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houraipeachSo that title is pretty hyperbolic and you might think I'm exaggerating that statement for more views or more clicks or more whatever, and if I was someone for whom views or clicks made any difference to my revenue stream(current total: $0.00), you'd probably be right to think that. But since I don't make any money off my opinions and am not likely to do so anytime soon, you should instead take it for what it is, which is a completely and totally sincere summation of my feelings towards George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road. Explaining why would take an incredibly long-winded, boring, self-indulgent overexplanation of every miniscule detail of a film whose description could easily be written as 'a car chase that lasts for 2 hours.' But since this is the internet, a tool made almost exclusively for long-winding, boring, self-indulgent overexplanations of things, that's exactly what you're going to get. And the first thing to do is establish that Fury Road is very much unlike most other action films.
This will, of course, involve HUMONGOUS SPOILERS for every single thing I discuss, so if you don't want anything spoiled, well, the warning was issued!
Section I.: Why Is Fury Road Different From Other Action Films?
I'm glad you asked, hypothetical reader who is conveniently serving as my section titles. The reason is because Fury Road dares to not adhere to formula. What do I mean when I say 'formula?' I'm glad you keep asking such useful questions!
So, in order to explain what Fury Road is like, I need to construct an example of everything it isn't. And luckily, the universe has already provided me with a perfect example: Avengers 2: Age Of Ultron, the not-quite-latest in the Marvel series of superhero movies, which Fury Road opened across from in theaters. I had the experience of seeing Age of Ultron before I saw Fury Road, which is very good for Ultron, because it means I was able to actually enjoy it at the time instead of being disappointed because I'd already seen the best action film ever made. This is not a diss at Ultron; it is, for the record, a very enjoyable film with a lot to recommend it that serves as an almost perfect example of a formula movie. I'm going to be using the terms set forth in Blake Snyder's book Save The Cat!, which is all about how to make a formula movie.
It begins with the Set-Up, wherein the world as-it-is is presented, established, and shown to be flawed or endangered in some way: the Avengers have reunited to hunt down the last remnants of HYDRA, and are dealing with internal personality conflicts. This is usually accompanied by a statement, either overtly or otherwise, of the film's Theme, its underlying subject and message. This is actually heavily up to interpretation, but for the purposes of this essay, we're going to say that Age of Ultron's theme is 'change,' represented most heavily by Iron Man's desire to create the Ultron system in order to make superheroes like himself obsolete, out of fear that he and the other Avengers, as individuals, will not be able to protect the world forever, and Ultron's belief that the Avengers themselves ARE the problem, as they cause world-shaking repercussions but want to preserve the world as it is, thus denying what he sees as natural change.
This is followed in the formula by the Catalyst, the event that sets everything in motion and pushes the film out of the Set-Up. In this instance, it is the creation of Ultron and his decision that the Avengers are too fettered by their sentimental attachment to the world to properly safeguard it. This is typically followed in very short order by the Debate, wherein the hero or heroes decided how to respond to this situation, which sows the seeds of future tension: in the case of Age of Ultron, this is the Avengers debating amongst themselves whether Iron Man was right to try and create Ultron behind the backs of the others, and what to do about him now that he's on the loose. This is followed by the Break-In To Act Two, wherein the heroes make a choice and enter the next phase of the story. In this case, obviously, the Avengers decide that whatever their differences, Ultron has to be stopped.
The next couple of events usually happen close to each other, but don't necessarily always go in the same order. Firstly, there's the introduction of the B-Plot or B-Plots: smaller character-centric subplots within the narrative that contain small but important aspects of the Theme. This is also sometimes called 'the love story' because many films use romance for this kind of subplot. In Age of Ultron, there's a bunch of these: the budding romance between Hulk and Black Widow, the rivalry between Iron Man and Captain America over leadership of the Avengers, the tense relationship between Ultron, Scarlet Witch, and Quicksilver, and so on so forth. We then come to the Promise Of The Premise, sometimes known as the Rising Action: this is where all the fun stuff happens. During the Rising Action, we hit the Midpoint, which is where we start to see the repercussions of the theme happening: the heroes reach either a high point that is unsatisfying, or hit a low point that teaches them something valuable or elaborates on the theme. In Age Of Ultron, the Avengers manage to track down Ultron and his minions, but it turns out to be an elaborate setup Ultron has engineered to fracture the team further, ultimately resulting in Hulk going out of control and destroying a city, spurring the world to see them as more trouble than they're worth.
At this stage in the story we hit what Snyder calls 'Bad Guys Close In,' but that's clunky and awkward, so I'm going to call it the Descending Action: this is where the heroes lose. This serves a number of narrative purposes, but a key one is to show that the heroes are vulnerable and thus heighten the dramatic tension of the story. This is usually accomplished by the villain scoring a major win over the heroes, or otherwise advancing their goals: in Age of Ultron, Ultron acquires the Infinity Stone and uses it to begin creating his new body, at a point where the Avengers are frayed, battered, and vulnerable. This leads to All Is Lost and the Dark Night Of The Soul: at this stage of the story, it seems like there is no hope at all, the heroes are left to contemplate their failures, and discover something new that lets them tackle the problem from a fresh angle: the Avengers take refuge at Hawkeye's home, figure out their differences, and decide to try and confront Ultron again by striking at him while he's most vulnerable, during his body transfer.
This leads to the Break-In To Act Three, where the heroes try one more time, this time incorporating their knowledge of and awareness of the Theme, often pushing the villain to desperate action in the process. The theme of Age of Ultron is 'change,' so Iron Man decides to steal Ultron's new body and use it to make a new AI, this time without imprinting his own personality and fears onto it and thus tainting it with his worst aspects; at the same time, Captain America and Black Widow manage to bring Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch onto their side, turning Ultron's strategy of fracturing the team against him; this pushes Ultron to 'solve' the problem of conflict on Earth by wiping out all life. This is followed by the Finale, where the heroes uses everything they've learned and confront the villain directly: in this case, Iron Man has created Vision and with his aid and that of their various allies, they finally stop Ultron before he is able to destroy civilization, albeit at the cost of Quicksilver. In the end, the film stops to reflect on the Final Image, showing us how the world has changed and what the cost has been, as well as the promise of something new: the old Avengers have disbanded, but a new one has been founded in their place, incorporating all their allies.
Boy, that was a really long summary of Age of Ultron. And this isn't even ABOUT that movie! I'd like to take a moment here and say that the formula is not BAD: it simply... is what it is. It's common for a reason: the formula sells, and it sells consistently, because it's a good way to tell a story, and a kind of story that humans like hearing. So, why did I tell you all this?
Because Fury Road really, really, REALLY does not care about the formula in the slightest.
Section II.: Why Should I Care That Fury Road Doesn't Follow The Formula?
The simple, short answer is 'because you've probably not seen it in a while.' It sounds pat, but if you look back over the last twenty to thirty years, the number of big-budget action films that deviate from the formula is almost nil. For literally longer than I have been alive, nearly every Hollywood action movie has followed the exact same narrative structure, to the degree that the formula is often mistaken for 'being good.' We have developed a vast lexicon of terms and critiques that exist solely to define films BY the formula. When a movie succeeds, we talk about how good it was at executing the formula; when a movie fails, we describe it in terms of how it failed to execute the formula. Everything revolves and orbits around how like the formula it is.
So Fury Road is useful, not just because it's one of the greatest films ever made, but because it allows us a window back into the world of action filmmaking BEFORE the formula existed. It allows us to, for a moment, briefly see through the artifice of formulaic filmmaking and let us glimpse perhaps the most powerful thing a film can show us: something we didn't expect. And frankly: I don't think anybody expected Mad Max: Fury Road.
It seems insane straight away, as a very concept. A sequel to an ultraviolent post-apocalypse film franchise that only ever saw cult success even at its apex, directed by a 70-year-old man whose last three films, the only ones he'd done in two decades, were children's comedies about talking animals; a 70-year-old man who, despite being an enormous gamble, hugely rusty at directing live-action projects, and in only-middling health, was given a budget of over $150,000,000 and total creative control over the project. That sounds insane even to ME, and I'm not the kind of person who actually makes financial decisions about making movies. These were decisions made by Hollywood executives, whose purpose in life is to squeeze the maximum amount of revenue out of the minimum amount of financial risk, whose fiscal world is so explosive and volatile and unpredictable due to being based on the whims of a fickle consuming public that they have adopted a strategy of obstinate conservatism in their business practices. While we all chafe at Adam Sandler and Michael Bay movies, the reality is that they CONSISTENTLY make money, far and above their production costs: they are RELIABLE business strategies.
Mad Max: Fury Road was not a reliable business strategy. It was a follow-up to a long-dead series about driving around the heat-blasted Australian wastes in the wake of the total collapse of society, directed by a 70-year-old grandfather whose greatest commercial success was a film about tapdancing penguins. There is not enough cocaine in the UNIVERSE to make this sound like a good idea to someone who can be fired in disgrace for failing to bring in a solid profit margin. And yet... this movie happened anyway. It not only happened, it was a masterpiece. In a world where the formula is how you make a 'good movie,' Fury Road should not, could not exist.
Which means the fact that it does exist shows us that the formula is not the only way.
Section III.: Alright, Alright, So How Does Fury Road Deviate From The Formula?
Firstly, while the film has a definite Set-Up, that Set-Up serves to establish that the world of the movie has an almost complete lack of interest in the plights or actions of individuals. One of the reasons the original Mad Max films were so interesting was that post-apocalyptic Australia, on a fundamental level, did not care about anybody; at best it was apathetic, and at worst it was actively hostile to life. Whether it's Mad Max's nightmarish near-collapse land of martial law, where cops are authorized to summarily execute anyone and everyone who violates the law, or The Road Warrior's post-collapse hellscape, where humanity has fallen into tribalistic squabbling over what limited resources remain, or Beyond Thunderdome's dystopian Bartertown, where ruthless gangs use bloodsports and intimidation to keep cowed subjects in line, the world George Miller presents is uncompromisingly bleak and uncaring towards human woe.
You know what the Set-Up for Fury Road is? It's Max briefly lamenting that the entire world is screwed beyond anyone's capacity to save it before being almost immediately attacked, getting his iconic Interceptor muscle-car wrecked, and is captured, tortured, humiliatingly branded and tattooed, and turned into a living blood-supply for radiation-poisoned warboys. Which also means that the hero's absolute lowest point happens... pretty much within the first five minutes. Or possibly, for Max, all the way back in the first movie.
Things are further muddled when we are introduced to the savages Max has been captured by, the Immortans. Normally at this stage, we'd get a sampling of how wicked and vile or otherwise villainous the antagonists are, by having them show off what makes them so bad. Instead... we're shown that they're actually building a civilization. They have running water, medical care, infrastructure, art, and culture; it's all in service of a despotic self-proclaimed god-king, Immortan Joe, but far from being one-dimensional, the Immortans and particularly the warboys are presented as victims of the world just as much as Max is, if not moreso. Cursed with brief lives by disease and cancerous growths, the warboys seek purpose in glorious death in service to their culture, their gods, and their lord, promised ascension to Walhalla if they serve the great god V8 and Immortan Joe valiantly.
It's here, as Immortan Joe speechifies about his power and vision for the world, that the situation is fully flipped on its ear when we are introduced to Imperator Furiosa, one of Joe's top lieutenants and driver of his War Rig, the vast behemoth of a tanker truck that brings fuel and weaponry back to the Immortan Citadel. As she leaves, Furiosa goes rogue, as it is revealed to us that she is smuggling away Immortan Joe's 'wives,' a gaggle of his favorite sex-slaves, to freedom as an act of payback for his years of mistreatment. With Immortan Joe's fleet of raiders in hot pursuit, Max gets strapped to the hood of a hot-rod to serve as a blood-bag for a sickly warboy, Nux. And this is where it gets nuts, because it's here that the entire audience probably starts to realize that Furiosa, not Max, is the actual protagonist of this film.
I'm gonna take a brief pause to note, once again, how fucking crazy it is that this got made. In a long-delayed revival of a now culturally-ancient film franchise, George Miller, the aforementioned grandpappy director who absolutely should not have been allowed to have $150,000,000 to make a movie, decided that the title character of the series and of the film... is a sidekick to an even-cooler female lead. And spends most of the first quarter of the movie chained to the front bumper of a mook's car. And also never even gets his damn car back. You could not play riskier business unless you delivered your screenplay by sliding into the board room in your underwear.
We also haven't had an overt Theme statement or a Debate yet, and we're already a fourth of the way into the damn film. The formula is in tatters, left crushed on the roadside by a monster truck as the movie proceeds to have a twenty-minute chase scene, interrupted by a colossal sandstorm, which finally gives Max a chance to escape from his captors... only to bump into Furiosa. They promptly beat the shit out of each other, with Max handicapped by being forced to drag along Nux, whom he is still chained to. The instant this kerfuffle is settled, Max attempts to drive off with Furiosa's truck... only for the engine to give out, Furiosa to confidently stride back up and tell him it won't run without her, take it back, and promptly launch into... ANOTHER lengthy chase scene.
Look, I'm gonna be blunt, 90% of Fury Road is chase scene. In a world of formula and formula only, you can't do this kind of thing: the pacing is absolutely relentless, giving us maybe five or six minutes to breathe, tops, before launching into yet another explosive action sequence, over and over. And it's incredible, with jawdropping visual spectacle, beautiful, subtle moments of character development for Furiosa and the wives, and even for Nux as he bounces between chasing after Furiosa, returning to Immortan Joe, and finally settling on aiding Furiosa's escape after his efforts to redeem himself and ascend to Walhalla fail miserably every time. If anything, Max is here as the Ishmael of the piece, a grim, stoic observer to a rich tapestry of human sociology crammed into the cab of a skull-festooned Mac truck.
Part of what makes this work is that all the action feels meaningful and purposeful in-the-moment; there isn't the time for big, message-centric navelgazing. Breathers are usually the characters stopping to do something practical, like 'fix the truck' or 'figure out how many bullets we have left.' Despite how over-the-top it is it never falls into spectacle for spectacle's sake; even at its most absurd there is a grounding and center provided by the intensity of the moment that keeps you rapt and willing to suspend disbelief.
And what it keeps doing over and over, is NOT caring about adhering to the formula, and continuing to be incredibly good anyway. It even defies typical action movie stuff that has nothing to do with the formula, like letting a villainous mook become a major heroic character, not using the wives as cheap emotional props, and the female lead getting the brutal, cathartic kill on the villain while the male lead ends up performing a selfless, lifegiving act of healing. Fury Road never feels predictable. You are never quite certain where it's going to go, aside from 'forward.' It pulls moves I wouldn't even expect from an art film by a no-name director with a budget of 'what do we have in the garage;' more than that, it gets away with them via sheer bravado. I'll stop rambling with the praise for now, or at least this specific kind of praise, but you get the idea. The short version is pretty much 'just go watch the movie.'
Section IV.: So What Can We Learn From All This?
One of the biggest problems in the way we critique media is, bluntly, that we don't actually critique it. We catalogue media by adherence to preconceptions of what things SHOULD be, and try to place everything in little labeled boxes of familiar traits and concepts. By endlessly classifying and reclassifying the familiar, we restrict ourselves to thinking in familiar ways; we run the risk of looking at something and going 'this doesn't look like what I expected, so it must be bad.'
When was the last time you were HAPPY to be surprised by something? When was the last time an encounter with the unexpected was joyous, rather than aggravating? The problem with the formula is not the formula itself, but the fact that it becomes simple to equate it with being 'good.' Good stuff is good because it's familiar, and bad stuff is bad because it wasn't familiar enough. Fury Road is a sobering splash of ice water on the face to snap us out of this kind of thinking. When I watched it, I was thrilled to see something I wasn't expecting to see for the first time in literal years.
I want more movies where I can watch for fifteen minutes and be excited about not having a clue where things are going or what will happen. I want more media, period, where I don't have a jaded, know-it-all sense of certainty about the outcome. I want more moments of suspense and tension and excitement and spectacle that feel EARNED, that feel believable, that can take me out of the position of 'a person watching a movie' and into that space of immediacy and intimacy that visual media is so naturally good at. I want more movies like Fury Road, which is to say, I want more movies that are nothing at all like Fury Road.
Witness it.
This will, of course, involve HUMONGOUS SPOILERS for every single thing I discuss, so if you don't want anything spoiled, well, the warning was issued!
Section I.: Why Is Fury Road Different From Other Action Films?
I'm glad you asked, hypothetical reader who is conveniently serving as my section titles. The reason is because Fury Road dares to not adhere to formula. What do I mean when I say 'formula?' I'm glad you keep asking such useful questions!
So, in order to explain what Fury Road is like, I need to construct an example of everything it isn't. And luckily, the universe has already provided me with a perfect example: Avengers 2: Age Of Ultron, the not-quite-latest in the Marvel series of superhero movies, which Fury Road opened across from in theaters. I had the experience of seeing Age of Ultron before I saw Fury Road, which is very good for Ultron, because it means I was able to actually enjoy it at the time instead of being disappointed because I'd already seen the best action film ever made. This is not a diss at Ultron; it is, for the record, a very enjoyable film with a lot to recommend it that serves as an almost perfect example of a formula movie. I'm going to be using the terms set forth in Blake Snyder's book Save The Cat!, which is all about how to make a formula movie.
It begins with the Set-Up, wherein the world as-it-is is presented, established, and shown to be flawed or endangered in some way: the Avengers have reunited to hunt down the last remnants of HYDRA, and are dealing with internal personality conflicts. This is usually accompanied by a statement, either overtly or otherwise, of the film's Theme, its underlying subject and message. This is actually heavily up to interpretation, but for the purposes of this essay, we're going to say that Age of Ultron's theme is 'change,' represented most heavily by Iron Man's desire to create the Ultron system in order to make superheroes like himself obsolete, out of fear that he and the other Avengers, as individuals, will not be able to protect the world forever, and Ultron's belief that the Avengers themselves ARE the problem, as they cause world-shaking repercussions but want to preserve the world as it is, thus denying what he sees as natural change.
This is followed in the formula by the Catalyst, the event that sets everything in motion and pushes the film out of the Set-Up. In this instance, it is the creation of Ultron and his decision that the Avengers are too fettered by their sentimental attachment to the world to properly safeguard it. This is typically followed in very short order by the Debate, wherein the hero or heroes decided how to respond to this situation, which sows the seeds of future tension: in the case of Age of Ultron, this is the Avengers debating amongst themselves whether Iron Man was right to try and create Ultron behind the backs of the others, and what to do about him now that he's on the loose. This is followed by the Break-In To Act Two, wherein the heroes make a choice and enter the next phase of the story. In this case, obviously, the Avengers decide that whatever their differences, Ultron has to be stopped.
The next couple of events usually happen close to each other, but don't necessarily always go in the same order. Firstly, there's the introduction of the B-Plot or B-Plots: smaller character-centric subplots within the narrative that contain small but important aspects of the Theme. This is also sometimes called 'the love story' because many films use romance for this kind of subplot. In Age of Ultron, there's a bunch of these: the budding romance between Hulk and Black Widow, the rivalry between Iron Man and Captain America over leadership of the Avengers, the tense relationship between Ultron, Scarlet Witch, and Quicksilver, and so on so forth. We then come to the Promise Of The Premise, sometimes known as the Rising Action: this is where all the fun stuff happens. During the Rising Action, we hit the Midpoint, which is where we start to see the repercussions of the theme happening: the heroes reach either a high point that is unsatisfying, or hit a low point that teaches them something valuable or elaborates on the theme. In Age Of Ultron, the Avengers manage to track down Ultron and his minions, but it turns out to be an elaborate setup Ultron has engineered to fracture the team further, ultimately resulting in Hulk going out of control and destroying a city, spurring the world to see them as more trouble than they're worth.
At this stage in the story we hit what Snyder calls 'Bad Guys Close In,' but that's clunky and awkward, so I'm going to call it the Descending Action: this is where the heroes lose. This serves a number of narrative purposes, but a key one is to show that the heroes are vulnerable and thus heighten the dramatic tension of the story. This is usually accomplished by the villain scoring a major win over the heroes, or otherwise advancing their goals: in Age of Ultron, Ultron acquires the Infinity Stone and uses it to begin creating his new body, at a point where the Avengers are frayed, battered, and vulnerable. This leads to All Is Lost and the Dark Night Of The Soul: at this stage of the story, it seems like there is no hope at all, the heroes are left to contemplate their failures, and discover something new that lets them tackle the problem from a fresh angle: the Avengers take refuge at Hawkeye's home, figure out their differences, and decide to try and confront Ultron again by striking at him while he's most vulnerable, during his body transfer.
This leads to the Break-In To Act Three, where the heroes try one more time, this time incorporating their knowledge of and awareness of the Theme, often pushing the villain to desperate action in the process. The theme of Age of Ultron is 'change,' so Iron Man decides to steal Ultron's new body and use it to make a new AI, this time without imprinting his own personality and fears onto it and thus tainting it with his worst aspects; at the same time, Captain America and Black Widow manage to bring Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch onto their side, turning Ultron's strategy of fracturing the team against him; this pushes Ultron to 'solve' the problem of conflict on Earth by wiping out all life. This is followed by the Finale, where the heroes uses everything they've learned and confront the villain directly: in this case, Iron Man has created Vision and with his aid and that of their various allies, they finally stop Ultron before he is able to destroy civilization, albeit at the cost of Quicksilver. In the end, the film stops to reflect on the Final Image, showing us how the world has changed and what the cost has been, as well as the promise of something new: the old Avengers have disbanded, but a new one has been founded in their place, incorporating all their allies.
Boy, that was a really long summary of Age of Ultron. And this isn't even ABOUT that movie! I'd like to take a moment here and say that the formula is not BAD: it simply... is what it is. It's common for a reason: the formula sells, and it sells consistently, because it's a good way to tell a story, and a kind of story that humans like hearing. So, why did I tell you all this?
Because Fury Road really, really, REALLY does not care about the formula in the slightest.
Section II.: Why Should I Care That Fury Road Doesn't Follow The Formula?
The simple, short answer is 'because you've probably not seen it in a while.' It sounds pat, but if you look back over the last twenty to thirty years, the number of big-budget action films that deviate from the formula is almost nil. For literally longer than I have been alive, nearly every Hollywood action movie has followed the exact same narrative structure, to the degree that the formula is often mistaken for 'being good.' We have developed a vast lexicon of terms and critiques that exist solely to define films BY the formula. When a movie succeeds, we talk about how good it was at executing the formula; when a movie fails, we describe it in terms of how it failed to execute the formula. Everything revolves and orbits around how like the formula it is.
So Fury Road is useful, not just because it's one of the greatest films ever made, but because it allows us a window back into the world of action filmmaking BEFORE the formula existed. It allows us to, for a moment, briefly see through the artifice of formulaic filmmaking and let us glimpse perhaps the most powerful thing a film can show us: something we didn't expect. And frankly: I don't think anybody expected Mad Max: Fury Road.
It seems insane straight away, as a very concept. A sequel to an ultraviolent post-apocalypse film franchise that only ever saw cult success even at its apex, directed by a 70-year-old man whose last three films, the only ones he'd done in two decades, were children's comedies about talking animals; a 70-year-old man who, despite being an enormous gamble, hugely rusty at directing live-action projects, and in only-middling health, was given a budget of over $150,000,000 and total creative control over the project. That sounds insane even to ME, and I'm not the kind of person who actually makes financial decisions about making movies. These were decisions made by Hollywood executives, whose purpose in life is to squeeze the maximum amount of revenue out of the minimum amount of financial risk, whose fiscal world is so explosive and volatile and unpredictable due to being based on the whims of a fickle consuming public that they have adopted a strategy of obstinate conservatism in their business practices. While we all chafe at Adam Sandler and Michael Bay movies, the reality is that they CONSISTENTLY make money, far and above their production costs: they are RELIABLE business strategies.
Mad Max: Fury Road was not a reliable business strategy. It was a follow-up to a long-dead series about driving around the heat-blasted Australian wastes in the wake of the total collapse of society, directed by a 70-year-old grandfather whose greatest commercial success was a film about tapdancing penguins. There is not enough cocaine in the UNIVERSE to make this sound like a good idea to someone who can be fired in disgrace for failing to bring in a solid profit margin. And yet... this movie happened anyway. It not only happened, it was a masterpiece. In a world where the formula is how you make a 'good movie,' Fury Road should not, could not exist.
Which means the fact that it does exist shows us that the formula is not the only way.
Section III.: Alright, Alright, So How Does Fury Road Deviate From The Formula?
Firstly, while the film has a definite Set-Up, that Set-Up serves to establish that the world of the movie has an almost complete lack of interest in the plights or actions of individuals. One of the reasons the original Mad Max films were so interesting was that post-apocalyptic Australia, on a fundamental level, did not care about anybody; at best it was apathetic, and at worst it was actively hostile to life. Whether it's Mad Max's nightmarish near-collapse land of martial law, where cops are authorized to summarily execute anyone and everyone who violates the law, or The Road Warrior's post-collapse hellscape, where humanity has fallen into tribalistic squabbling over what limited resources remain, or Beyond Thunderdome's dystopian Bartertown, where ruthless gangs use bloodsports and intimidation to keep cowed subjects in line, the world George Miller presents is uncompromisingly bleak and uncaring towards human woe.
You know what the Set-Up for Fury Road is? It's Max briefly lamenting that the entire world is screwed beyond anyone's capacity to save it before being almost immediately attacked, getting his iconic Interceptor muscle-car wrecked, and is captured, tortured, humiliatingly branded and tattooed, and turned into a living blood-supply for radiation-poisoned warboys. Which also means that the hero's absolute lowest point happens... pretty much within the first five minutes. Or possibly, for Max, all the way back in the first movie.
Things are further muddled when we are introduced to the savages Max has been captured by, the Immortans. Normally at this stage, we'd get a sampling of how wicked and vile or otherwise villainous the antagonists are, by having them show off what makes them so bad. Instead... we're shown that they're actually building a civilization. They have running water, medical care, infrastructure, art, and culture; it's all in service of a despotic self-proclaimed god-king, Immortan Joe, but far from being one-dimensional, the Immortans and particularly the warboys are presented as victims of the world just as much as Max is, if not moreso. Cursed with brief lives by disease and cancerous growths, the warboys seek purpose in glorious death in service to their culture, their gods, and their lord, promised ascension to Walhalla if they serve the great god V8 and Immortan Joe valiantly.
It's here, as Immortan Joe speechifies about his power and vision for the world, that the situation is fully flipped on its ear when we are introduced to Imperator Furiosa, one of Joe's top lieutenants and driver of his War Rig, the vast behemoth of a tanker truck that brings fuel and weaponry back to the Immortan Citadel. As she leaves, Furiosa goes rogue, as it is revealed to us that she is smuggling away Immortan Joe's 'wives,' a gaggle of his favorite sex-slaves, to freedom as an act of payback for his years of mistreatment. With Immortan Joe's fleet of raiders in hot pursuit, Max gets strapped to the hood of a hot-rod to serve as a blood-bag for a sickly warboy, Nux. And this is where it gets nuts, because it's here that the entire audience probably starts to realize that Furiosa, not Max, is the actual protagonist of this film.
I'm gonna take a brief pause to note, once again, how fucking crazy it is that this got made. In a long-delayed revival of a now culturally-ancient film franchise, George Miller, the aforementioned grandpappy director who absolutely should not have been allowed to have $150,000,000 to make a movie, decided that the title character of the series and of the film... is a sidekick to an even-cooler female lead. And spends most of the first quarter of the movie chained to the front bumper of a mook's car. And also never even gets his damn car back. You could not play riskier business unless you delivered your screenplay by sliding into the board room in your underwear.
We also haven't had an overt Theme statement or a Debate yet, and we're already a fourth of the way into the damn film. The formula is in tatters, left crushed on the roadside by a monster truck as the movie proceeds to have a twenty-minute chase scene, interrupted by a colossal sandstorm, which finally gives Max a chance to escape from his captors... only to bump into Furiosa. They promptly beat the shit out of each other, with Max handicapped by being forced to drag along Nux, whom he is still chained to. The instant this kerfuffle is settled, Max attempts to drive off with Furiosa's truck... only for the engine to give out, Furiosa to confidently stride back up and tell him it won't run without her, take it back, and promptly launch into... ANOTHER lengthy chase scene.
Look, I'm gonna be blunt, 90% of Fury Road is chase scene. In a world of formula and formula only, you can't do this kind of thing: the pacing is absolutely relentless, giving us maybe five or six minutes to breathe, tops, before launching into yet another explosive action sequence, over and over. And it's incredible, with jawdropping visual spectacle, beautiful, subtle moments of character development for Furiosa and the wives, and even for Nux as he bounces between chasing after Furiosa, returning to Immortan Joe, and finally settling on aiding Furiosa's escape after his efforts to redeem himself and ascend to Walhalla fail miserably every time. If anything, Max is here as the Ishmael of the piece, a grim, stoic observer to a rich tapestry of human sociology crammed into the cab of a skull-festooned Mac truck.
Part of what makes this work is that all the action feels meaningful and purposeful in-the-moment; there isn't the time for big, message-centric navelgazing. Breathers are usually the characters stopping to do something practical, like 'fix the truck' or 'figure out how many bullets we have left.' Despite how over-the-top it is it never falls into spectacle for spectacle's sake; even at its most absurd there is a grounding and center provided by the intensity of the moment that keeps you rapt and willing to suspend disbelief.
And what it keeps doing over and over, is NOT caring about adhering to the formula, and continuing to be incredibly good anyway. It even defies typical action movie stuff that has nothing to do with the formula, like letting a villainous mook become a major heroic character, not using the wives as cheap emotional props, and the female lead getting the brutal, cathartic kill on the villain while the male lead ends up performing a selfless, lifegiving act of healing. Fury Road never feels predictable. You are never quite certain where it's going to go, aside from 'forward.' It pulls moves I wouldn't even expect from an art film by a no-name director with a budget of 'what do we have in the garage;' more than that, it gets away with them via sheer bravado. I'll stop rambling with the praise for now, or at least this specific kind of praise, but you get the idea. The short version is pretty much 'just go watch the movie.'
Section IV.: So What Can We Learn From All This?
One of the biggest problems in the way we critique media is, bluntly, that we don't actually critique it. We catalogue media by adherence to preconceptions of what things SHOULD be, and try to place everything in little labeled boxes of familiar traits and concepts. By endlessly classifying and reclassifying the familiar, we restrict ourselves to thinking in familiar ways; we run the risk of looking at something and going 'this doesn't look like what I expected, so it must be bad.'
When was the last time you were HAPPY to be surprised by something? When was the last time an encounter with the unexpected was joyous, rather than aggravating? The problem with the formula is not the formula itself, but the fact that it becomes simple to equate it with being 'good.' Good stuff is good because it's familiar, and bad stuff is bad because it wasn't familiar enough. Fury Road is a sobering splash of ice water on the face to snap us out of this kind of thinking. When I watched it, I was thrilled to see something I wasn't expecting to see for the first time in literal years.
I want more movies where I can watch for fifteen minutes and be excited about not having a clue where things are going or what will happen. I want more media, period, where I don't have a jaded, know-it-all sense of certainty about the outcome. I want more moments of suspense and tension and excitement and spectacle that feel EARNED, that feel believable, that can take me out of the position of 'a person watching a movie' and into that space of immediacy and intimacy that visual media is so naturally good at. I want more movies like Fury Road, which is to say, I want more movies that are nothing at all like Fury Road.
Witness it.
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Date: 2015-08-06 05:57 am (UTC)