Rape: As countless people have said – Half of the movie’s main cast consists of sex slaves. And there’s not a single rape scene.
Gore: The film looks exactly the type to be ultra-violent a la Quentin Tarantino. But it’s not. The one gory moment is one that you can see coming from miles away and lasts only for a second. And even then, it’s not terrible. Considering this, the movie probably could have had a PG-13 rating with minor alteration.
Sexualization: Five women wearing nothing but gauze sounds like a recipe for anything but what we got; no lingering, awkward, bodily shots. There was even a scene with a completely naked young woman with the camera focused directly on her. Guess what. The camera treated her exactly as if she were wearing flannel pajamas.
Degradation of women: Bad people get upset. We get that. Sometimes they like to swear at our heroines. And yet no one felt the need to say “bitch,” “cunt,” or “whore.” How a film managed to present about the least female-friendly society you can imagine but treated its female characters with more respect than 99% of action movies is beyond me.
Things that the film did not handle with restraint:
FLAMETHROWER GUITAR.
Gender equality: No one once says “Women are ___,” or “Men are ___.” It almost seems like outside of Immortan Joe’s freakishly utilitarian society, men and women get along just fine. Huh. Weird.
Death: Good and bad people die alike on the Fury Road; very quickly. It’s your typical action movie body count. But in a move that’s both odd and brilliant, the film spends a good amount of it’s scarce dialogue detailing what death means to the characters. For some, it’s a suicidal call to honor. For others, it’s a necessary risk to bring about more life. People die in droves. And it’s sad. Death matters.
Criticism: This is about the most critical movie of gender inequality, capitalism, and fascism I’ve ever seen without anyone ever mentioning gender inequality, capitalism or fascism.
COMPASSION: I can’t state this enough. This is a post-apocalyptic genre movie where people kill each other over sex slaves, border disputes, and cars and its message is hope and compassion. The biggest, most heroic moment of the movie is an act of healing, not an act of violence. WHOA.
do you mean this face anon?? this face?? because yeah. yeeeah. that is the face of the most frantic, most terrified, tiny baby ever to roam the wasteland.
or maybe you mean this face, where he’s realising exactly how hurt she is (and cheedo’s in the background like eh, tis a scratch).
or maybe you mean this face, which i like to call The Worst Face, because of how terrible it is. this is the face you make when you realise that you have to bail soon because you’re having feelings and that hasn’t happened in A Long Time.
Loved the character of Capable because she showed how you can have a strong femals character who doesn’t necessarily kick butt and shoot things but uses compassion and understanding to shape the course of the narrative.
So this was my absolute favourite moment in Mad Max: Fury Road.
Max can’t make the shot. Tries, fails, tries, fails, and there’s only one more bullet left.
No belittling, no defensiveness, no shaming from either of them. It’s just the best person for the job. He hands the rifle over to her, without discussion, to do what she’s good at in the critical moment, and does what he can to support her success – acts as a motionless prop for her shot.
Equals. Respecting each other’s skills. Relying on each other.
If this is madness we could do with a little more of it.
Also let’s not forget one of Max’s major traits up to this point was being jumpy. And he’s just so still here. And so passive to her. I say it that way because all we’ve seen this dude do up to this point is fight everyone and everything like a feral animal, eyes darting, snatching stuff, utterly confused. This is the equivalent of a wild dog letting someone use him as a prop and holding perfectly still for that. The level of trust Max has to give here is insane, and he offers it up willingly.
One of the things about Furiosa that I appreciate is she is never super nice and sweet and squishy inside to “make up” for her rough exterior. Yes, we see her in tender and vulnerable moments, especially with the Vuvalini, but she never does that thing that is often done with rough/hard/brutal characters (especially female characters), where we see them secretly being all warm and fuzzy because they’ve just put up a front to protect themselves. Furiosa has been hardened and burned in the fires and horrors of the wasteland, but she has become strong and tough throughout. Her survival instincts and strength don’t exist only to protect some squishy interior, they are who she is to her core.
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