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So I'm just come back from watching Fury Road.

I have to say, if you're going to watch Fury Road, I recommend doing it after eating half of a large bag of buttered popcorn and having had nothing to drink since lunch: it really focused me on the story, I must say.

Of course as a result my most vivid reaction to the movie was JESUS FUCKING CHRIST DON'T POUR THE FUCKING WATER OUT INTO THE DESERT TURN THE FUCKING TAPS OFF WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING, so I may not be up to the same level of deep academic analysis that all y'all have been doing.

Anyway. Probably the best movie I've ever seen where the ratio of explosions to words of dialogue was greater than 10:1. Also I did not get bored of fight scenes and car chases at any point? Which was pretty freakin' magical given how quickly I usually get bored of those.

In conclusion, I still like Ancillary Sword better. :P

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I live in Australia, and throughout my childhood we were going through the most severe drought we'd ever experienced, so I was brought up with, "Don't hose your car, that's wasting water. Try to keep your showers to three minutes." There were laws which told you which houses could water their garden on which days. So watching a movie that claimed to be set in a drought-ridden future Australia where people left the hose running while they fought Max was a bit weird to us...

They waste so much freakin' water in that movie, and that was the first scene that really bothered me. I kept expecting Max's first words in that scene to be something like "Turn the damn hose off you're wasting water". I grew up in a place that only had annual short-term summer droughts, and *still*, you don't leave the hose on when you're not actively using it. >:|

I guess it was supposed to help teach us that the high-ranking people in the Citadel were spoiled and didn't know how good they had it? But it bothered me ok. They are going to get a v. sudden wake-up call when they're in charge of the water supply and have to institute rationing almost immediately...

Yes. We were feeling fretful about the amount of water they're pumping out of those pipes at the end, too. Where does this underground water supply come from? How limited is it? Are you considering the future when you dump megalitres just to show people how generous a leader you're going to be?

There are places in Israel where they know exactly how much water an individual plant (say, a wheat plant or something) needs to survive, and sprinkler systems are set up to give each plant its quantity exactly. I would expect that kind of care in Max's world, to be honest.

I mean, they had a tanker full of water, and I guess they didn't expect to live all that long, maybe...

I actually thought that it was about the fact that they were now in control of the resources, both the water, which was theirs to waste or not, and also their sexuality, as indicated by their shedding the chastity belts as part of the same scene.

We don't actually have a good idea of what the water reserves at the citadel are like either - whether Joe and Co were rationing it for conservation of simply because they were hoarding it for power, and whether it could be more judiciously used.

I also think that the water they had with them was mostly intended to pay off the people in the canyon, because they thought they were going somewhere where it was a more abundant resource and wouldn't need to be rationed.

Yeah, that's my take on it too.

I enjoyed Fury Road a lot! And I'm amazed that despite being a two-hour car chase I never did get tired of it either. Also, how much story they managed to convey with so little dialogue. That's amazing, really.

Okay, it sounds like you're a good person to ask about this: is this a movie that's so good that it might even appeal to someone who generally avoids action movies of all sorts? Or would that be pushing it?

-J

I don't, like, actively avoid action movies, but they aren't something I usually seek out, and I am the kind of person who completely zoned out during the big fight scene at the end of Avengers, and I did enjoy this one. I did get a little bit lost during the big fight scene at the end of this one, in terms of tracking which characters were still active in the fight. (Although that's partly because there were half a dozen new characters that had just been introduced before the final fight and it takes me longer than that to be able to tell people apart) but most of the action scenes I had no trouble following what was going on or gettin distracted with daydreaming, and that's a first for me.

But the fights and chases were very... stylish, without glorifying violence, if that makes any sense? They were actively fun to watch and the set/prop/audio/cinemagraphy/design people for this movie deserve all the awards. And there was always stuff going on other than the fight/chase itself, among the main characters (making repairs or learning to trust each other or whatever) so there was more of a narrative to them than boomy explody death yay.

Also of the characters we are rooting for, there are about a dozen women and one-and-a-half dudes, and while the plot is built around the fact that women are treated as objects in this world and around action-movie masculinity, the POV/camera view actively does not ever buy into either of those things, and none of the violence is sexualized at all. (Like, the closest it gets is the scene we're discussing above with the hose, where we first meet a lot of the women, and they're in the desert in filmy white clothing hosing each other down with Male Character watching, and you think for maybe a minute "okay, yeah, here comes the first male gaze scene" and then the camera shifts just enough to make it clear that no, it's the water we're panting after, not the beautiful women, haha fakeout. And there's nothing even that close to that in the rest of the movie.)

So if that's what bothers you about action movies it should be OK.

But it is flashy-jump cuts-boomy-explody-shouty-people-becoming-red-mist, so if that's the stuff that bothers you about action scenes (rather than just being bored/turned off by them) you should still avoid.

Also. Uh. The internet is really excited about like. The plot and the character arcs and stuff? And while it does manage an impressive amount of story given the explosions:words of dialogue ratio, that's, uh, not actually saying much, the story is pretty basic.

Edited 2015-05-31 16:30 (UTC)

Yeah! I don't know how they did that, usually car chases are boring as anything and yet this one was not.

That particular scene I think was about that, but it wasn't the only point in the movie where they wasted a ton of water.

Of course I probably wouldn't have cared nearly as much if I hadn't gone into the movie severely dehydrated, that tends to... concentrate the attention.

(I think the water in the tanker was because Furiosa's official mission was trading water for gasoline in Gastown? So once they were off the road, yeah, it became a luxury they didn't actually need. But it must've still been super-valuable as a commodity or else they would have dumped the tanker early on in exchange for speed. Of course I didn't figure out until 3/4 of the way through the movie that the entire tank was full of water - I spent a lot of time trying to decide if it was water, milk, gasoline, or refugees in there.)

As for the citadel - if he's really "pumping it from deep down under the desert" then I don't care what the reserves are like, the supply is not infinite and he's spending a LOT of energy getting it. Joe pouring it out for the peasants was presumably a display of waste in order to demonstrate how much power he has, and doesn't necessarily mean he actually has a lot to waste - just enough to pretend he can waste it. But now the peasants are going to think that Joe gone means water pouring out 24/7 and no, that is not what it is going to mean....

I said after the movie that I would totally watch the sequel that was two hours of hydrologic engineering and water-rationing politics instead of two hours of car chases, and that is kinda all I want out of this fandom rn. ;P

I've had a hard time putting my finger on what exactly bothers me about action movies, and in trying to characterize it I've said a lot of things over the years that turned out not to bear up under closer scrutiny. But as a general rule, I think the issue is mostly that what I'm looking for in fiction is "stories about people," and stories in which the ways that people grow and change take a backseat to other stuff are never going to feel particularly satisfying to me. So it's not the "flashy-jump cuts-boomy-explody-shouty-people-becoming-red-mist" thing at all (violence doesn't bother me if it has emotional consequences and those emotional consequences are explored in detail), but those kinds of trappings are usually indicative of stories that I'm not going to find very satisfying, so I have learned to avoid them.

In any case, thank you for your frank commentary, both pro and con! I will mull it over some more and possibly watch it on Netflix someday. :)

-J

This is definitely a story about people and people growing and changing! It's just a story about people growing and changing while driving a tanker truck across the desert and being shot at. So yeah, you might enjoy it.

I think it actually helps that it is one two-hour car chase instead of a story that's frequently interrupted by car chases; all the action-y stuff has to be integrated into the character story because there's no space for anything else.

Like Mel said - it is a very basic story - but it is really clean and tight. They do a *lot* of work with the little dialogue, and much of it comes out in the visuals. There isn't a ton of exposition, because that would slow things down. It's basic, but also pretty smart. And yes, definitely character growth and development, and some very complex emotional stuff going on.

I would also watch the sequel about hydrologic engineering and water rationing politics!

HOW INTERESTING that hydrologic engineering and water-rationing politics is exactly what I want to write!

I approve this plan!

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