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damienkarras73 · 6 months ago

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An essay on Furiosa, the politics of the Wasteland, Arthurian literature and realistic vs. formalistic CGI

Mad Max: Fury Road absolutely enraptured me when it came out nearly a decade ago, and I will cop to seeing it four times at the theatre. For me (and many others who saw the light of George Miller) it set new standards for action filmmaking, storytelling and worldbuilding, and I could pop in its Blu Ray at any time and never get tired of it. Perhaps not surprisingly, I was deeply apprehensive about the announced prequel for Fury Road's actual main character, Furiosa, even if Miller was still writing and directing. We didn't need backstory for Furiosa—hell, Fury Road is told in such a way that NOTHING in it requires explicit backstory. And since it focuses on the Yung Furiosa, it meant Charlize Theron couldn't return with another career-defining performance. Plus, look at all that CGI in the trailer, it can't be as good as Fury Road.

Turns out I was silly to doubt George Miller, M.D., A.O., writer and director of Babe: Pig in the City and Happy Feet One & Two.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is excellent, and I needn't have worried about it not being as good as Fury Road because it is not remotely trying to be Fury Road. Fury Road is a lean, mean machine with no fat on it, nothing extraneous, operating with constant forward momentum and only occasionally letting up to let you breathe a little; Furiosa is a classical epic, sprawling in scope, scale and structure, and more than happy to let the audience simmer in a quiet, almost painfully still moment. If its opening spoken word sequence by that Gandalf of the Wastes himself, the First History Man, didn't already clue you in, it unfolds like something out of myth, a tale told over and over again and whose possible embellishments are called attention to in the dialogue itself. Where Fury Road scratched the action nerd itch in my head like you wouldn't believe, Furiosa was the equivalent of Miller giving the undulating folds of my English major brain a deep tissue massage. That's great! I, for one, love when sequels/prequels endeavour to be fundamentally different movies from what they're succeeding/preceding, operating in different modes, formats and even genres, and more filmmakers should aim for it when building on an existing series.

This movie has been on my mind so much in the past week that I've ended up dedicating several cognitive processes to keeping track of all of the different ponderings it's spawned. Thankfully, Furiosa is divided into chapters (fun fact: putting chapter cards in your movie is a quick way to my heart), so it only seems fitting that I break up all of these cascading thoughts accordingly.

1. The Pole of Inaccessibility

Furiosa herself actually isn't the protagonist for the first chapter of her own movie, instead occupying the role of a (very crafty and resourceful) damsel in distress for those initial 30-40 minutes. The real hero of the opening act, which plays out like a game of cat and mouse, is Furiosa's mother Mary Jabassa, who rides out into the wasteland first on horseback and then astride a motorcycle to track down the band of raiders that has stolen away her daughter. Mary's brought to life by Miller and Nico Lathouris' economical writing and a magnetic performance by newcomer Charlee Fraser, who radiates so much screen presence in such relatively little time and with one of those instant "who is SHE??" faces. She doesn't have many lines, but who needs them when Fraser can convey volumes about Mary with just a flash of her eyes or the effortless way she swaps out one of her motorcycle's wheels for another. To be quite candid, I'm not sure of the last time I fell in love with a character so quickly.

You notice a neat aesthetic contrast between mother and daughter in retrospect: Mary Jabassa darts into the desert barefoot, clad in a simple yet elegant dress, her wolf cut immaculate, only briefly disguising herself with the ugly armour of a raider she just sniped, and when she attacks it's almost with grace, like some Greek goddess set loose in the post-apocalyptic Aussie outback with just her wits and a bolt-action rifle; we track Furiosa's growth over the years by how much of her initially conventional beauty she has shed, quite literally in one case (hair buzzed, severed arm augmented with a chunky mechanical prosthesis, smeared in grease and dirt from head to toe, growling her lines at a lower octave), and by how she loses her mother's graceful approach to movement and violence, eventually carrying herself like a blunt instrument. Yet I have zero doubt the former raised the latter, both angels of different feathers but with the same steel and resolve. Of fucking course this woman is Furiosa's mother, and in the short time we know her we quickly understand exactly why Furiosa has the drive and morals she does without needing to resort to didactic exposition.

Anyway, I was tearing up by the end of the first chapter. Great start!

2. Lessons from the Wasteland

Most movies—most stories, really—don't actually tell the entire narrative from A to Z. Perhaps the real meat of the thing is found from H to T, and A-G or U-Z are unnecessary for conveying the key narrative and themes. So many prequels fail by insisting on telling the A-G part of the story, explaining how the hero earned a certain nickname or met their memorable sidekick—but if that stuff was actually interesting, they likely would have included it in the original work. The greatest thing a prequel can actually do is recontextualize, putting iconic characters or moments in a new light, allowing you to appreciate them from a different angle. All of season 2 of Fargo serves to explain why Molly Solverson's dad is appropriately wary when Lorne Malvo enters his diner for a SINGLE SCENE in the show's first season. David's arc from the Alien prequels Prometheus and Covenant—polarizing as those entries are—adds another layer to why Ash is so protective of the creature in the first movie. Andor gives you a sense of what it's like for a normal, non-Jedi person to live under the boot of the Empire and why so many of them would join up with the Rebel Alliance—or why they would desire to wear that boot, or even just crave the chance to lick it.

Furiosa is one of those rare great prequels because it makes us take a step back and consider the established world with a little more nuance, even if it's still all so absurd. In Fury Road, Immortan Joe is an awesome, endlessly quotable villain, completely irredeemable, and basically a cartoon. He works perfectly as the antagonist of that breakneck, Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote-ass movie, but if you step outside of its adrenaline-pumping narrative for even a moment you risk questioning why nobody in the Citadel or its surrounding settlements has risen up against him before. Hell, why would Furiosa even work for him to begin with? But then you see Dementus and company tear-assing around the wasteland, seizing settlements and running them into the ground, and you realize Joe and his consortium offer something that Dementus reasonably can't: stability—granted, an unwavering, unchangeable stability weighted in favour of Joe's own brutal caste system, but stability nonetheless. It really makes you wonder, how badly does a guy have to suck to make IMMORTAN JOE of all people look like a sane, competent and reasonable ruler by comparison?!?

…and then they open the door to the vault where he keeps his wives, and in a flash you're reminded just how awful Joe is and why Furiosa will risk her life to help some of these women flee from him years later. This new context enriches Joe and makes it more believable that he could maintain power for so long, but it doesn't make him any less of a monster, and it says a lot about Furiosa's hate for Dementus that she could grit her teeth and work for this sick old tyrant.

3. The Stowaway

Here's another wild bit of trivia about this movie: you don't actually see top-billed actress Anya Taylor-Joy pop up on screen until roughly halfway through, once Furiosa is in her late teens/early twenties. Up until this point she's been played by Alyla Browne, who through the use of some seamless and honestly really impressive CGI has been given Anya's distinctive bug eyes [complimentary]. It's one of those bold choices that really works because Miller commits to it so hard, though it does make me wish Browne's name was up on the poster next to Taylor-Joy's.

Speaking of CGI, I should talk about what seems to be a sticking point for quite a few people: if there's been one consistent criticism of Furiosa so far, it's that it doesn't look nearly as practical or grounded as Fury Road, with more obvious greenscreen and compositing, and what previously would've been physical stunt performers and pyrotechnics have been replaced with their digital equivalents for many shots. Simply put, it doesn't look as real! For a lot of people, that practicality was one of Fury Road's primary draws, so I won't try to quibble if they're let down by Furiosa's overt artificiality, but to be honest I'm actually quite fine with it. It helps that this visual discrepancy doesn't sneak up on you but is incredibly apparent right from the aerial zoom-down into Australia in the very first scene, so I didn't feel misled or duped.

Fury Road never asks you to suspend your disbelief because it all looks so believable; Furiosa jovially prods you to suspend that disbelief from the get-go and tune into it on a different wavelength. It's a classical epic, and like the classical epics of the 1950s and 60s it has a lot of actors standing in front of what clearly are matte paintings. It feels right! We're not watching fact, we're watching myth. I'm willing to concede there might be a little bit of post-hoc rationalization on my part because I simply love this movie so much, but I'm not holding the effects in Furiosa to the same standard as those in Fury Road because I simply don't believe Miller and his crew are attempting to replicate that approach. Without the extensive CGI, we don't get that impressive long, panning take where a stranded Furiosa scans the empty, dust-and-sun-scoured wasteland (75% Sergio Leone, 25% Andrei Tarkovsky), or the Octoboss and his parasailing goons. For the sake of intellectual exercise I did try imagining them filming the Octoboss/war rig sequence with the same immersive practical approach they used for Fury Road's stunts, however I just kept picturing dead stunt performers, so perhaps the tradeoff was worth it!

4. Homeward

Around the same time we meet the Taylor-Joy-pilled Furiosa in Chapter 3, we're introduced to Praetorian Jack, the chief driver for the convoys running between the Citadel and its allied settlements. Jack's played by Tom Burke, who pulled off a very good Orson Welles in Mank! and who I should really check out in The Souvenir one of these days. He's also a cool dude! Here are some facts about Praetorian Jack:

He's decked out in road leathers with a pauldron stitched to one shoulder

He's stoic and wary, but still more or less personable and can carry on a conversation

Professes to a certain cynicism, to quote Special Agent Albert Rosenfield, but ultimately has a capacity for kindness and will do the right thing

Shoots a gun real good

Can drive like nobody's business

So in other words, Jack is Mad Max. But also, no, he clearly isn't! He looks and dresses like Mad Max (particularly Mel Gibson's) and does a lot of the same things "Mad" Max Rockatansky does, but he's also very explicitly a distinct character. It's a choice that seems inexplicable and perhaps even lazy on its face, except this is a George Miller movie, so of course this parallel is extremely purposeful. Miller has gone on record saying he avoids any kind of strict chronology or continuity for his Mad Max movies, compared to the rigid canons for Star Trek and Star Wars, and bless him for doing so. It's more fun viewing each Mad Max entry as a new revision or elaboration on a story being told again and again generations after the fall, mutating in style, structure and focus with every iteration, becoming less grounded as its core narrative is passed from elder to youth, community to community, genre to genre, until it becomes myth. (At least, my English major brain thinks it's more fun.) In fact there's actually something Arthurian to it, where at first King Arthur was mentioned in several Welsh legends before Geoffrey of Monmouth crafted an actual narrative around him, then Chrétien de Troyes added elements like Lancelot and infused the stories with more romance, and then with Le Morte d'Arthur Thomas Malory whipped the whole cycle together into one volume, which T.H. White would chop and screw and deconstruct with The Once and Future King centuries later.

All this to say: maybe Praetorian Jack looks and sounds and acts like Max because he sorta kinda basically is, being just one of many men driving back and forth across the wasteland, lending a hand on occasion, who'll be conflated into a single, legendary "Mad Max" at some point down the line in a different History Man's retelling of Furiosa's odyssey. Sometimes that Max rips across the desert in his V8 Interceptor, other times driving a big rig. Perhaps there's a dog tagging along and/or a scraggly and at first aggravating ally played by Bruce Spence or Nicholas Hoult. Usually he has a shotgun. But so long as you aren't trying to kill him, he'll help you out.

5. Beyond Vengeance

The Mad Max movies have incredibly iconic villains—Immortan Joe! Toecutter! the Lord Humongous!—but they are exactly that, capital V Villains devoid of humanizing qualities who you can't wait to watch bad things happen to. Furiosa appears to continue this trend by giving us a villain who in fact has a mustache long enough that he could reasonably twirl it if he so wanted, but ironically Dementus ends up being the most layered antagonist in the entire series, even moreso than the late Tina Turner's comparatively benevolent Aunty Entity from Beyond Thunderdome. And because he's played by Chris Hemsworth, whose comedic delivery rivals his stupidly handsome looks, you lock in every time he's on screen.

Something so fascinating about Dementus is that, for a main antagonist, he's NOT all-powerful, and in fact quite the opposite: he's more conman than warlord, looking for the next hustle, the next gullible crowd he can preach to and dupe—though never for long. For all his bluster, at every turn he finds himself in way over his head and writing cheques he can't cash, and this self-induced Sisyphean torment makes him riveting to watch. You're tempted to pity Dementus but it's also quite difficult to spare sympathy for someone who's so quick to channel their rage and hurt and ego into thoughtless, burn-it-all-down destruction. When you're not laughing at him, you're hating his guts, and it's indisputably the best work of Chris Hemsworth's career.

It's in this final chapter that everything naturally comes to a head: Furiosa's final evolution into the character we meet at the start of Fury Road, the predictable toppling of Dementus' precariously built house of cards, and the mythmaking that has been teased since the very first scene becoming diagetic text, the last of which allows the movie to thoroughly explore the themes of vengeance it's been building to. A brief war begins, is summarized and is over in the span of roughly a minute, and on its face it's a baffling narrative choice that most other filmmakers would have botched. But our man Miller's smart enough to recognize that the result of this war is the most foregone of conclusions if you've been paying even the slightest bit of attention, so he effectively brushes past it to get to the emotional heart of the climax and an incredible "Oh shit!" payoff that cements Miller as one of mainstream cinema's greatest sickos.

Fury Road remains the greatest Mad Max film, but Furiosa might be the best thing George Miller has ever made. If not his magnum opus, it does at least feel like his dissertation, and it makes me wish Warner Bros. puts enough trust in him despite Furiosa's poor box office performance that he's able to make The Wasteland. Absolutely ridiculous that a man just short of his 80th birthday was able to pull this off, and with it I feel confident calling him one of my favourite directors.

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the-cat-and-the-birdie · 1 year ago

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Hey Writers of ATSV, STOP letting White Men off the hook and expecting me to clap.

The fact that Miguel is repeated dehumanized and called an animal even prior to him snapping but George Stacy's scenes are written completely sympathetic towards him -

It doesn't sit right with me. Look at this:

They call Miguel an animal in the opening scenes.

At this point, he's not a threat to anyone but Vulture. In this scene, Miguel is doing exactly what he's supposed to do as Spider-man.

He gets called an animal.

Two pages later it's literal George Stacy holding a gun to his daughters face, and yet it's written completely, 100% sympathetic towards him AND ONLY HIM.

Which like..... Girl... Let me adjust my spectacles because I cannot be reading this right.

He's pointing a loaded gun at his daughter. Gwen is undoubtedly more scared than she's even been in her entire life.

She's confused and desperate, one of our main characters is going through a traumatic event.

The script though? It only cares about George and how he was 'betrayed by his little girl'

As if Gwen isn't her own person.

As if Gwen didn't just save dozens of lives. In a situation where the police could do nothing.

Had Gwen not been there, the police would not have been able to handle Vulture. The threat is subdued - yet he still persists.

It doesn't matter that she just saved multiple lives. It doesn't matter that she's not a threat - or that she's his literal daughter.

What matters is how hard this is for the adult white man with the lethal weapon in his hands.

The scene SHOULD be written from Gwen's point of view. SHE'S the victim.

But no, the white male cop is going through it due to his own emotional incompetency so let's focus on that while calling Miguel an evil animal.

In ATSV both George AND Peter - the two white men in the movie - let Gwen down. They either put her in danger or do nothing as they watch.

George points a gun at her. Peter watches Miguel as he physically assaults Gwen and puts her in the machine, exiling her into homelessness.

Then, he gets to go home to his wife and kids, not even mention to MJ that Gwen and Miles were both assaulted and are now missing. And instead he whines about how he's 'not good at this mentor stuff'.

In ATSV the White Male characters repeatedly fail the people around them with no consequences at all - even from a lot of the audience.

And yeah - Peter Parker is completely neglectful.

To the point it's not okay whatsoever.

I've seen MULTIPLE people say that 'Peter is justified in not helping Gwen during the Go-Home scene. Because Miguel was obviously violent and he's probably scared of him plus he was holding MayDay.'

Which is an excuse that ignores the fact that it's pitiful that GWEN a teenage girl facing homelessness - who is likely weaker than both Peter and Miguel - is more willing to stand up to Miguel than PETER PARKER.

It ignores the fact Miguel would NOT attack a fucking baby. He's a FATHER.

But it's easier to assume the Latino man is a raging, angry, baby killer than to admit the white man is committing neglect.

It baffles me that people will really defend Peter saying 'he was scared - he didn't know what Miguel would do-'

Neither did Gwen. But she still did it.

Because she's a GOOD GUY. Because it mattered to her. Because the people she cared about were getting hurt.

She stood up to Miguel in the face of literal danger and homelessness.

Peter had nothing to lose. He make a joke and shut up when he was told.

Once again: If Gwen and Hobie hadn't come for Peter, we have NO IDEA how long he would've stayed with Miguel. We are given NO INDICATION prior to Gwen's arrival that Peter is actively going to change sides. Or is even really considering it in that moment.

Even in the script Peter shows no remorse or worry for Gwen or Miles at all.

It's as if they don't cross his mind. As if he doesn't care he led Miguel directly to Miles because he forgot he had on a tracking watch. As if what he just witnessed didn't disturb him, as if he isn't worried that Gwen is literally homeless.

All he cares about is him, and his image as mentor.

Like sir, I do not give a DAMN. I might not even give a fuck, if you will.

Shut the fuck up about that mentorship shit 😭😭😭😭 You tryna mentor niggas that's MISSING.

He's like that deadbeat dad that brought you a bike a decade ago at 6 and he still bringing it up asking you why you don't call him 'dad'. Like just because you taught Miles to swing over a year ago doesn't mean you're his mentor mfer. Miles would've learned to swing anyway cause it's literally instinctual and every person bitten eventually learns it by themselves so really Peter wtf 😐

People will scream 'But there's nothing he could do!! Miguel is too scary!!'

One: Peter is one of if not the Spider-person with the most experience. If we assume he was bitten at 18 and he's say 45 now, that's still over 25 years of experience. If he was bitten in high school, that's even more experience.

He has biological powers Miguel doesn't, plus he has years of experience over Miguel - who canonically got his powers as an adult. If anyone in that room can beat Miguel - it's him.

If you're telling me that Peter B. Parker is not only scared of Miguel but he's scared to the point he will not even attempt to question him, even though three people younger than him will - Gwen, Hobie, and Miles - that's pitiful. That's a sad excuse for a Spider-man.

Also He's Spider-Man. The whole point of Spider-man is he fights even if he isn't sure he can win.

Two: At the very least, he can show that he's genuinely concerned for the kids he wants to mentor so bad. But he doesn't even do that. Even bringing them up or saying their names doesn't cross his mind.

But once again, the white male character emotionally neglecting those around him - especially the children who depend on him - and both he are George are either shown as innocent, unwilling to act, or the script is outright sympathetic towards them.

It's easy to call the Latino man an animal but writing a scene in which a white cop is rightfully portrayed as selfish is too hard.

It's easy to call the Latino man a monster but writing Peter Parker as a heroic figure is too hard.

The racism is not just towards Miguel. It's also in the blatant favoritism the white male characters are given.

Both George and Peter actively endanger those around them and at no point do they do something on their own accord that helps anybody but themselves.

Gwen has to go to her father - by force. Gwen has to go to Peter - using Hobie's hard work.

What we NOT GONNA DO is give the white man praise when it's literally the black guy who did all the work.

Fuck - Hobie mentored Gwen TEN TIMES MORE than Peter ever did Miles. Hobie put a roof over Gwen's head and came to get her when no other person would.

Writers, stop trying to make me sympathetic towards the white men who actively hurt the people around them when there's good mentors like Hobie and good parents like Rio and Jeff.

I ain't with the shits'. If anyone is an animal in this script, it's the man who pointed a gun at his daughter.

I guess assaulting and mentally scaring children is only okay if you do it with a firearm? Or if you make this face while doing it 🥺*

(*coupon not available for the melinated)

I changed my mind i don't forgive Peter or George. Miguel who has a whole ass arc of life and death and loss gets called an animal while the white cop with six minutes of screentime gets shown as father of the year while holding a loaded gun to a child girl you must be kidding me

Maybe Gwen would be in a better mood if we let her kick their asses idk 🤷🏾

#no proofread #I'm just yelling #spiderman #atsv #spider man #marvel #across the spiderverse #hobie brown #gwen stacy #miles morales #miguel o hara #miguel o'hara #spiderman 2099 #ghost spider #spiderwoman #peter b parker #atsv analysis #George Stacy #Peter Parker

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