1. Your oppressive post-apocalyptic world doesn’t have to be physically dark. It can actually be bright and colorful. The audience actually likes to be able to see what is going on.
2. Visual story telling is a lost art that needs to be found again. Seriously, this movie did not have a lot of dialog to begin with but you could have taken it all out and I would have still been able to follow the movie pretty well. Show us, don’t tell us.
3. Physical effects enhanced by CGI are the way to go. It will always have more weight than CGI on its own. Real people doing real stunts in real locations gives a substance that is missed when the same stunts are done in front of a green screen.
4. (and this one is REALLY important) You can have an action movie that centers around interesting female characters that aren’t being objectified and have their own agency and people will see it (and it will be AWESOME!). Also, your male character doesn’t always have to come charging to the rescue, he can even be the “damsel in distress” occasionally.
5. A flame throwing guitar is an excellent addition to any chase scene.
I can’t get over how confused he is I can’t I can’t
And I love how gentle she is with it? She doesn’t exactly have a lot of reason to be kind to him, we’ve seen she has rage and stress and frustration enough to spread it around, and yet this patient kindness.
“I am one of the Vuvalini! Of the many mothers. My initiate mother was Katee Comcannon! I am the daughter of Mary Jo Bassa! My clan was Swaddle Dog”
Let’s be sad together and think about how often Furiosa must have repeated those words to herself. Seven thousand nights of trying to keep hold of who she was. Twenty years of doing the Devil’s bidding, of working to secure herself in his trust. Of transporting new girls to be his wives. Of wondering if they will even want her back after all the things she’s done. Of stamping down on her anger and her disgust and of biding her time and all that time, every night, like a mantra, saying it to herself.
“I am one of the Vuvalini Of the Many Mothers. My initiate mother
was Katee Comcannon. I am the daughter of Mary Jo Bassa. My clan was
Swaddle Dog. I am one of the Vuvalini. I am one of the Vuvalini.”
toast knowing her way around guns. just. every gun. all of them
toast saying they can “squeeze off this little [gun] a raunchy 29 times” and looking at max like maybe she’s trying to get a reaction out of him but he does fuck-all
nux kissing capable on. the cheek. a cheek kiss. on the cheek. boy was spraying poison on his face a few scenes ago now he’s kissing people on the cheek don’t touch me
nux still referring to max as “blood bag” even after he’s part of their little makeshift family & how it’s another illustration of nux’s weird innocence. ‘cause “blood bag” isn’t inherently a derogatory term in his head it’s just stating a fact and he doesn’t have anything else to call max so it doesn’t occur to him that maybe max doesn’t want to be called “blood bag” but here we are
“tree thing”
the fact that the wives know what trees are even though they’re around the same age as nux (or younger) but they’ve got books/have probably read about trees & deduced that that thing is, in fact, called a tree
“stay where you are little joe. it’s kinda lost its novelty out here” dag pls
“warlord junior. gonna be so ugly” “it could be a girl” KEEPER OF THE SEEDS PLS
the way they light max’s eyes in the “hope is a mistake” scene
when max tells furiosa his plan about cutting back through the canyon and blowing it up behind them and the kEEPER. OF THE SEEDS. SAYS “KABOOM”
aND MAX SMILES AND POINTS AT HER LIKE “she gets it”
that black-top in the final battle trying to intimidate furiosa by hissing at her and she roars and head butts him so hard dickhole probably ain’t got a face anymore
furiosa and max’s last fights being edited together because parallels and also punches n stuff being timed w/ drumbeats because the actual hero of this movie is punk rock
when furiosa and the wives are pulled up on the platform at the end and they pull other people up w/ them (as opposed to those people being beaten down at the beginning)
the closeup of the dude w/ the facial growths who gets pulled onto the platform and is open-mouthed smiling so hard while gazing upwards idk he just makes me happy
the women who were hooked up to the milking machines being the ones to start the water flowing once they see immortan joe is dead
all the “fuck capitalism” content in this movie culminating in one big happy “NO SERIOUSLY FUCK CAPITALISM” final scene
One of the many reasons MAD MAX: FURY ROAD is so successful as an action film is the editing style. By using “Eye Trace” and “Crosshair […cut for length]
It occurs to me that one of the reasons Mad Max is so remarkably effective at eschewing the male gaze may be because of this approach. If you listen to this pre-release talk by the cinematographers, he talks about how challenging it was for him to follow Miller’s edict to keep the centre on whatever was meant to be the focus of the scene because, and this is from memory and it’s a two hour talk, ( but I think it’s in the first twenty minutes or so, and he says it twice, so if anyone wants to go check?) his instinct was to include the beautiful girls in the back of the cab.
Like, he literally mentions how gorgeous Rosie Huntington-Whiteley is, and how it went against all his instincts to leave her out, even though the scene was supposed to be about Furiosa, or Max.
And I think we the viewers noticed that.
As someone who has no training in film or video, I would have to see some counter-examples, to see how not-on-center more conventional cinematography is. And to see some more exploration of what it has to do with male (or other) gaze.
Most film composition and photography composition is off-center for visual interest. Specifically they aim to hit one of the golden ratio ‘points of interest’, all you have to do is google “Golden Ratio” or “Rule of Thirds” and the word “composition”. This is the golden ratio:
The blue lines are where it would appear on a rectangle the ‘points of interest is roughly where the lines cross perpendicular. You can ‘cheat’ by using ‘thirds’ (black lines) instead of the golden (blue lines) REMEMBER THESE POINTS:
This is (mostly) center frame:
This is more classically composed:
You can see especially how she literally shifts from one point of the golden ratio to another. Your eyes are immediately drawn to her eyes. (San Andreas trailer which is mostly clean of male gaze)
Max is, as a still shot, in comparison more ‘boring’. Your eyes aren’t ‘led’ anywhere. There’s nowhere for it to go…which is a good thing because your attention needs to be about right there because Max is going to nearly get his head taken off.
And then you have the Age of Ultron trailer. (Fuck you Marvel):
If you’re framing this by the golden ratio, one of the points of interest is at her eyes, the other is her cleavage. I BARELY HAD TO GO 20s INTO THE TRAILER.
Why don’t we get Steve’s cleavage?
Why don’t we get Tony’s cleavage?
Both their eyes are at the sweet spot of the Golden Ratio.
Natasha’s head and ass are too, however.
Red Witch’s chest instead of her face….
See how there’s almost no headspace for Natasha:
The focus here is literally NOT on her face, it’s on Natasha’s chest and hips
EY FATTY BOOM BOOM 