…a kind of….lesser Mad Max. Grouchy Max). There are other road warriors out there. This is an expansive world with many stories to be told. I hope to God Disney doesn’t get a hold of it.

Whereas Fury Road was more plot driven, Furiosa is definitely a more traditional narrative. It is not breakneck nonstop action. Anya Taylor Joy is fabulous, milking her large, expressive eyes to spout all the dialogue she doesn’t speak. Yet when characters do speak…I found the language very interesting, a hodge podge of slang and flourid, sometimes poetic competency, like the dialogue of a Daniel Woodrell period novel (very refreshing when compared to the dumbed down dialogue of Villeneuve’s Dune).

I was afraid Chris Hemsworth’s star power would overwhelm his character, but Dementus is so far apart from anything I’ve ever seen him do, he was not a distraction, and the villain never veered into cartoonishness. There is a level of damage to him that admirably informs his lunacy so it never feels contrived to me.

It’s a very different movie from the rest of the Mad Max series, as each entry has been wildly different from the other. George Miller’s imagination, both as an action filmmaker and a worldbuilder has been undersold for decades. I think he may even surpass George Lucas in terms of having realized a cinematic setting that I suspect will be around and unfortunately exploited long after the world loses his genius.

Incidentally I attempted to rewatch the whole series prior to seeing this but ended up stopping Fury Road to go to the theater, right around the time Furiosa is cryptically reminiscing to Max about her backstory, so the experience of watching this was like taking a long sidetrip into an extended flashback before coming back to the thrilling (and thus, more satisfying) climax of that movie.

If Furiosa suffers from anything, it’s the ending, which was just a tad ambiguous. In the midst of this epic 40 Day Wasteland War, we are torn away to follow its main instigator apparently pulling a kind of Saddam Hussein and buggering off into the wastes with only Furiosa in hot pursuit. We don’t get how Furiosa becomes an Imperator, but it can be inferred. Instead of the explosive action packed ending Fury Road had, Miller gives us a hypothetical, a fantasy denouement (this is what may have happened). Furiosa’s story is legendary, and nobody knows the truth behind a legend – not even Miller, a post apocalyptic Homer who is only relating what he knows.

To sum up, it is not the action masterpiece Fury Road was, though there are some pretty thrilling action set pieces and moments that made my eyes pop. The post credit flashes to Fury Road do Furiosa a bit of a disservice by inviting comparison. Think of it as the first Creed movie to the Rocky series that spawned it. I was really impressed.

In rewatching the series, I got to thinking about how you can visually follow the branching tributaries of George Miller’s imagination, and how it evolves and is expanded upon. I’m not sure if there are deliberate Easter eggs or just unconscious motiffs.

I was watching Furiosa and noticing the reappearance of the V8, and how the idea of the War Rig began with the climactic chase from the Road Warrior, the fortified Mack Truck evolving into this thunderous, armored, rolling combat platform in Fury Road and Furiosa. I also noticed Goose’s cycle from Mad Max, Blaster’s whistle from Thunderdome, and got to thinking how Furiosa’s Green Place resembles the Crack In The Earth. The kids from the Crack can be traced back to the Feral Kid in Road Warrior, and the War Boys of the Immortan sure look like Scrooloose from Thunderdome. The Doof Warrior bounces in a bungie chord sling, and the hang gliding boarders of Furiosa are expansions on the Polecats. Furiosa’s mother is suspended and tortured similarly to the captives under Lord Humoungus. Just observations, and like I said, probably just the creative evolution of Miller’s imagination. But it’s fun to trace the threads back and forth.