http://aryastarkc.tumblr.com/post/131325022136 i found a post that compares mad max: fury road and chicken run. they have almost the same plot, if you think about it.
I read all the posts and now I need to sleep but basically what a great movie. I love everyone. I even love Immortan Joe (what an excellent character) and the entire cult he built up, and the fascinating and implied fiefdoms of the Bullet Farm and Gas Town, and the amazing props and design, and Furiosa's arm, and Max, and I ship Furiosa<>Max so much, and that gentleness helped redeem Nux, the way the brides were all so different in strength and weakness, from Cheedo being afraid and wanting to go back, to their teacher and her defiant stay behind, to the Vuvalini and their implied structure and own culture, to the incredible acting to... Such an excellent movie. Good night :3
Just found this thread and YES GOOD THIS IS MY FAVORITE MOVIE EVER. I actually went to see it the day I got my driver's license. My dad was very worried when we left the theater ahaha
Fury Road is the one and only movie I have paid to go see more than once. It's such a boost, after seeing it the first time I wanted to run a marathon up a mountain, I had so much energy. What a good movie. dang it though now i wanna see it again but it won't be the same at home also my dad doesn't get it. he saw it and was like 'meh'. meanwhile i practically had a religious experience, dad why
I bought the dvd the day it came out and watch it all the time and I see new amazing stuff every single time I watch it tbh... my latest viewing was literally just me pausing every few minutes to do a frame-by-frame of some of my favorite scenes. In the part where Max wakes up from the sandstorm and yanks the chain, it pulls Nux's hand up and you can see the small splash of blood under the cuff where the needle got shifted around. In the scene where Capable is tracing Nux's scars, im always blown away by how beautifully it transitions into the Dag tracing the flaming skull steering wheel embellishments of the tin/bronze ceiling of the War Rig. Little details like that are what make the movie so especially beautiful, i think!
i still can't get over the stunts they did, like they were like "can we do this" and the safety people were like "HELL NO" and they just go "well, see, we already did cause we thought you'd say yes and here's the footage". like, that shit is what makes a movie special for me. i love learning behind the scenes stuff like that it's almost as if it gives a movie a personality. ...now i kinda want a hetalia-like show with movies as people. fury road is such a great movie.
So I'm going to be writing my fst paper on one of these I think. Namely a genre analysis on the Mad Max films as westerns. Which they basically are. They're like the Australian western or jidai geki. It's lovely and intriguing. Dem extreme long shots showing the immensity and ambiguous nature of the wilderness. Urgh though I will have to pick one of these eventually and also an angle to go off. Like my first inclination is to focus on the cinematography of the films which has a lot of the hallmarks of the western. Both in terms of the shots themselves and what those shots are being used to portray. Though I might end up focusing on how, like the more typical western, the Mad Max films are concerned with the mythology of a nation. Things like Australia's oil crisis in the 70s or the nuclear testing by Britain or the car culture of Queensland are all very important to the films. Max himself basically is an Australian Sanjuro or Man with no Name. Watched through the first two films. Thunderdome and Fury Road remain. I also have a fuck ton of reading to be doing. If anyone has any suggestions on say interviews, reading about the western or the franchise, or suggestion of westerns that'd be lovely. i am so hype about movies ;-;
Also having watched three of them now I have to say that I'm really impressed with how Miller makes the most of his medium. With the first film he talked about how one of this big inspirations were old silent films. The ones with Buster Keaton and the like in them which you could reasonably watch without the subtitle cards. He really loves those things and his idea with Mad Max was to create what he calls "pure cinema". So basically Miller is a story teller who primarily makes use of visuals and sounds. Dialogue is there, but it's not as important as the cinematography and editing. It's interesting to go from Fury Road to the first film and see the evolution of his pure cinema. Fury Road is a lot more expressive than the first Mad Max in terms of its sound design and shots. Part of that is definitely the budget. The first film had such a tiny budget that they did all the post production work in his fucking house and the reason it was shot in wide angle is because the other lens were either too finicky or fucking broken. The first film also makes more use of dialogue I feel. A lot of it has that sort of weird stilted quality you see in westerns. Part of that is due to it being redubbed in a dialect different than what was filmed I think. At any rate it's definitely more present than Fury Road and also feels a bit more...Important? But even then it's not what is carrying the meat of the story. That's handled by his cinematography by and large. He takes this even further in Road Warrior. One of his most important relationships is with the Feral Kid who he doesn't speak to at all. Some of his more important interactions with the Gyropilot don't involve speech. There's also the vehicles. A lot more importance as them as characters is given than in the first film (which is partly a matter of budget). Not sure where Thunderdome goes with it yet, but Fury Road takes the concept even further. The vehicles become even more an extension of the characters and they do a lot of the talking. They do most of it honestly. And that's just wonderful. It also makes me think of something I read in an interview with Miller. Namely that the car culture that he based the films on is dying out. Australian culture as a whole he feels is kind of dying off, at least the culture he himself grew up with. And I think that's probably damned important to Fury Road. A major preoccupation with the western and the art before it that it was based off is attempting to capture a bit of culture and history that is dying before it's finally gone forever. There he is capturing this bit of his life that is rapidly being lost to time.
