Max Rockatansy: Unseen Action
For the past six months, the internet has ruminated over Mad Max: Fury Road and its themes. I think it’s provoked more discussion than probably any blockbuster has in a long time. Fury Road was the right movie at the right time in pop culture. Although it didn’t make a billion dollars like other blockbusters have, it nonetheless became the only movie to transcend cinema to create positive discussion about our society. Me personally, I haven’t had much to say over the last six months. I’ve read a lot of people’s theories and breakdowns of the movie, that I fear I have nothing new or interesting to contribute. But there’s one specific thing in Fury Road that has not left my mind since I’ve seen the movie. Although the moment has been discussed plenty of times, I think something has been missed through it all.
The moment I’m speaking of would be this one:
There are a lot of ways to interpret this scene, in which Max goes to kill their pursuers and make his way back to the rig. Much has been made of this particular scene happening entirely OFF camera. We as the audience don’t get to see it. Most interpret it as a confirmation that Max is not our main protagonist, that his most bad ass moment was downplayed to convey this. While it’s certainly a viable interpretation, it’s not really the one that I’ve been struggling to put into words for the past half year.
In order to understand this scene better, you have to understand that Immortan Joe, his army, and his allies all represent forms of performative masculinity. Mad Max: Fury Road doesn’t condemn masculinity, it condemns the hyper and toxic masculine culture. Everything about Immortan Joe’s kind of masculinity is overt and invasive. It’s out in the open to be aggressive. The way his warboys act to how his vehicles are pimped out, it’s all hyper-masculine and therefore a performance. This isn’t the nature of masculinity, this is what it can become.
Max’s brand of masculinity is not the same. It’s built purely for survival. He just wants to be left alone. It’s not to announce himself to the world as this hyper-masculine figure. It’s not performative. He’s just Max. All of his true action scenes are with Furiosa, the Wives, or Nux somewhere nearby. Except for the scene above, which happens entirely off camera.
It’s because in Max’s selfless act to go kill the bullet farmer on his own, he has to become what the movie condemns. He has to perform to Immortan Joe’s hyper-masculine standards. He has to become what Furiosa and the Wives are running from. He has to become something that he himself does not want to be. If just for a moment, he’s no different from his former captors.
Any other action movie would follow Max so we could see how he takes out their pursuers. But that would mean the movie is encouraging us to celebrate what he’s doing. Celebrating such an action would be in direct conflict with the movie’s attempt to condemn Immortan Joe’s culture. Are his actions needed and justified? Yes. But it’s not something to celebrate. Instead, the movie sticks to Furiosa’s perspective, not because she’s the main protagonist(which she is), but because the movie does not want us to see Max in that light. It does not want us or Furiosa to see Max become what the movie is condemning and what she is ultimately running from. The movie is respecting Max’s decision and out of that respect, doesn’t allow us as the audience to see his actions. The only people who see his actions end up dead, so nobody in the movie other than Max is alive to tell about it. This is not only the movie forgiving Max for his act of performative masculinity which was selfless in nature, only to protect the women he’s traveled with, but it’s also allowing Max to exist without the stigma of Joe’s own culture attached to him. We don’t get to see the unseen action because Max doesn’t want us to see it. He didn’t want to become that person in the first place. So he can safely walk back and still be Max. He can still have his own identity in the eyes of not only Furiosa, but the audience.
It’s Mad Max: Fury Road’s own way of protecting its titular character.
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