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Mad Max contd: further along the Fury Road [spoilers]


Fez

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IBM Watson will analyze your personality from a block of text you input.  So I thought it'd be fun to input a quote from Fury Road.

 

Mad Max voice-over:

 

My name is Max. My world is fire. And blood. Once, I was a cop; a road warrior searching for a righteous cause. As the world fell, each of us in our own way was broken. It was hard to know who was more crazy. Me... or everyone else. Here they come again. Worming their way into the black matter of my brain. I told myself... they cannot touch me. They are all dead. I am the one who runs from both the living and the dead. Hunted by scavengers. Haunted by those I could not protect. So I exist in this Wasteland. A man reduced to a single instinct: survive.

 

and Watson's analysis:

 

 

You are sentimental.

You are laid-back: you appreciate a relaxed pace in life. You are calm-seeking: you prefer activities that are quiet, calm, and safe. And you are carefree: you do what you want, disregarding rules and obligations.

You are motivated to seek out experiences that provide a strong feeling of well-being.

You consider helping others to guide a large part of what you do: you think it is important to take care of the people around you. You are relatively unconcerned with achieving success: you make decisions with little regard for how they show off your talents.

 

Screencap posted to imgur with the full details of the assessed personality.

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Finally saw this, and it totally met my (by this point pretty damn high) expectations. It felt so fresh aesthetically and even thematically, despite being rendered in perhaps the most stereotypical post-apocalyptic setting/scenario of modern fiction -- an archetype that was, of course, basically created by this very franchise. 

 

I absolutely loved the structure of it and the way the story unfolded. There's so little dialogue, and so much of the plot and exposition come through visual storytelling. Even the world-building, which was also surprisingly fresh and distinct, was rarely explained directly to the audience. Like most great pieces of fiction, it forces the viewer to engage with the story in order to understand it (not that there's anything wildly complex or difficult here to understand in the first place, but then that's precisely why it's nice that so little of it is force-fed to us like a lot of blockbusters would). Same goes for the characters. Furiosa and, to an even greater degree, Max, almost never verbally express how they're feeling at a particular moment, because they don't need to. Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy are good enough actors (supported by a good enough script and director) that the audience knows all they need to know from their mannerisms. I mean shit, virtually half of Max's already hilariously sparse dialogue is just a slew of different grunts, and it fucking works

 

The action speaks for itself. "Intense" just isn't a strong enough word to describe it. The set-pieces are huge, fast, completely over-the-top in every imaginable way...and yet incredibly measured and well-choreographed. It never felt like an incomprehensible mess of noise and motion (like many of the fight scenes in say, the Transformers movies). The camera-work and editing serve to establish a sense of geography to each action scene. You may get lost for a moment simply because it's all so fast, to the point that you can look away for a moment or two and miss something important...but if you pay attention, the action always follows a logical (if not necessarily realistic) chain of cause-and-effect, which is something that's way too rare in a time when action movies are more popular than ever (a similar thing happened with the success of The Raid franchise in the West, which applied the same techniques to fist-fights that Mad Max does to vehicular mayhem -- of course, this is something East Asian action filmmakers have known for decades). I also loved the wonderfully unsubtle feministic edge it had. The title may be "Mad Max", but this is absolutely Furiosa's story. The interplay between the two men and six women traveling together here is great, and it never feels preachy or forced. The fact that Max spends almost half the movie bound, impotent, and is literally treated as an object (bloodbag) was great and quite clever.

 

Somewhat ironically, the film reminded me a bit of the Mel Gibson-directed Apocalypto, which relied decently on visual storytelling as well as lengthy-but-coherent-and-interesting action sequences.

 

So yeah, movie totally lived up to the hype. If you're even remotely a fan of action flicks, then go see this. It's one of the best out there, and will almost certainly be looked back upon as one of the defining films of the genre for this decade. 

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Well, I finally saw it. Twice now. It's crazy that Tom Hardy has almost no lines, just noises and facial expressions, and he still killed it. I don't usually buy Blu Rays, but I'm thinking I'm going to with this, I want to see all the extra stuff. I read that the next script it already written and Tom is signed on for 4 total Mad Max movies. I've never seen any of the old ones, but I think I might have to check them out soon.
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I was reading some analysis of the framing of it, and that it primarily uses centre framing rather than points of interest at the thirds or the golden rule and that this is why the action is so easy to follow - you don't need to drag the eye around the screen and make people figure out what is going on when you have that much going on. Just stick it in the same spot and people will follow the action and be entertained.

This framing is also a big part of why the scantily clad were not objectified by the movie, not only were they not positioned with their breasts or groin at points of interest, their bodies are frequently behind objects, other characters or shadowed. The exception to this being the really effective fake out scene with the water and bolt cutters.
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I was reading some analysis of the framing of it, and that it primarily uses centre framing rather than points of interest at the thirds or the golden rule and that this is why the action is so easy to follow - you don't need to drag the eye around the screen and make people figure out what is going on when you have that much going on. Just stick it in the same spot and people will follow the action and be entertained.

This framing is also a big part of why the scantily clad were not objectified by the movie, not only were they not positioned with their breasts or groin at points of interest, their bodies are frequently behind objects, other characters or shadowed. The exception to this being the really effective fake out scene with the water and bolt cutters.

Read the same analysis. Very interesting stuff. This movie just keeps on getting better and better the more I read about it and understand how it was made. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

It's not exactly the most clear delivery I've ever heard.

 

'The history woman, take a look at the history woman. -something- (,and she let the women go?) So now, my poor old da' has to go round and round the garden like a grisly bear.'

Wow, that's a lot more than could get out of it. For me it was just 'something - history woman- something - history woman - something - poor old da - something' :) Do you think the unclear delivery was intentionally (due to Rictus's... problems) or is it just the sound mix not being very good? :)

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"The history woman...take a look at the history woman...hour by hour we have put her through the (?????) .....and she let the women go, so now my poor old dad has to go round and round the garden like a girzzly bear"

is all i got from it missed the little bit in the middle 

 

i think the delivery was intentional but just very unclear because of the shouting and rictus' voice 

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