Friday 15 December 2017

Film Review | Exploitation Cinema: Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), directed by the filmmaker George Miller “delivers the sort of jumbo-sized entertainment that makes you spontaneously break out in appreciative laughter: The breadth of his imagination and showmanship makes you giddy” (Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald, 2015). Full of destruction, violence and weird scenes, Mad Max is a prison escape post-apocalyptic action adventure film.


Mad Max is also part of the exploitation cinema where the main themes are sex, romance, eroticism, violence, crimes, and drugs. The exploitation and the abuse are represented by the two antagonists: Furiosa (Charlize Theron) who is a feminist hero, and the Immortal Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) who is an evil leader of war boys and woman sex slaves.

The whole film is about Mad Max helping the hero of the story, Furiosa, to free a group of young women sex slaves from the Immortal Joe. This can be understood as a feminist revolution as all of these women are fighting against their oppressor without taking care what they look like and if there are any chances to win. A woman can be heroic too, and they can also fight for themselves and the rest of society. Max’s role is quite important though because he is not the hero even though he is also fighting, and his behavior transmits that violence doesn’t make him more masculine as the Immortan Joe does.


“Mad Max: Fury Road will leave you speechless, which couldn’t be more appropriate. Words are not the point when it comes to dealing with this barn-burner of a post-apocalyptic extravaganza in which sizzling, unsettling images are the order of the day” (Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times, 2015). So in conclusion, even though this fantastic film will leave you speechless, it is an exploitation film, and women are shown as sexual objects, and it mainly represents how women are getting more and more powerful. And that also describes today’s society where women can be the hero too.


Bibliography:
Kenneth Turan (2015) ‘Mad Max’ kick a post-apocalyptic extravaganza into overdrive At: http://beta.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-mad-max-review-20150515-column.html Accessed on: 15/12/2017

Illustration List:
Image 1. Mad Max: Fury Road [Film Poster] At: https://www.imperialcinema.co.uk/films/mad-max-fury-road/ Accessed on: 15/12/2017

Image 2. Mad Max: Fury Road [Film Still] At: http://beta.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-mad-max-review-20150515-column.html Accessed on: 15/12/2017

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