Back and forth on the Fury Road [part 3]

A week or two ago, I texted six points in response to my friend William’s text about Mad Max Fury Road. Here are the last three of those points, Will’s texted replies, and my sorta final word on them — this being my blog and all. SPOILERS THROUGHOUT.

4. The so called “men’s rights activists” are very real. I’ve run across a few, and they’re every bit as nuts as the Social Justice Feminists they tend to war with. But with less justification

4. I wouldn’t have a clue, so I’ll take your word for it. I dislike the idea of putting Harriet Tubman or Rosa Parks on the $20 bill because what they represent is diametrically and otherwise opposed to what the currency represents. They should not be interpreted as symbols of a system they struggled against as both women and persons of African descent who were barred at the very least from assimilating into the culture this currency continues to stand for. Obama would do, or keep it real and let it be Susan B Anthony. Black women did not benefit from the women’s suffrage movement until the Voting Rights Act of 1964. But I seriously digress…

As usual, Will…as usual.

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5. I liked the first Pitch Perfect, so the success of the second doesn’t surprise me. The female market isn’t very well served in summertime.

5. Never saw either movie, so I have no comment. Several critics have not been easy on it, but the thing is these two movies serve two different audiences, but there could be a vin(sp?) diagram that explains their overlapping audience appeal that I don’t care to get into right now.

True enough. And I don’t want to get into it, either. Suffice it to say that people can enjoy a wide range of story types.

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6. I recently saw Children of Men. It and Fury Road are very much spiritual siblings.

6. You can make that point depending on what you’re reading into the character motivations. Book of Eli was much more pronounced and obvious about its intentions and motivations, which may have worked against it from an objective standpoint. I want to watch Children of Men again before I make a further point, but I remember it being understated (I could be dead wrong).

My point has zip to do with character motivations and more to do with how both are fables about what happens to Western civilization when God and most of the real vestiges of His morality are both dead from society. In Children of Men, I was reminded of Jesus’ statement, when he tells his disciples not to bar the children from coming to greet him, that His Kingdom is made of “such as these,” him speaking of the children.  In that film, the absence of children led to humanity being almost completely swallowed up in its sinful human nature.

In Fury Road, we find that the absence of one God and the moral framework of the West built on Him has led to the film’s chief antagonist filling the vacuum with another: a twisted religion built around a new god —himself — and his hoped-for progeny while weeding out the less-than-worthy through starvation and a suicidal death cult theology. We also see that the absence of children, or hope of bearing them, has left humanity seeing only the worst of itself.

In both films, though, there is a remnant that still has hope and sees a better way, despite the forces arrayed against it.

Back-and-forth on the Fury Road [part 2]

So I texted six points in response to my friend William’s texted reaction [in last post] to Mad Max: Fury Road. His replies to my points follow in italics and to the right, and then, in normal type, I make a final word. SPOILERS ARE ALL OVER THIS POST.

1. I’m not sure I’d call the violence senseless. Mad Max films are set in a world that has forgotten God and His morality. In the place of the Golden Rule, it’s simply the survival of the fittest — no, the most brutal.

But the film’s overhanging theme is actually a refutation of that quasi- Darwinian ethos.

1. I did not sense that God as we know Him played any role in this story; neither as an unseen nor mitigating motivator for any of the characters’ actions. There is certainly a moral standard in play that some of the characters adhere to, but it’s never implied that God was that standard. Of course, you can read what you like into their motivations, which would answer your point about the minion who’s motivation you didn’t understand. When it comes to God, there really isn’t a wrong answer…

I was referring to the fact that Mad Max isn’t a sci-fi setting in a vacuum. It’s set in our future, in (presumably) an Australia destroyed by a final world war. So in that context, it is indeed a world once founded on Western civilization that has left Christian morality behind in large part.

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2. The War Boy who Turns Good was initially the weak point for me. I didn’t see the motivation for his turn, which seemed be happening even before the redhead encounter. It’s still a stumble, but not a fatal one, because so much of the character moments in this film are understated and behind the eyes.

It wasn’t a significant drawback, rather in my view a chance for the audience to climb on board with the plot to this point and allow yourself to suspend our disbelief. All stories of this type need someone the viewer or reader as the case may be to either guide or serve as a surrogate for their involvement, and his role was perhaps a bit too obvious in that. There was a moment where he talked about destiny and he was trying to figure out what his own role in the story since it wasn’t going as he intended; that could have served as an indication that his importance was greater than so far viewed and that there could possibly be a greater power at play (again, whether or not if you choose to believe that, there’s the in point)

 It wasn’t at all obvious for me, at least not in the first half of the movie (prior to that moment Will mentions). I kept getting upset that this venal little zealot hadn’t just freaking DIED already. I certainly didn’t see him as the Everyman or guide. He was just another adversary.

It’s one of the things I liked about the film, actually. There WASN’T a character filling the role Will mentions. For the whole first act, we’re like Max after the opening scene: chained and being dragged along to wherever this mad movie is taking us.

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3. This is an accidental feminist film, in which women aren’t just “the girl” or the helpless prize to be won and rescued by the hero. Each woman shows reserves of strength. And indeed, the film as a whole champions the feminine virtues of nurturance over the extremely sick patriarchy of Immortan Joe.

3. Valid point; it was not intentional, or at least I hope not (I would hope that the idea was that this is always possible, but some people choose not to believe it; i.e. those male rights protesters. It may not be as extreme as some people are making it out to be either way; nobody looked at Denzel’s role in Eli as groundbreaking for Black lead actors, though the premise of the line surviving baby in Children of Man being of African descent was noticed without irony. Again, what you read into all of this plays a role in how it’s perceived.

It’s definitely not intentional, per the filmmaker’s own admission. It’s still refreshing.

More in the next installment. And perhaps Will is doing his own version on his own blog, “Serious Consideration.”

Back-and-forth on the Fury Road [part 1]

I saw Mad Max: Fury Road last weekend, writing this on Facebook about it:

“MAN! That Fury Road. Was. The BOMB! Maybe even better than The Road Warrior.”

So, William D. Jackson, one of my oldest friends, sent an unsolicited lonnnnng text about the latest Mad Max movie (SPOILERS ENSUE):

“I think with Mad Max the amount of senseless (albeit very artistic) violence in my opinion overwhelmed the nobility of the plot. It was very late in the movie that I sympathized with the purpose of the protagonists’ actions. Even stranger, to me the Everyman was the young minion who sacrificed(?) himself at the end. Very strange for a big action film that the audience identifies most with a minor character, and even stranger for that character to have the greatest arc in the whole story. Max was still himself, if a bit deeper and more sympathetic. But the young man who craved greatness and achieved it in ignominious (yet ultimately the most impactful) fashion is the one who changed the most and was on further extremes either way. In a way, I find the idea of this being a “feminist” movie insulting; feminism should mean more than symbolic female heroism. But if I’m wrong about that, then feminism is just like all isms; a canard of epic proportions. (I’m also cynical enough to believe that the protests from so-called male rights activists is a marketing ploy to get more people to watch. The critics panned another movie with a group of female leads that supposedly knocked Mad Max off the top of the box office in its first weekend, though that could say more about the lack of depth of the average American moviegoer. All said, I liked Mad Max, but didn’t love it. I was more moved by The Book of Eli; its intent was deeper, its plot less dense, yet more sophisticated. Heck, Children of Men was the best of these type of movies for its sense of purpose and edgy cinematic  direction. Mad Max was a great popcorn flick with respect for gender equality and great set pieces, but it’s no classic. However, I would greatly look forward to a George Miller-directed live action movie franchise of Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood. Hope!”

My reply:

“I disagree.

That is all

Actually, no, of COURSE that’s not all. How long you known me?

Mad Max Fury Road may well be an instant classic for me, at least upon initial viewing, in a way that Book of Eli didn’t quite manage (though I liked that one a lot)

Five points follow

OK, six”

Next entry will share the six points in conjunction with Will’s replies.