The Tribes of Furiosa

 Last weekend I went to see Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.

If you are willing to pay money to see a film, I would be hard pressed to think of why you wouldn't spend money on Furiosa. It appears to be the case though, that people are not willing to go see Furiosa.

The movie is good, I would go further and say it is probably the best made prequal I have ever seen. Maybe even a perfect prequal, because it has that disadvantage that prequals inherently have which is - we know Furiosa is going to live and several other characters. That sort of shit.

This should not defeat a film at the box office though, especially given how many people I know have watched Mad Max: Fury Road, multiple times. People are capable of being engrossed by stories they have read or seen before, in fact I believe the neuroscience is in and we are most engaged when we know what is going to happen.

Nor should the long delay between the release of Fury Road and Furiosa defeat it at the box office, because this would have to apply to Fury Road which came out 37 years or something after Thunderdome, and also apply to Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Prometheus etc. those are all incredibly flawed films whose financial success is hard to explain apart from a naive fandom gullibly spending money and not waiting for word of mouth.

Furiosa is admittedly a little on the long side, it is a more complicated story than Fury Road which takes place over I don't know, maybe 72 hours if that, it depends mostly on how long Max was out of it when he's captured at the start. Furiosa covers some 15 years.

What annoys me, is that I've seen some reviewers suggest that its because Mad Max isn't in this film (he makes an unnecessary and somewhat incoherent cameo) this is where I find there's an interesting divide between me and many critics I often incidentally agree with.

By this I mean, we agree that Doctor Who isn't worth watching anymore, Disney have bought and tanked most of the world's most valuable IPs, most notably Lucasfilm and Marvel, and there's often a common throughline which is "Woke" and "Entertainment" do not pair well together.

Where I can identify a clear schism however, is on the point of Furiosa somehow making a fatal error in not including Max. 

Max is a protagonist in the tradition of Rincewind from Terry Pratchett's discworld, and perhaps more clearly Luke Skywalker from Star Wars. His main function is to explore a world populated by more interesting characters than himself. 

Where I'd disagree with Terry Pratchett (RIP) is that Rincewind is pretty interesting. I am yet to read a Discworld novel with a more interesting or likeable protagonist. Max too is interesting, you can see it in Tom Hardy's most recent performance, where he is tortured by visions of his murdered family.

But this film doesn't need Max to introduce us to the Wasteland locale where Imortan Joe rules the three outposts of The Citadel, Gastown and the Bullet Farm (or whatever). 

So I want to propose more likely hypothesis, that really Furiosa given it's lack of terminal flaws, should have much of the community second guessing previously accepted hypothesis like "go woke go broke".

The first demands we turn back the clock to Barbenheimer. Oppenheimer did not do as well commercially as Barbie, and conversely Barbie did not do as well critically as Oppenheimer (which cleaned up the Academy awards, and as per forever, moron fans appeared to discover again for the first time that awards aren't distributed based on box office as per Joker, Avengers: Infinity War/Endgame, The Dark Knight etc.) 

I haven't seen Barbie, and while my impression is it's partially divisive in terms of right-wing people hating it, and Oppenheimer which I did see, isn't so much divisive as it is most people couldn't be bothered seeing it I suspect the box-office success was an anomaly. I think these movies succeeded because of "Barbenheimer" which is to say - people needed to see them to be relevant. Barbenheimer was a social media success story, in the tradition of poetry book "Milk and Honey" 

Social media built up buzz for these films with a catchy piece of internet-slang and a trending hashtag. Forget Barbie's box-office returns, consider how much additional revenue just came from merchandise. What we can also expect, is that while the more demanding (in terms of run time, mature subject matter etc.) Oppenheimer benefitted from the Barbenheimer phenomena, clearly most people did not bother to do the double feature, because Barbie made 50% more in box office revenue. 

Furiosa then is more akin to the box-office disappointments of Fast X and Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part I, where having seen them I would struggle to explain what an audience wouldn't like about them, that they did like in previous franchise installments. These underperformances can't be explained by on-the-nose woke messaging and so fourth.

When regarding these box-office phenomena I'm more inclined to think the problem doesn't lie with the products, but the industry.

I just don't buy that anyone would boycott the follow up to Fury Road because it doesn't have either Mel Gibson or Tom Hardy in it. I must however confess, that when I heard way back in 2014, 2015 whatever that George Miller's big plan was to make a prequal of Furiosa's backstory I was disappointed, just because I wasn't that interested in Furiosa, I did not find her character that interesting.

Now, this year also saw Larry David end Curb Your Enthusiasm, in which in the finale he was accused of repeatedly rehashing ideas. Something that I feel is true, with many Curb plots being old Seinfeld plots and even later season episodes being almost remixes of earlier Curb episodes.

But this got me thinking:

screenshot from "The Road Warrior aka Mad Max 2"

The War Rig from "Fury Road"

The War Rig from "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga"

Three of the five franchise installments, may well be George Miller simply remaking the same action set piece, again and again, each time with further refinements. The films might be in a meta sense, vehicles for the scene he continues to dream of filming - road piracy where enemies attempt to board a truck.

The thing is though, these scenes all work. I'm not tired of them, I mean if I can watch video after video on youtube of objectively less exciting GoPro footage of mountain descents on bicycles, or long boarding down alpine roads, or base jumping, why not pay money to see something this well crafted at the cinema?

Fury Road is in some respects, just a remake of Road Warrior, with the budget and technology he had always wanted to fully realize his vision. I think George like many of his fans, love Road Warrior and fear Beyond Thunderdome.

Furiosa I put it to you, in a similar manner is just Mad Max. Much like Sarah Conner in Terminator 2 is Ellen Ripley from Aliens - the director just transplanted a cool character. George Miller knows how to write Max, and he likely wrote what he knew to create Furiosa.

So another alternate theory, is that Furiosa has not aged well.

Way back when, I actually wrote about Furiosa because of how excited some of my friends got about Furiosa. In brief, after watching Fury Road, I didn't get it, her character felt like nothing new but I had mental block trying to think of precedents. This was ironic because the trailer that played before the feature was for Terminator Genysis (or whatever) a film you had probably forgotten ever existed. 

When the block gave way, it was a flood. Furiosa's precedents are of course Sarah Conner (James Cameron) from Terminator 2*, Ellen Ripley (James Cameron) from Aliens, Beatrice/The Bride from Kill Bill (Quentin Tarantino), Trinity from The Matrix (The Watchowskis) and maybe we can go back and find one of the more action oriented Bond Girls, I'm sure my list is not exhaustive though I'd say clearly Ripley and Sarah Conner are the true icons of action heroines.

So I feel justified in anyone who said "finally" when Furiosa hit the screens was simply ignoring a quite established trope of female action heroines.

I don't really know, but I wonder if the character of Furiosa fell out of favour with the feminist fan base, I recall reading on the mary sue a scathing review of the prequal comic https://www.themarysue.com/furiosa-comic-review/ and like the comics aren't great, they aren't in the movies for a reason and the review isn't necessarily unfair though its criticisms might be amplified by whatever the reviewers expectations were.

What I found surprising though, was the surprise and disappointment. As in, the Mad Max franchise is set in a post apocalyptic wasteland that is in a macro sense, anarchic. Yes, Tina Turner was a warlord that recruited Max in her power struggle against Master Blaster, but to me I still kind of cringe that anyone might imagine how women would fare in a post apocalyptic wasteland. Like if I came across a woman who remarked "things were so much better for women under feudalism." I would think them delusional. 

It would seem, that much of the Furiosa character's fanbase engaged with the film as pure escapist fantasy, assumed that Furiosa had ascended to her station in the Imortan Joe army how? And had decided to break ranks and steal away Joe's "wives" because what?

The backstory was clearly always going to be very bleak, Furiosa's plan in Fury Road is evidently desperate, almost suicidal, it suggests that something snapped not that something was built. The reviewer for the Mary Sue doesn't suggest any specific alternative expectation, and does concede that clearly rape was built into the premise of Fury Road. All the reviewer proffered was a non-specific list about what the backstory could be:

This could have been a story about them using their knowledge and taking their freedom, rather than being passively given their knowledge and ushered, silenced and unquestioning, to freedom. This could have been a story about agency, respect, curiosity, friendship, love, rebellion, and vibrant humanity.

And I have to admit, the comic is congruent and compatible with the prequal. It might be that word is out however that the character of Furiosa is not who many fans projected her to be. 

Okay yeah, in the new movie I found the economist in me surfacing whenever there is a sweeping shot of a massive biker horde of hundreds driving across the wasteland. I'm like "where's the supply train, this biker army just could not survive out in the wasteland, they don't have the fuel, food or water." Particularly since The Citadel appears to be the only place in the setting where food can be grown and fresh water is plentiful. But I remind myself to suspend my disbelief and get back into the movie.

I think it's a slightly different suspension of disbelief however, to accept that once you remove civilization women's liberation becomes an individual's choice?

So if anything, I don't think Furiosa's underperformance is a result of an absence of Max, it seems far more likely that many women have gone off of Furiosa because they've had ten years to digest and process that Furiosa didn't collaborate with the wives as equals to escape to the Green Place together, but rather hit her limit and hatched a desperate plan to escape that Max stumbled upon and wouldn't have succeeded/salvaged without him.  

Now, where I do agree is that Mad Max Fury Road is not really about Max as protagonist. He might be our guide and he has his own little character arc, but clearly Furiosa is the protagonist or at least the focal character of the film. Even so, it's messy because I'd say the central relationship is Max and Furiosa learning to trust eachother, at the end of the story Max leaves and Furiosa remains, suggesting Furiosa's story has concluded, Max's story continues.

In a similar way, in Furiosa I would say Furiosa functions like Max did, she is kind of our eyes and ears that bear witness to the tragedy of Dementus. Dementus is unambiguously a villain, but in many ways Furiosa is the story of the rise and fall of Dementus. Just as Furiosa was a mirror of Max, Dementus is kind of the negative of Furiosa and Max. He's someone who has leaned in to the whole post-apocalyptic wasteland, he clearly has a deep backstory.

He is however a confusing character, and part of me wonders if the poster created a negative association with Thor: Love and Thunder:

Dementos look changes, possibly making it much easier for the editors to maintain chronology when cutting the film together. The poster shows Chris Hemsworth in his most Thor-like getup, with the blond hair, the red cape and well you can see for yourself. It strikes me as the kind of stupid decision a studio makes, insecure that people might decide they forget they liked Chris Hemsworth in three of the four Thor movies. 

When his character is introduced, I thought he'd been inspired by Reg Mombassa's Australian Jesus where despite the name, and that he was obviously the main antagonist he seems initially to comport himself as the kindest and most merciful among his horde. By the end of the film, I never really got a handle on him, except that he had his own tragic backstory and was just plain unstable. The performance is good, his dialogue is great. 

So here is where I part ways with reviewers that I just don't think can explain the underperformance opening weekend at the box-office:

This review in particular set me off, largely because the youtuber, I think, had this piece written before the facts came in. Like I think he just hates women, I must admit he got to the point where he was making the argument that spin-offs seldom pan out and just lost interest. Furiosa underperformed, in that it didn't make its budget back in its four-day opening weekend. 

But it isn't a critical flop, as at writing both critics and fans rate the film at 90% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. It's not one of these films where critics give it 100% certified fresh and fans give it 7% or 23% or whatever and you have this massive incongruity.

I particularly object to the youtuber's assertion that Furiosa "flopping" was obvious from the get go I find insulting, because it wasn't obvious to me. I discovered my thumb wasn't on the pulse last weekend where I would have felt Furiosa was one of the first films to come out in months (probably since Dune Part II) worth actually seeing. 

That's the schism, I think for which Furiosa may be a lightning rod. 

I already new that many youtuber movie critics I often agree with, did so incidently because of our differing attitudes toward the MCU - for my part, I agree that the last billion MCU movies and tv shows were not worth watching, but there are many who unlike me want the MCU to go back, where I just want them to stop.

And it's not surprising, I've never been in denial about misogyny existing, it's just when you have a movie and character as bad as Captain Marvel (2019) you can't conclude if someone hates the film because the protagonist is a woman, or if they hate the movie because it is a shitty movie.

Furiosa is not a shitty movie, so I can with more confidence attribute hatred of this film to nothing more than a hatred of women.  

To which, I might conclude by alluding to two wrongs not making a right. Identity politics is doomed to remain what it always has been which is: hot garbage. Given my confidence that I can defend an assertion that Furiosa is Max and Max is Furiosa, they are the same character just as Derek Zoolander's Blue Steel, Ferrari Letigra are the same thing. Stoic badasses with shoulderpads that can drive, fight and shoot against the odds to protect the underdogs from the bad guys.

Loving Furiosa because she is a woman, and hating Mad Max because he is a man is the moral equivalent of loving Mad Max because he is a man and hating Furiosa because she is a woman, particularly once you conduct a survey of your male film buff friends and ask whether they rate higher male action movies First Blood, Roadhouse, Kickboxer, Escape From New York, Predator and Robocop, or Alien, Aliens and Terminator 2. (rewatch T2 if you haven't recently, Linda Hamilton is clearly the actual star of that movie, not Arnie.)