I think MMFR is one of the best-made bad movies ever... (Gaming)

by Kermit , Raleigh, NC, Wednesday, June 01, 2016, 22:40 (3097 days ago) @ Kahzgul

This is so weird. I'M the guy who complains about the lack of character development and cartoon characterizations in action movies. I got exactly what I wanted from MMFR. Allusions to the main characters' past, telling details about the principals, and a sense that this world had its own logic that was completely different than my own. I saw enough of the iceberg is another way of putting it. To tell more in a movie so devoted to dramatically showing would have been out of place. I didn't know a lot of explicit details about the characters' history, but I had no doubt that George Miller had notebooks (or hard drives) in his house full of that history. You could tell. His vision of the world sold it and the characters in it. There's an analogy to practical effects here.

The world building was terrific, but the story they told in that world was awful. Did the characters have personality? Yes, except for Max and Furiosa. Did they develop as characters? Aside from the side switcher, no, none of them did.

Could this story have been told without Max or Furiosa? Yes, absolutely. What if the breeders had just left on their own, and we followed the side-switcher from the beginning as he tracked them down, boarded the vehicle, and then failed to do as he'd been led his whole life to believe he should have done? Watch as he realizes his life was a lie, that people can be more than property, and that he was super horny for the hot girls. Then, in a true about-face, he sacrifices himself to save the breeders and stop the Immortan, allowing people who value life to return home and start a society about more than power and war. That would have been such a better movie, and the fact is that it's really the exact same plot, minus the two main characters.

Why does that work? Because those two characters are boring, unlikeable, and impossible to relate to. All of the others have circumstances that at least relate to the human condition, but Max and Furiosa don't react to the world in believable ways. Max literally has nothing going on. There's the weird flashback hallucinations but it's clear they don't matter at all and are at best a bandaid added in post to pretend that there's a reason for why he does what he does (but I don't buy it because it's never shown to have any effect on Max). Furiosa because her level of investment should be 100% but turns out to have been like 3%. She finds out the green place is gone and she's just kind of "oh well" about the whole thing.

In movies we talk about the "all is lost" moment in the script, where they fell into the chasm where memories go to be forgotten, or the shark is literally eating the boat they're on, or the alien has kidnapped the little girl who you were risking everything to save. In MMFR, when Furiosa realizes The Green Place isn't around anymore, instead of despairing because she spent months arranging secret deals, risked her position and the lives of her friends, and killed scores of people for literally nothing, she just takes a deep breath and decides "we go on" *and then* is immediately convinced to go back instead. What? I mean, everything she lived for was a lie, so she made the only decision she could, and then someone tapped her on the shoulder and she just up and changed her mind? Garbage writing.

Side-switcher has a great "all is lost" moment after he fails the Immortan. He curls into a ball and despairs properly. Then, an unexpected visitor convinces him that what he believes he lost was really for his own good, and he gets up, switches sides, and has real conviction moving forward. Why on earth wasn't he the pivotal character of the film? He is literally the only one who grows or changes over the course of the entire movie, and instead of this being an epic moment of sacrifice it feels so much more like "well thank god we spent all that time setting up that this dude could die instead of someone we really want the audience to care about." Completely undercutting the potential of the event.

So disappointing.

All I can say is I cared enough and knew enough about Max and Furiosa. I found them completely believable as characters. You call them dull and I call them dulled, or more accurately damaged. I'm not a fan of the "must-have moments" school of scriptwriting (or any kind of fiction writing if the writer knows what he's doing). I don't relate to your obsession with Nux or this notion that he should have been the focus of the movie. It just makes me think you don't get it. The big twist of the movie is that Max isn't the focal point you'd expect--the women are. That said, if you don't get that Max lost his family and grasp how that affects his journey in the movie--if you didn't see Furiosa despairing--if you don't get that this movie is primarily a visceral experience that follows its own rules (and shouldn't be judged as an Elizabethan drama), I'm at a loss.

George Miller has influenced everyone from Guillermo del Toro to Vince Gilligan. For me, watching MMFR was delightful because I felt like I was watching a master at the top of his game. But enough. Whenever I feel like I'm trying to explain heaven to a bear, I take it as a sign I should stop. I'm stopping. :)