Why MAD MAX: FURY ROAD Works - A Scene-By-Scene Breakdown
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- Опубліковано 28 сер 2021
- In this essay, we explore how Mad Max: Fury Road makes its mark by merging moving metaphors with mindblowing motorized maneuvers!
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FCH Art by Yannick Belzil
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Music by LittleVMills
• Mad Max - Brothers In ...
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54:53 - The fact that Max's old car is being driven by Nux's old friend. It's like both of their past selves are coming after them.
One of my favorite parts of this movie is told entirely through costuming. We can tell Furiosas backstory almost entirely through her outfit. If you pay attention, the base of her outfit, what she wears under that armor and all those guns, is white linen. The same material the *wives* wear. After being taken as a child, *Furiosa was one of Joes wives*.
which opens the possibility that she might have destroyed her own arm as a means to escape that role.
Great observation, I missed that! This is why I only the read the comments on this channel.
@@maximeteppe7627 Damn dude that is fucked up, but that is good writing if so.
I like this take! I always thought myself that to “escape”, she found a way to teach herself how to drive.
Her harness reminds me a little of the back harnesses long haul truck drivers sometimes wear for back support. If one of the main motifs in the film is that all the people under Immortan Joe are objectified/used as tools (the War Boys, the Wives, etc) then Furiosa just made herself a more useful tool somehow as a way to avoid being a wife forever
I'm going to assume that she's also naturally blonde with a full head of hair but she cut it all off and dyed it with dirt and engine grease to separate herself from the grace and femininity of the wives.
I will never get tired of watching video essays about Fury Road.
I hesitate to call any movie perfect, but this might be the one that most closely gets a perfect score for Story, Cinematography, Editing, Acting, Character building, Message, Costume, Sound and just anything else I can think of. Your video shows why.
The way everything about the Citadel and its society is made clear to the audience without any exposition whatsoever - Masterclass.
This movie does a good job at treating you like you have a brain and can think for yourself.
Table of contents, since I don't think anyone's done it yet:
0:00 Intro
2:45 Teaser: A Single Instinct
5:20 Sequence 1: Welcome to the Citadel
8:30 Sequence 2: Taking a Detour
12:30 Sequence 3: Convergence
15:40 Sequence 4: Enter the Void
17:09 Sequence 5: From the Ashes
18:51 Sequence 6: Breaking Bonds, Forging New Ones
23:51 Sequence 7: The Death of the Old Self
28:06 Sequence 8: "Safe" Passage
31:12 Sequence 9: Family Squabble
34:31 Sequence 10: In Want of Forgiveness
38:48 Sequence 11: Long Night's Journey into Day
45:08 Sequence 12: Homecoming
47:47 Sequence 13: The Last Seeds of Hope
52:07 Sequence 14: In Through the Out Door
58:16 Sequence 15: A Man With a Name
59:09 Sequence 16: Full Circle
1:02:24 Wastelands
1:05:56 Credits
The world building in this movie is like a violent ghibli move lol. By leaving some things unexplained, the viewer can build so much more in their own mind. The world actually more feels fleshed out when you explain less.
Princess Mononoke is a violent Ghibli movie
@@tvsonicserbia5140 I just watched that for the first time and was immediately reminded of Fury Road
I loved how so much of the story is not in the dialogue, but in the expressions and body language of the amazing cast. So much of this was storyboarded instead of scripted, and it shows in such amazing visuals. It is truly a deep movie and an excellent analysis.
Welcome back, Sir Hulk.
Damn, Angharad slipped on the blood from when Max shot her. I never picked up on that.
Me either. Much like Seven Samurai, I think I can watch Fury Road more than ten times and still get discover something new.
I LOVE Fury Road SO MUCH and every single time someone releases a new think piece about it, I go and rewatch it. It's such an incredible film and truly, for me, the closest thing to perfect that you can get
"I'm not crying, you're crying!"
But it applies to the emotions that your rich analysis brought up 😭😭😭
Seriously, I cannot express how much your contributions to film discussion means to me and how much it has helped me evolve as a storyteller and a consumer of the stories we tell.
I'd always thought that the 'first history man' was Max himself, long after the events of the film. Realizing that there's more to the world he's living in than surviving, and that people can come together to make themselves better, and that learning from history and stories are fundamental to that. Pretty sure that massively contracts with some lore somewhere though.
Could always be The Wild Child! He's the first character to do any narration in the series! :p
Speculation on the topic is fun. And useless. But most fun thing are. And that's okay. The use is being fun.
@@addisonmartin3200 fin theory, but the end of MM2 kills it.
He's telling the story as an old man, dying, and the leader of the Great Northern Tribe.
Not saying it can't be him. Kist solidly not likely.
Kind of like the assumption in the Terkinator franchise that Kyle is John's father. Myself, I don't buy it, and never have, on the biology level. Between his workd growing up, and how reproduction works.
My take? Sarah was already pregnant.
Makes for uninteresting conversations, or several insults cast at me for posting it.
MY MATE HULK HAS RETURNED🙌🙌🙌😆
Nah
Another cool visual metaphor: the metallic paint that the warboys used as well as the black paint over their eyes and Furiosa's eyes.
1. It's metallic, showing that they're being treated no different than war machines
2. It's over their face and teeth, both mirroring Max's own cage mask, becoming a symbol of slavery
3. When they grin their teetch when being sprayed with it, as well as the lasting damage it does to their lips in form of the vertical scars over them, it makes them look like skeletons, doubling down on the idea of this being a death cult. Not to forget their stark white bodies and shaved heads.
As for the black paint over the eyes, it could represent being blinded, or seeing nothing but darkness. This especially has a lot of meaning to Furiosa, who starts with the black paint almost all over her face but who over the course of the movie slowly regains a more human-like look. She gains so many scars, but also finally once again becomes human.
I thought the black eye paint was because Immorten Joe wanted them to look like cute little pandas.
Black paint also has a practical use, to lessen glare in the sun. Good observations though!
The scars on their lips are from their lips constantly being dry from no water. Chapped lips = cracked lips. Usually you do not stay your lips twice it is supposed to be a dying maneuver. Nux was one of the only ones who ever did it twice. If you failed you usually did not go back you would go home a failure. But no one saw his first failure
If anyone wants a great micro analysis to go with Hulk's longform: Jill Bearup has a marvellous video on the Max-Furiosa fight.
I love how your enthusiasm filters through every single word you say
This is my contribution to the algorithm. WITNESS ME!!!
WITNESS!!!!
That scales of justice metaphor actually got me. Ive seen this movie so many times and im just now getting it. It also reminds me of how certain people tend to view justice in this authoritarian violent sense which i noticed in alot of the conservative reaction to Chauvins guilty verdict. I fucking love how tight the script is every-time there's something i missed. Masterpiece.
Did you notice his wig-made-of-bullets looks like what judges wear in the British legal system?
@@ScaryMason I did, and I thought it was not only a cool costuming choice, but also fits well with the commentary about "justice" and violence going hand-in-hand
The part I noticed only when FILM CRIT HULK pointed it out (despite having seen the movie start to finish several times) was that Splendid slipped on her own blood from the wound Max gave her. Such a small quick but important detail.
it could also be imterpreted, that by him missing all of his intended shots and later dying at the hands of Max, the crew's goal was deemed just and he himself was not.
how many times will it take for you then to ''get'' Nostalgia? a life time?
The Return of the King
Oh what a day! WHAT A LOVELY DAY!
Wooo, yesss, one of my favorite movies gets the Hulk treatment!
Here before the "When the world needed him most... He returned" comment
You are that comment
Here before the “First comment” guy came
There's one very important thing about this film that should be mentioned:
George Miller wanted to turn this film into a truly mythical campfire story that's told from the perspective of some History Men in the far future.
But here's the kicker - there was a character in this film who is the storyteller and shows up IN this film to warn Max about the future events.
It was an ancient indigenous man who materialized in front of Max out of thin air and told him "I know you, I KNOW YOU" and then to prove it, he moves his hand across Max's face - a move which will save Max's life later on when he gets shot in the head with an arrow. Then that storyteller just vanishes into thin air. This was all in the original script from 2002.
That scene was modified to show a little girl (not Max's daughter btw) doing the same thing and vanishing as well.
So the intention was that the actual storyteller of this mythical tale of Fury Road literally showed up in the film to talk to one of the characters, but wait - there's more!
George Miller is very much into the mechanics of storytelling and he said "There is no story without somebody to observe it. You watch your cat, it carries in its DNA so much programming, so much information, but you need an observer, the cat is not aware of its narrative."
And this idea was shown in the scene were the wives and vuvalini are watching the night sky, seeing a satellite. They ask "Is there still somebody sending shows?".
What that scene means is that those characters, in that story are literally wondering if there's some kind of storyteller, coming up with new stories, myths, you name it.
While them themselves not being aware they're in a story.
We are their observers, George Miller is the storyteller.
This film literally oozes metaphors once you learn about the man who made it and how much subtext he planned on putting in it because originally he thought it would've been his final Mad Max film.
That is delightfully meta, the idea that the characters, in that moment, hover on the edge of awareness that they themselves are a show. Or that the story we're seeing is actually a fireside tale, so unreliable that the storyteller actually appears in the story to help the hero survive. I'm almost sad that didn't make it into the final film, but it shed more light on who all the people were in Max's visions. They're everyone that anyone ever lost. They're not specific to Max's story, because Max isn't specifically Max anymore. He's Mythic Max, a character in a tale, which may or may not have ever happened.
Of course, as with all films, when you start asking what did or didn't really happen, you have to remember it's a work of fiction. None of it happened. In story, there's no line between literal and metaphorical. Just ask Baron Münchhausen.
@@rottensquid If I remember correctly, in the original version of the film from 2002 Max wasn't hallucinating the accusing dead, the folks he failed to save. There was only one really strange moment where he hallucinated the indigenous man who busted into the story with the knowledge of future events and then poof he was gone.
The fact that he was an indigenous Aboriginal - the storyteller - mirrored what happened to George Miller when he was location scouting for Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. He wanted to film it on sacred Aboriginal land and he needed permission from the tribal elders to film there. So he met up with them, told them the story of Max, showed them storyboards and they said that they had heard that story before. And that blew George Miller's mind. He realized that he was subconsciously re-telling a story that was already known for ages among the indigenous Australians.
So when they started working on Fury Road the idea was to frame the film straight up like a mythical campfire tale that was told by some History Men from the far future but ALSO as a campfire myth known for centuries by the indigenous Australians as evidenced by the indigenous Australian that busts into the movie to warn Max about the future events. In other words - it was going to be a universally recognized common myth.
Now - this is just my hypothesis, but in order to achieve that goal, I think George Miller based Fury Road on the myth of the Pleiades, or more specifically - the Aboriginal version of that myth because it's so common all around the world in different cultures. The Aboriginal version of that myth is about 7 sisters escaping a malignant male that wants to take one of them for his wife. And as they escape across the Australian land they create nature and eventually escape up into the sky to become stars.
Sounds familiar? Especially because originally George Miller wanted to have 6 wives + Furiosa in the War Rig, making it 7 'Wives' (Furiosa is an ex-wife herself) escaping from the Immortan who wants them for himself and as they finish their journey they plant the seeds in the Citadel.
George Miller later admitted in an interview for RT I believe (you can go on my channel and check out "How Mad Max Movies were Made Part 2 - there's sources for all this info there) that he 'accidentally' repeated that myth. But I don't believe that. I think it was deliberate.
@@MadMaxBible I am totally going to go check that out. Very cool!
I think there's always a kind of need for deniability when it comes to repeating archetypal myths. It's often the case you don't realize that's what you're doing until you're well into it. And as we've seen the "hero's journey" concept morph into such a pathetic set of banal cliches, there's also a need not to follow what you think of as "universal stories" too closely.
In the Jungian world, there's a little bit of suspicion of the reductiveness of Joseph Campbell's approach, at least as it's been embraced by the media world. From a Jungian standpoint, it's not the universality of archetypes that matters, but the distinctiveness that comes from their differences. The idea that myth is universal suggests that the details are superfluous, which has a ring of cultural erasure.It's kind of a variation on "your heathen God is really Jesus Christ in disguise, so technically, you're already Christians. So you might as well convert. Oh, and here's your free gift for joining. It's smallpox! :D"
I still haven't seen Fury Road, but an episode of Film Crit Hulk is probably going to motivate me to see it all the sooner.
I'll return here at some point.
Have you saw it?
I'm sad there hasn't been another FCH on youtube in a long time.
13:00 I also really like the character building that the fight with the rival gangs establishes for Furiosa. She's really competent in the geography and politics of the area, and knows how to organically thin out the number of warboys on the War Rig, so that when they inevitably realize what's happening, the rivals will have made it easier for her to deal with them. Exploiting their culture and ignorance with a lot of contingency planning, it really made her terrifying as an intelligent predator who is dealing with a series of problems in sequence.
"It's because we have to plant the necessary seeds of doubt, and we have to show that change is hard, especially now... he can finally get closer to everything his old self ever wanted, and he'll learn what that really means." Sorry, are we talking about Nux or Zuko's arc in AtLA? wait, it's both? got it.
A half life also being a reference to the half-life of radioactive material is a great detail.
It's also great the amount of Aussie slang and idioms in the dialogue to.
Awh! This is great! I wrote my university thesis about the use of Storyboarding in this film! It's so great to hear you discuss it! ❤️
this movie is so good that I'm getting hyped while watching a breakdown of it
As The Grand Archpriest of The Church of the Algorithm, I bless this video with a comment.
Hey Hulk team - going out on a limb here but I hope you know all of the 'you're back' comments do understand the time it takes to make these long-form videos. We're excited but most of us probably want you to avoid crunch, we get it.
This was an incredible essay, so many congratulations Mr. FILM CRIT HULK.
I really liked how you expounded on the chain metaphor, which wasn't something I'd ever thought about, so that was brilliant! Also, you know a film is crazy good when someone can produce an one-hour video on it, and still not cover lots of great stuff featured on the film.
There's a reason most video essayist that got me into the genre talk about you as one of their entry points into media criticism. I've watched a number of videos on why Fury Road is so good, but none of them has made me feel that as much as this.
Glad to have you with us again, glad to know you've been gainfully employed. A true banger of a film to return to us with.
Fantastic breakdown. You're for sure one of my favourite film critics.
Not only an Avenger… but also a film critic!
Love these videos! Thank you, Hulky baby!!
I think "disgusting Monopoly man" already describes the vanilla version.
HULK IS BACK BABY!!!
I think corpus colossus is a really interesting name. I have no clue where the story goes after the movie ended, but one possibility is that he may be the bridge between the old regime and the new. The corpus callosum connects the right and left hemispheres of the brain (which used to also erroneously be considered gendered, with the left brain being male and right being female).
In a sense a true hero irl has 2 traits. Helping the vulnerable and the ability being able to accept help.
Great video Hulk! I'll be sure to see this movie whenever it is possible in the future.
You did this movie a great honor; thank you for pointing out everything that made me love that movie.
I know I'm late here, but I want to point out Max's purely visual (and therefore often missed) character arc. In the first sequence of the movie, we can see that he doesn't have supplies but owns a crab trap stored in his car. Crabs live in the water. Later, when Furiosa, the Wives, Nux, and the Vuvalini go on to cross the Plains of Silence (former Pacific Ocean), Max tells them that they will only find salt. He is aware that the oceans dried up and crabs are likely gone.
The existence of that crab trap means what Max was about to cross the Plains of Silence too, fully knowing that he wouldn't make it. Max was about to commit an indirect suicide and now wishes for Furiosa and the others not to end like he would have.
Great video, by the way.
you have a knack for this; fury road is a special and once-in-a-generation film to me but you manage to elevate it through some of the best analysis i've had the pleasure of watching. thank you so much for articulating so beautifully what i love about this film whilst introducing new analyses and points i never thought of. this is one those video essays you never forget about
I knew I was gonna have a good day when I saw my favorite Film Critic had uploaded, that feeling only doubled when I saw you were analyzing one of my all time favorite action movies of the 2010's.
Always gonna be thrilled by in-depth analyses of this incredible film!!!
RIP Quentin Kenihan and Hugh Keays-Byrne
After reading Blood Sweat & Chrome just now, there's so much backstory that went into production. For instance, every single War Boy has a story. That's just the tip.
a note about the quote at the end of the film: i too googled it after i saw it and discovering it was an in-universe quote blew my mind and made me love this film even more. because it provided an answer after the fact, after the film was already over, on something that originally i saw as just set dressing-Miss Giddy. Obviously we knew she was the wives' teacher, but the tattoos could have been anything. it grew the world beyond just this moment of the car chase and gave it a mythology that felt real. loved the video!
Good to have you back
Its always entertaining to see Hulk on youtube
Not bad for 1 hour essay, Hulk
Thx for the great work
lol I love the Conan as Doof Warrior shot smuggled into the intro montage.
Thanks for the great insight into one of my favorite movies!
Another good bulk of content thanks for making me a bit more inteligent about action film
I have spent the last year trying to find this channel. Finally I am back! Missed this.
What a wonderful film, thank you for sharing this.
40:32 There’s a deleted scene where Joe discards Angharad’s body as well as Miss Giddy in the middle of the desert. He didn’t even attempt to bury her or leave them with any dignity, it was cut for story clarity but I think it definitely should’ve been kept in.
Even the distortion of language ("McFeast"; "Bullet farmer"; "People eater") imply a bigger history and a bigger world from which these words evolved.
I am so god damn excited for this video. Film hulk + Fury Road.
Beautiul loveletter to a beautiful movie. Keep it up, Mr. Hulk! :)
The into the void sequence so perfectly captures the absolute insanity of the situation. I feel my breath being held every time I see it.
Great video! I'm 2 minutes in and I know I love this already!
As a smart man once said, making simple things is difficult, making things complicated is easy.
Out of his Hibernation again
These just take a long long long time to make when landon and I both doing other stuff full time! I swear we go as fast as we can :)
@@filmcrithulk1769 Good editing is labourious. Quality over quantity!!
@@filmcrithulk1769 well this was worth the wait.
Excelent video of a perfect movie...
Miss your takes, my dude, hope you come back in the future
Appointment viewing let's goooooooooooo
Splendid analysis, kudos!
One thing, though: it is "couldn't care less", not "could care less". If he could care less, it would mean he cared a little bit and the sentence made little sense.
one small correction: That girl Max keeps having visions of isn't his daughter. Max had a son, as shown in the first film. She's just some girl he failed to save a couple years before this move takes place
Possibly we will see the background for that history in the upcoming Mad Max: Wasteland movie
@@alphamorion4314 it was told in its entirety in the comics, also it feels like that arc was kinda finished
Ok, so I’ve had this video in my Watch Later for like a year or so, and man I am happy to have watched this. I love how you dove into the metaphors and themings to toxic masculinity. I’m not sure if you’ve stopped making videos or not, but I’m exited/hope what you do next will be swell
Max does not have a daughter. He had a son.
That is Glory, the child, from the prequel comic, who Max couldn't save.
Witness me, film crit hulk
18:22 - That's $26 well spent lol
Hulkkkkyyyyyyyyyy Finally here
Be regular boii😍😍😍😍😍
so much Checkov's we need to consolidate this under something that can be drawn from when needed while not just being something so simple: Checkov's Improvised Resources(enough to state the multitude of things that can be used to effectively set up something for later and allows freedom to state whatever is needed can be anything; animal, mineral, vegetable and everything inbetween)
I really hope you make another vieo soon, you are incredibel and informitive.
Beautiful analysis! Love all the little bits you pointed out that I didn't connect together when I watched this movie. BTW for those who don't know, DC put out some tie-in comics for Mad Max: Fury Road, which have been collected into a TPB. They were done by George Miller and others who worked on the movie, so they're not fluff, you get actual, canonical backstory for Immortan Joe and Nux and such.
Also, closing the crevice to deny Rictus passage.
Funny timing cuz I watched it like a week ago and I’m obsessed with it
"choince"
"golden age spicey"
I know that Film Crit Hulk always has fun bloopers.
And more importantly, the audience does know. Too. As well. Also. And?
P.S. 12:15
Yes please and thank you
Literally rewatched Fury Road 2 nights ago (the storytelling blows my mind just a bit more each time), and this drops! What a good world
Sidenote: are all the 'stickers' in the corners when scenes are playing to protect from copyright claims?
Yeah, this movie is a masterclass in show, don´t tell. And in those two hours we are shown so very much in so many ways in every frame.
Funny to see Immortan Joe has a U.S. Naval Officer's crest as one of his medals.
"Crossed hands above the head" This symbol is that of the V8 engine. The god that they worship and chant at some stages. V8, V8,V8!
How does this video not have ALL the views?
after 11month, Crit Hulk came back
He had a Mission Impossible episode a few months back.
Oh this is going to be good.
awesome
We need more Critic bulk !!!!!!
Came from the future to say that this week Furiosa is coming out!
Hello Hulk
i always imagine the end card means mad max is this historical figure, and that there is a story means the worls has gone on, and the fact that this is a story where the patriarchy was beaten makes it a hopeful future
Just starting (and I have to break for dinner already) but I like how the subtitles at 2:30 say "the therefore butts".
Woah, that's the second movie I have on Bluray that you've made a video about. Guess I have good taste lol.
I'd love if you did one on the action in John Wick, but no pressure obvs
Yes
You’re so good! I love listening to you talk about movies that we can tell you genuinely care about. You have such good insight and I love your videos.
Why Didnt you make more videos man? these were so good!