I was having brunch with a friend when she mentioned Mad Max: Fury Road. Memory is a funny thing. I was able to rattle off all the previous films in the franchise though I remember little about them other than Mel Gibson before his beautiful blue eyes were overshadowed by his ugly soul: Mad Max, Mad Max: Road Warrior and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. I was not aware of the release date for Mad Max: Fury Road, but the favorable buzz was enough for me to head to the theaters. It is uncommon for there to be a sequel thirty years after the previous installment and with a new actor playing the titular character. It is even more unusual for such a sequel to be successful. It is downright inconceivable that such a successful sequel could have meaning beneath the mayhem.
If you don’t like violence, don’t see Mad Max: Fury Road, but if you are going to see it, see it in the theaters on a big screen. The action is relentless so whenever the action stops, people stop moving and everything is quiet except for dialogue, it creates a piercing experience that could not possibly be recreated if you are distracted at home or can pause and restart the film.
The dialogue and situations are surreal, and it took me some time to get acclimated to this world, which I liked in Serenity and Firefly, but was comparatively easier in Whedon’s world.
Mad Max: Fury Road unfolds in a nuclear (that seems new) post-apocalyptic dystopian world. The titular character gets sucked into a fascist society where men are brainwashed to sacrifice their lives for the state with dreams of an afterlife and many women are used as breeding cows to produce more men and milk. People are chided for their “dependence” on water, and oil and vehicles are glorified. I usually hate endless car chase scenes, but visually Mad Max: Fury Road is like a nightmarish, rock and roll Cirque du Soleil performance set in the desert.
No one can accuse George Miller of being subtle or boring, but his message needs to be clear since apparently it is still needed today: people are not property for you to use as you see fit. Men should not just live to die for you. Women should not live just to be pregnant for you. Babies are not your property. They are not here solely to benefit you against others’ will. That is not life or survival.
George Miller has managed to do what Charlize Theron has failed to do in previous movies such as Æon Flux and Hancock: make her a successful action hero. Despite the title, her character dominates the plot, which is virtually unheard of considering that usually titular characters do that. The ending is completely surprising given the narrative’s momentum during the first two thirds of the film, but seems to suggest something brave about confronting past traumas and healing the world. Mad Max is still insane, but also a relic of civilization: a true man with noble priorities such as sacrifice and strength in the service of others who need him. Miller’s dystopian world provides us with an encouraging model of a society where men and women decide to work with each other. Mad Max passes the Rorschach test and answers the rhetorical question of what to expect if you see a naked woman in the middle the street: if you see a scantily clad woman in the desert, you should want to drink water and not think of rape.