Tag: mad max: fury road

for-the-other-shoe:

OMG:

I called George at three in the morning and said, “I have to shave my head.” I loved it, but everyone hated me because it defined the look for the War Boys and all the stunt people. We had these huge, hardened stuntment whining, “I don’t wanna shave my head.”

[…]

“We’d knit,” says Theron, “There are photos of Nick, all muscular in leather pants with his head shaved, knitting a scarf. He made a ton of stuff. He made all our Christmas presents. I think Tom got in on it. But he dropped a lot of stitches. Not a world-class knitter in my opinion.”

Okay first, the fact that THERON defined the War Boys look makes me cackle to no end. 

But also, Hardy’s a method actor, so here I am imagining him with face screwed up, knitting needles clicking furiously like nail files, grunting in frustration.

madhardy:

cactusspatz:

out-there-on-the-maroon:

verysharpteeth:

superhumandisasters:

What a good fight scene. This encounter could have been played a lot of ways, some of them unsavory given we start with one armed man and six unarmed women,.but the most terrified character here is easily Max. The Five Wives are frightened, but more angry and fed up, and Furiosa is just, well, furious. Meanwhile, Max spends the first half of the film acting like a nervous stray on the verge of fear-biting.

This is it exactly. Max keeps flicking the guns around and snatching things because he’s honestly on the very edge of panic. He’s just been chased down, tattooed, used as an unwilling blood donor, made a hood ornament, nearly died in a car chase and dust storm like 5 million times, and is plagued by hallucinations on a GOOD day. Everything he does up until he starts realizing Furiosa needs his help and she TRUSTS him is someone fueled completely by terror. It says something about Furiosa that she figures out very quickly that Max isn’t so much a threat as he’s also a victim, useful, and SCARED. 

Something my boyfriend pointed out is that Max is remembering how to talk through the first chunk of the movie. 

I thought he was just grunting and stuff because “rawr I am a badass male action hero man” and didn’t wanna use words. But no, no he’s remembering how to talk. He’s been wandering the desert for who knows how long, not speaking to another soul, hallucinating, and when he’s confronted by the Wives and Furiosa he can barely communicate beyond the violence he’s been subjected to at the hands of the War Boys and in his interactions previous to that. He remembers how to speak as the movie progresses. 

Also, Max clearly isn’t interested in killing anyone in that first fight. Furiosa puts a gun to Max’s head and pulls the trigger – twice – but Max walks up with a busted shotgun, wastes six bullets on warning shots, and disables Nux with a punch in the solar plexus even though he’s holding a loaded pistol.

Even at his most feral, just out of an experience that would curl most people into a ball of helpless panic, Max just wants to get away, not kill anybody. It breaks my heart.

This movie is honestly a master class in show not tell. This is the reason why the script is probably like six pages – we really don’t need dialogue. The fact that Max doesn’t straight up kill Furiosa – when it’s made perfectly clear that she would kill him in a heart beat if their roles were reversed – is such a heavy and telling moment, character wise.  Max doesn’t kill anyone until he has to. Not when he’s escaping in the very beginning (when he has that war boy up against the wall of the cave he could easily snap his neck but he doesn’t), and not when he could very easily kill Nux for what he’s put him through.

Because he’s not out for vengeance. Not like Furiosa. Furiosa is angry, she wants revenge, she wants to tear people apart with her bare hands. Max is a kicked dog. Feral and crazy, yes, but ultimately his overarching driving force is fear. And Furiosa sees that immediately. Plays off that fear, of being trapped and locked up (”you want that thing off your face?”). Gives him things to do because she knows he’s terrified but obviously can also handle himself. Immediately sees his value as an ally. Gives him time to pull himself together. 

And she’s rewarded, in the end, for trusting her gut. I’m so sad. 

bai-xue88:

Ok, things I’ve found in the Mad Max artbook, comics and interviews that shed light on daily life with Immortan Joe and the wives:

– Joe doesn’t actually need his mask. It’s just an air purifier so he doesn’t breathe in dust and gas.

– Cheedo is the youngest, and also the only virgin. This could be because Joe has issues with sleeping with young girls, which is an interesting quirk for someone who otherwise has no problem with using and abusing human bodies. It could also be because Cheedo hasn’t menstruated yet; malnutrition, stress, and/or illness can delay puberty – all quite likely factors in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

– Part of the reason Cheedo is willing to return to Joe is because she hasn’t realized how horrific the reality of being his wife truly is; he has not yet forced himself on her.

– Splendid self-harms, creating deliberate scarification on both her arms and her face. This is basically her only means of rebellion prior to the escape (harming Joe’s ‘property’).

– Joe intentionally sought out one of the few historians in the world (Miss Giddy) to tutor his wives and give them a good education. Despite seeing his wives as his property, he clearly takes pride in having them be the best in every way, including in their intelligence and knowledge. Miss Giddy is more than just their caretaker; she’s their teacher and mentor.

– The wives regularly see Joe at his most intimate, not just when he wants sex. They see enough of him to know that he is 100% human and that he’s “full of shit.” This would imply that Joe is at his most relaxed around them, that he spends real “quality” time with them.

– The Citadel’s upper floors are climate controlled, and the girls are dressed accordingly, able to live in their sheer sarongs with little discomfort due to temperature or weather.

– Despite most of the books in the world being burned, Joe has collected what remaining books he can for his wives, likely to contribute to their education.

– Joe’s Gigahorse is designed to represent animalistic copulation.

– The five women we meet are in no way his first wives. He has been a slaver-polygamist for a long time, giving each wife three chances to produce a healthy heir before he divorces them and sends them out among the Wretched. Until Splendid, there was no ‘success.’

– When the wives escape, Joe blames only Furiosa, thinking that she’s fed them lies and intentionally undermined his relationships with them. This indicates that he probably thought they were devoted to him before Furiosa ‘got to them’.

– Joe legitimately sees himself as the savior of the wastes. Whether he actually considers himself divine is up to debate, but he certainly views himself as reasonable, benevolent and paternal to both his people and his wives. He provides for his wives (as long as the marriages last) and sees himself as a good husband. They are precious to him, but still objects in his eyes.

Hypothesis:

kaasknot:

laureljupiter:

adreadfulidea:

kaasknot:

The War Boys aren’t actually that sick.

1) It could be that a particular kind of tumor is common in the Citadel, courtesy of Founder’s Effect; this would explain why everyone from the Citadel’s genetic pool has tumors/boils/buboes, but individuals from outside populations–Furiosa, Max, the Wives (possibly), the Vuvalini–don’t have them. This would also explain why supposedly pervasive radiation toxicity appears only to affect one population instead of all populations.

2) The War Boys’ and the Wretched’s ailments are curable. The tumors are relatively benign and easily removed (there was no sign of cachexia in populations that weren’t starved, and Nux didn’t seem to be suffering from organ failure); the night fevers are a series of infections endemic to the War Boys’ shitty living conditions; and the reason they need blood transfusions so often is because they’re highly active while on a subpar diet, and thus chronically anemic.

3) If maintaining a death cult is critical to your holding power, one of the best ways to keep the members of said cult properly suicidal is to assure them their lot will be better in the next life. For them to believe it, their lot has to be suitably miserable in THIS life. That’s really not hard to do in Mad Max Land, but it’s even easier if they believe they’re running out of time. How to do this? Tell them their ailments are fatal. Tell them they’re living half-lives on borrowed time. Tell them only cowards die in bed, and that the bravest, the ones who die in battle, are the only ones who get to paradise.

Conclusion: Immortan Joe is a dick. News at 11.

All possible, especially given the apparent uniformity of the War Boy’s illnesses which would either suggest that they come from the same genetic pool (not likely given how many of them there are) or that they’re being exposed to some environmental contamination that is causing that same illness over and over again. Could be the fuel, honestly. Who knows what “Guzzoline” even really is.

I did have a theory myself… that they were that sick, even to dying, but it was being caused deliberately. Immortan Joe controls water supplies and presumably food as well; he could poison them easily enough for all the reasons you outline in point #3. That way when they are (very) young and strong they’re devoted to him, but as they get old enough to possibly start questioning him they sicken and die so he never has to deal with a potential rebellion or movement against him.

I was wondering about this too, mostly because the thought of the surviving women and Furiosa heading back to a place that was so irradiated most of the population dies in their early 20′s was pretty horrible; I finished the movie weirdly anxious about how they needed to to find whatever in the Citadel was giving people half-lives and get it the fuck out of there and dump it at the local This Place Is Not A Place Of Honor ASAP. 

But whatever illness the War Boys are all dying from, the women being milked don’t have it, the wives and Miss Giddy are fine, Joe’s sons respectively have OI and some kind of mental disability but no cancer, no tumors, no need for blood transfusions.  The only people dealing with anything like what’s going on with the War Boys are the War Boys and Joe himself, which makes me think you’re right that they’re being poisoned, and that suspect #1 for whatever contaminant is making them all sick is in that white war paint.  Joe wears it for public appearances but washes it off when he’s at home.  The War Boys ritualistically cake themselves in it from an early age and apparently wear it 24/7, so by the time they hit Nux’s age, they’ve got at least a decade of built up exposure.

I like this theory a LOT. Especially if their white paint is based off of titanium dioxide, the same chemical that goes into pretty much every white dye that we have, as well as sunscreen. Normally it’s not exceptionally hazardous, as it can’t penetrate our skin; but it’s classed as a carcinogen if inhaled:

“Titanium dioxide dust, when inhaled, has been classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) as an IARC Group 2B carcinogen, meaning it is possibly carcinogenic to humans. The findings of the IARC are based on the discovery that high concentrations of pigment-grade (powdered) and ultrafine titanium dioxide dust caused respiratory tract cancer in rats exposed by inhalation and intratracheal instillation.” (courtesy of Wikipedia).

When Joe applies the white paint, it’s applied as a powder. Tack on high concentrations of harmful environmental radiation and you’ve got yourself a health problem. Added to that, there’s a lot of toxic chemical slag that goes into titanium dioxide production. And if the War Boys produce the powder themselves, then that’s another cause.