Mad Max: Fury Road

Latest figures for the film are in:

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=furyroad.htm

Total Lifetime Grosses Domestic: $59,731,879 47.9%

• Foreign: $65,000,000 52.1%

= Worldwide: $124,731,879

Not too bad at all at this stage in the game, considering we still have the second weekend of release to go. Perhaps, though, this is another reason why film makers should forget about the US market for films like this and concentrate on making sure they get the most dollars from what they make overseas?

It's only due to Hollywood Accounting that films need to make such ridiculously high amounts of money in America for them to be deemed a success.

At any rate, it's doing better than the 300 sequel. That has to count for something, given how Fury Road is a far more belated sequel that was wedged in between freaking Avengers 2 and Pitch Perfect 2.

Just chiming in to say that over 24 hours later, I'm still jizzing over this film. The black, male, working-class man in me loves the pro-feminist, anti-caste themes. The audiophile in me loves the soundtrack. The dudebro in me loves the action, and oh my god this movie was amazing.

Definitely worth the second watch in theaters I'm going to give it. (Unlike Avengers 2, which I watched a second time to determine if it was good or not. It wasn't.)

In other news, Anita Sarkessian tweeted in that its 'not feminist'. She claims that the women are things, the women are sexualized, the 'allowing of some women to participate as equal partners in a cinematic orgy of male violence' is false feminism and etc...

I've never read this woman's stuff before... but did she see the same movie as me??? God... I know there are some people who could call me sexist fuckboy trash for saying this, but god what is this shit???

Anita Sarkeesian is one feminist, she is not feminism. I read many feminists who loved the movie (and Furiosa in particular, obviously), and had no problem whatsoever with the brides' clothes - because they have a personality beyond "being sexy".

Sarkeesian dislikes the association of "feminist character" with "violent character". Quoting her :

This is her vision of feminism, which is shared by some but not all of feminists. I think that what bothers her more is that people are saying "this is a feminist movie", while in her own eyes, it is simply an action movie with some relevant female characters.

(Which is something I disagree with, not that my opinion really matters - I'm a guy, I don't think I should be the one deciding what is feminist and what isn't)

Then she probably didn't pay much attention to the film. The whole idea of the film is that Furiosa and her ladies are escaping and eventually tearing down a patriarchal system, and their options - other than kicking arse - were spread rather thin .

Yes, it is why I disagree. In that setup, you cannot avoid violence. It's post-apo, it's how it works. Which I find interesting in its own way - it has often been treated as a very "manly" setup, where only the strong survives, and here you get women that hold their own against them.

Treating violence as an inherently male thing is kind of weird. Not my speed of feminism, that's for sure.

Seeing this tonight or tomorrow, and I'm pretty excited.

Enjoy,dude.

Well, yes, I recognize that she is ONE Feminist and its only her oppinion and not the opinion of the majority and only her take on feminism.

I just... Don't get it? Like, what would she want women in a post-apocolyptic setting to do about that? Have a petition? Non-violent walk out of Citadel? Its an inherently violent world and I can't tell what she means by 'cinematic orgy of male violence'? Does she mean the violence spurring from the main conflict of a male cultist wanting his sex slaves back, which would I suppose be accurate. Or does she mean that ALL violence is Male Violence? Because that doesn't make sense.

And there are more named female characters in the finale than male ones. All of the escapies, Furiosa, and the Vulvani. That's... I want to say 11 or 12? On the male side, you have Nux and Max for the good guys and Joe, Joe's son, and the People Eater for named males in the finale. "SOME" isn't accurate when its 12 to 5 on the gender scale in favor of women.

I'm going to have to assume Sarkeesian is criticizing something she hasn't seen, on the basis of what others have told her. Because quite frankly her criticism doesn't have a basis in reality. You can't claim the women are objects when they spend the whole film rejecting the label of objects, and you can't claim they're sexualized when said sexualization is played for horror (seriously, anybody who looks at the Wives and sees anything other than psychologically traumatized rape victims wearing the outfit their rapist gave them has issues).

As for the "all violence is male violence" thing, ha ha ha. Violence is human.

edited 22nd May '15 7:14:34 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Anita Sarkessian is what I jokingly call a radical extreme feminist, she plays the role of an over-analyzer to the point she ends up Comically Missing the Point at times.

edited 22nd May '15 7:29:26 AM by YoKab

Personally, I feel she enjoys the attention. And here I was defeating her by forgetting she existed.

Exactly, they fend off attackers more than once. Naturally, they aren't TRAINED in fighting like Furiosa, Max, and Nux are so that's kind of a fair point for the first half of the film, but the Vulvani ARE trained.

The 'sexualization' seems more like establishing shots too. The 'thin cloth shower' is played more as an actually 'washing' and the lingering shot on one of their stomachs is to establish one as pregnant; that's the big reveal of what exactly Furiosa 'stole' from Joe. The entire scene is quiet and uses A LOT of Show, Don't Tell and that's arguably the film's greatest strength; The Chastity Belt Falls into the Sand, the camera lingers on their terrified eyes, the camera lowers to show that one of them is pregnant. Its all to tell the audience who they are (were) without a word.

edited 22nd May '15 7:32:33 AM by InkDagger

I think the movie can already be considered a box office success. I mean, really, a r-rated movie based on a nearly forgotten Franchise which was never that successful to begin with? Cult classic of not, the numbers are more than decent and word of mouth will ensure that they will stay stable longer than they would have otherwise. At least in the domestic market. International the movie has a more difficult standing outside of Australia, naturally.

Pfffft. If the movie had depicted the female characters as somehow innately inclined and capable of resolving the conflict without violence or confrontation, I would consider it pretty reductive. That's Positive Discrimination. It'd be treating the women as "others", asking them to hold all the answers men can't provide because they're somehow fundamentally different. Rather than just being people, who will if necessary fight to stay alive, as almost any serf-preserving human being would.

edited 22nd May '15 8:00:35 AM by DrDougsh

Its also... Mad Max is an action film. Set in Post-Apocalypse. That's kind of an inherently violent setting. Period.

I do completely disagree with her assessment of Fury Road. I think some of the things she said bordered on enforcing gender roles, and the idea that women cannot partake in "inherently male" violence is patronizing at best. The film is groundbreaking for its genre, and while I won't question one's motives for watching it, I am pressed to ask - if this isn't groundbreaking enough for you as a genre film, what exactly is enough for you?

Her criticism presents no actual alternative or example of what would "fix" the film's apparent faults, leaving that question unanswered.

I say this, of course, as someone who loved Fury Road and fully believes it deserves a place in the ranks of Alien and Terminator as a genre classic with examples of both men and women in strong roles.

Gets them

Complains about them

edited 22nd May '15 8:03:34 AM by YoKab

Despite disagreeing with her, I have to recognize that she never states that the movie is bad. Not once. She does not like it as a feminist movie - but says nothing about the movie in itself.

That is what she often mentioned: you can disagree with parts of a movie/game but still enjoy it.

Much smarter POV than the MRA on this show anyway. They don't even compare.

Yeah, Sarkeesian's always made me...squeamish.

I also got the "violence is inherently male" vibe from that comment.

And am I the only one who thought that the shower scene was sexualizing the water, if nothing else?

edited 22nd May '15 8:25:35 AM by Sisi

Someone at wordpress said something pretty smart imho...that Mad Max is not a feminist movie in a sense that what it presents should simply be the standard and that hopefully one day it is.

They were wasting all that water!

I actually agree. But then, that is what we need to make progress — good movies that just so happen to be respectful and egalitarian, rather than equal representation being relegated only to message movies.

Correct. Good representation shouldn't be forced into 'Very Special Episode' movies where that very point is thrown in your face like some 'Look at me! We're not sexist!' (which its even funnier when said movie IS sexist in some way). Fury Road NEVER includes a moment where 'You're a woman? Fighting?' or 'Who trained you to fight?' or some shit. It just never comments on it. Its a non-issue in Mad Max.

I like how that pajiba.com review ended. Sums up the movie quite nicely.