And so are the shotguns, the chastity belts, the Polecats and all the other lethal trinkets that inhabit this world. The cars, from Furiosa and Max’s “War Rig” to Joe’s souped-up, lowrider-inspired monster truck, are beautiful. Like in A Clockwork Orange, Miller doesn’t just open your eyes, he keeps them yanked ajar until long after they start tearing up. The wives are also colourfully named: The Splendid Angharad, Capable, Toast the Knowing, The Dag and Cheedo the Fragile. “We’ll be McFeasting at the gates of Valhalla!” isn’t normal conversation anywhere except in and between The Citadel, Bullet Farm and Gas Town, where the War Boys equipped with their Blood Bags (humans) ask the others to ‘witness’ them before their chrome-sprayed faces are ripped apart by the earth-shaking explosions, bullets and sandstorms. ![]() That isn’t to say it’s purely functional even with such little dialogue, Miller inserts an emotional intensity in Fury Road, amplified by neologisms that bring authenticity to this universe. Miller also runs a chainsaw through the screenplay, leaving a script as sparse as throats in his fictional universe. The Victoria’s Secret model, however, remains in the form of Rosie Huntington-Whitely -better cast as one of Joe’s wives than she was in Transformers. He swaps corporate logos for a singular skull, appearing on steering wheels and Joe’s face, and replaces the muscular superhero with a bald woman with a prosthetic arm. ![]() Miller eschews the urban battleground we’re accustomed to, preferring wide, desolate open spaces reminiscent of Lawrence of Arabia. Incensed at his wives’ flight, Joe sends his entire army, kamikaze War Boys and a flamethrower guitarist, after the Breeders, Furiosa and Max. Max (a lonely Tom Hardy) is simply a passenger (and occasional gun stand) who rides along, unsure of whether he’s the hostage or a kidnapper. The plot belies the film’s title it focuses on Imperator Furiosa (a marvellous Charlize Theron) and her attempt to get the Breeders out of Joe’s vaulted harem to safety, a ‘Green Point’ across the dystopic, orange desert where both fuel and water are scarce. George Miller, the septuagenarian Australian director who made the original Mad Max trilogy with Mel Gibson, is back to direct Fury Road 30 years after the original, in what is a cross between a reboot and sequel. ![]() Fury Road doesn’t just deconstruct our expectations of what an action movie should be it puts an explosive-laden spear through it. ![]() We’ve almost taken for granted that the explosions, car chases and muscular heroes (never heroines) at their front and centre must come with product placement, a woeful script (“I don’t have friends, I got family”) and a Victoria’s Secret model in need of rescue.įury Road is a dazzling reminder of how audiences have sleepily accepted their compromised, corporatised fate, trusting it blindly in the hands of plastic superheroes who line up, like we do, in movie theatres every summer. Perhaps, like Mad Max: Fury Road antagonist Immortan Joe’s wives (creepily referred to as “Breeders”), moviegoers have become accustomed to the corporeal (and corporate, in the case of movie goers) violence meted out to them over the past few years. Running a chainsaw through clichés, Mad Max: Fury Road deconstructs our expectations of what an action movie should be.
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