Mad Max Spoilers

[ruthi]

Went out to see Mad Max Fury Road with friends.



This is an Unordered list of some reactions I had to watching Mad Max Furry Road (2015)

Before the film started, we were joking about waiting for the newsreel and looking forward to the cartoon before the movie. (I was just referring to how long it had been since I'd last gone to the cinema).

• The voices in his head started after the lizard was shown on-screen, so to me the lizard was telepathic.
  
  
• He ate the telepathic two-headed lizard!
  
  
• Nicholas Hoult was in this film, I had the same reaction to Nicholas Hoult that I have had before: he's really good-looking, who is he? -- oh yeah, it's Nicholas Hoult
  
  
• I loved the beginning, the guilt and horror haunting Max, all done in a flash and then the story turns away from it: here is all his manpain. His manpain is NOT IMPORTANT.
  
  
• Then he does the daring escape and he just fails. Haha! The total obvious expectation that he'll get away - he's brave and strong and ingenious, and motivated by so much manpain - he's even slightly lucky, the hook at that level at just that moment, he manages to jump and catch it - then they catch him. They know how to do this, they know how it works, they're not new. That bit, where they bring in the hook and grab Max - I like it so much.
  
  
• I could not remember that the warboys were called warboys, I kept thinking 'fuckboys', (which is a term of derision for disagreeable men from another context.)
  
  
• I liked the colour-coding and the clothes coding- the warboys painted white all over their skin marks them in opposition to Max, in opposition to Furiousa, as servants - people who are not free. The Boss of the citadel is covered but he's also pink, not painted white.
  The brides are covered in white but are struggling free from it, it is unravelling from them as the film goes on.
  The People who are servants are shown half-naked -- the always shirtless warboys, the topless milked women.
  
  
• In the car-chase in the desert, when Furiosa is obviously about to drive into the big storm, I leaned over and told my friend that the cartoon is Roadrunner.
  
  
• This film is racist. [Edit, 22 May: Zoe Kravitz is one of the wives, she is not white, I failed at noticing this.] There's only black people at the very very bottom - both literally and figuratively, at the bottom of the cliff that is the citadel, below everyone else, and figuratively - the most powerless, the poorest, the ones most at the mercy of the ones at the top. But ALSO the film treats them like they have no story, like there's noting that could be interesting about them. They don't have stories.
  Or am I wrong?
  
  
• I loved the ridiculous chase-scene where Max was trying to escape from the warboys - the speed of it was so silent-movie/cartoony and it was funny
  
  
• There were several LOL moments, but I sometimes felt like I was the only one laughing. Sometimes just me and my friends.
  
  
• There's a movie poster where Tom as Max is pictured holding a gun and Charlize Theron as Furiosa is looking over his shoulder, towards the target. I like that there is this poster, I like that in the actual film this moment is followed by him handing her the gun and her hitting the target he was failing to shoot. I liked that moment a lot in the movie, I like it even more now with the context of that movie-poster.
  
  
• The colours are ridiculous, day is orange-yellow, night is blue. The daylight sky is white, which pleased me very much, because the sky can be white on hot days. For night it looked like they just put blue over everything, and things are as visible as the story wants them to be. Cars in the distance: vague menacing shadows and silhouettes. Close-up of a black gun in the night (for instance) -- clear details showing, why not. Then you have the inside of the storm, where there's black-and-white-and-red. I like the ridiculousness.
  
  
• I liked that people were all colour-coded and had ridiculous make-up on for my convenience. After a couple of days of travelling they did not look the same, and then there were some fight-scenes where I was getting lost - I did not know which bald-thin-white-person was beating up which.
  
  
• When I grow up I want to be boltcutters.
  
  
• Furiosa has a metal forearm and hand, and she's not treated as faulty/broken/incapable in any way. It took me a long time to even notice it.
  
  
• A point made on twitter, by
  jennygadget
  
  It's very interesting - and awesome - that Mad Max: Fury Road _discusses_ sexual violence without having any rape scenes.
  - Jenny Kristine (@jennygadget) May 18, 2015
  
  Text of the tweet says: It's very very interesting - and awesome - that Mad Max: Fury Road _discusses_ sexual violence without having any rape scenes.
  
  It manages to blame the patriarchy, and discuss sexual violence, w/out titillating scenes that prove we need at least some men's protection.
  - Jenny Kristine (@jennygadget) May 18, 2015
  
  Text of the tweet: It manages to blame the patriarchy, and discuss sexual violence, w/out titillating scenes that prove we need at least some men's protection.
  
  I liked it, it was fun.
  
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