MAD MAX: FURY ROAD and Controlled Chaos

Rating: 💀💀💀💀💀

Trailer

In times of uncertainty, I turn to cinema that wields apocalyptic chaos as spectacle. It’s oddly comforting to remind myself that artists frequently explore dark visions of the future. Mad Max: Fury Road is a particularly compelling example.

This exquisitely executed film is a product of controlled chaos—specifically, a fast-moving production across the deserts of Namibia that called for hundreds of stunts and explosions over the course of eight months. Structurally, the plot is essentially a giant chase followed by a giant race toward salvation. This simple setup leaves room for heightened emotional stakes and surprisingly nuanced portrayals of humanity.

While seeking their own versions of redemption, the story’s central characters — Imperator Furiosa and Max Rockatansky — find themselves on the run. Their mission is to rescue a group of women known as the Five Wives from a deified dictator named Immortan Joe. He holds them captive under the most horrifying circumstances imaginable and views them only as “breeders” that can give him male heirs. Imperator Furiosa leverages her high-ranking position within Immortan Joe’s military machine to break this abusive cycle and commandeer a war rig with the Five Wives stowed away. 

Furiosa’s intended destination is the Green Place of Many Mothers, the home from which she was taken as a child. The mere idea of such a place seems impossible in the minds of characters who know little more than violence, oppression, and scarcity. From the moment she appears on screen, Imperator Furiosa is a compelling anomaly in a hellish wasteland. She has clung to hope and persevered through suffering we can barely imagine for the chance to embark on a suicide mission through the abyss. In her own words, “Out here, everything hurts.”

Immortan Joe’s power primarily comes from hoarding an extremely limited water supply. He restrictively distributes it as “Aqua Cola” to famished masses. At one point , he proclaims “Do not, my friends, become addicted to water. It will take hold of you and you will resent its absence.” His disproportionate power allows him to manipulate the truth and say things that defy scientific fact. He can end life as he sees fit, but he cannot create it—which is why Furiosa’s plan to take his “prized breeders” leads to the chase of a lifetime.

The things we need to do in order to survive don’t always make sense. Change can be revolutionary and bountiful but, by definition, it takes something from us. It’s often born from fear, loss, and desperation. When we’re pushed to our extremes, we don’t have time to do a conscious moral inventory of what’s truly haunting us. Instead, we keep moving in the direction that seems to make the most sense. Imperator Furiosa and the women she is rescuing need to believe in the Green Place because they need to hold onto something. They need to believe the future can be better and that life can be more than they’ve known.

Max has tried and failed to make a better future. At one point during the film, he tells Furiosa “You know, hope is a mistake. If you can’t fix what’s broken, you’ll, uh, go insane.” He has turned to cynicism in isolation. Furiosa almost takes a similar turn when she eventually learns that the Green Place has been destroyed due to the soil becoming “sour” — a direct result of several wars humans fought over fuel and water — but she and Max eventually decide that the only way they might “come across some kind of redemption” is by descending into and reclaiming the depths that forged them. According to a regime defector named Nux who joins their small resistance, “It feels like hope” to take drastic collective action based on little more than their belief in one another.

We’re currently navigating a pandemic by following rules that are constantly changing. The enemy we’re fighting is rapidly reshaping how we live on a scale too large to process. We are coping with chaos while staying physically distant for our own good. Much like the characters in Mad Max: Fury Road, we are only speaking to each other when it’s absolutely essential. Meanwhile, leadership at a societal level is either ignorant or malicious, reinventing truth while there is no definitive end to this crisis in sight. We talk about what we’ll go back to doing when this is all over while knowing, deep down, that our ideas about normalcy are now irrelevant. Change has already happened and the old ways have ceased to matter. 

“Then who killed the world?” is a question asked by one of the Five Wives. It is reflective of our tendency to find someone or something to blame. Attributing the chaos we’re experiencing to something tangible makes more sense to us than the idea of surrendering. However, surrender may be exactly what’s necessary to move forward. 

It’s only after Furiosa and Max surrender to the truth that they can confront their real demons and rally to defeat a common enemy. One of my favorite shots in the film captures the precise moment when Imperator Furiosa realizes she has been chasing an impossible dream. She screams to the heavens and collapses in the sand, her anguish set against the arid landscape she can’t outrun.

People like to have a plan. They also need to have some idea of how long it will take for stability to return as well as what steps they can take to help. When the plan amounts to something like remaining isolated to slow the spread of a dangerous disease, it’s easy to feel hopeless and forget that even what seems like inaction means everything. 

Max says his only plan is survival. Imperator Furiosa has a plan to free captive mothers by taking them to the Green Place. There’s no blueprint for either one, and in practice these plans often translate into running while counting bullets and bodies. 

When one of the five expectant mothers dies in a particularly horrible way during a pivotal chase, another says “Whatever happens, at least we’re going to the Green Place.” This is quickly shut down by someone yelling “The stupid Green Place. We don’t even know where to find it!” Real lives can be lost in service of something that’s easier to believe as merely a concept. Emotions enter the equation when things start to affect us more directly. As losses accumulate, we find ourselves balancing prolonged grief with the work we need to do.

As the reach of the pandemic expands and our proximity to safety feels more limited, our ability to have hope may be diminished. Holding onto the mere idea of victory under chaotic circumstances can take something resembling delusion. This is where the narrative power of cinema can function as an immersive coping mechanism.

While watching a film, the chaos in which I’m immersed has fixed parameters. A fixed run-time and a resolution are guaranteed. I can periodically step away if I’m watching at home, continuously titrating my exposure to sensory overload and emotional investment. Watching something that existentially activates me is an elective rendezvous with the unknown from within four walls and the healthy body I am privileged to have. 

Reality offers few controllable parameters, but it also may not be as bleak as we are able to imagine. The outcome may be unclear, but we can turn to stories to help build resilience while we chart a path forward. They are reminders that humanity can get to whatever the other side of uncertainty looks like. 

Stability, like the bodies we inhabit, is finite. It is cyclical and requires nurturing. At the end of Mad Max: Fury Road, Imperator Furiosa emerges victorious. She defeats Immortan Joe after experiencing staggering loss and devastation in the film’s final act. Based on the final shots of the film, we’re probably meant to assume she will now rule over what the carnage has left behind. 

Furiosa’s newfound dominance is something that may corrupt her or gradually crumble, but it is likely that her moral approach will be fundamentally different from Immortan Joe’s because of the compassion she has gained. Chaos is likely to return in some form, just like many of the things that occasionally reshape our world order. It’s the magnitude of that chaos that hinges on how we preserve our humanity and empathy while firmly in the grip of madness.