Ok I was thinking about this some more since I reblogged it earlier, especially fuckyeahisawthat’s comments about the deadness of her expression in #2 as compared to #3.
In #2 she’s Imperator Furiosa. She’s got a crew that she leads, who will defend her and follow her orders, but she’s still separate from them and all alone in that cab. On the other hand, in #3 she’s surrounded by people. She’s still a leader, they’ll still all protect and defend her and she’s still their leader but now she’s (I think) most like herself, or at least the self she knew. Now she’s Our Furiosa.
I wanna add, even if she wasn’t separate from them before, if there was a time when Imperator Furiosa was one with her crew (and Ace’s behaviour seems to suggest so), by the time the movie start she’s chosen to leave them all behind. There is a rift between her and her crew that’s not just the result of the loneliness of leadership, it’s also the loneliness of a renegade.
And we could go on with how her new crew are led by her but lose none of their individuality and rights. It was always a joint effort- Angharad had a lot to say in how their escape progressed. The Vuvalini, Max, the Five, even Nux had a say in their further plans. The communication is different. Probably because they are all fighting for their safety and survival (as individuals and as a group at once) instead of fighting for the wealth of the warlord who enslaved them.
Looking at these and thinking about her facial expressions when Max proposes they turn back to the Citadel:
She left Citadel, headed out for the Green Place, thinking that would be her last mission. She would find the Many Mothers and join their way of life and she wouldn’t have to take charge anymore. There would be no more difficult decisions for her.
When she agrees to go back, she’s taking on the responsibility of another mission. No one else knows the Warboys like she does. No one else knows Joe like she does. Even though everyone is behind her, in the end, it’s all on her.
I think it’s a matter of layering. It’s obviously both performance and filming based. This gif comparison highlights that in every scene, more is going on than what the surface indicates. Furiosa is exhausted but she’s also more relaxed than she was in the beginning of the movie.. It’s pretty clear she doesn’t feel as alone. She’s surrounded by people she legitimately trusts. Those who aren’t blinded by Joe. I like to think her vigilance is strengthened by who she’s surrounded herself with. Because despite her exhaustion, she pushes on without much doubt.
I don’t get trapped in AU hell often. No shame in loving AU stuff but I’m just not the biggest fan of them. However, one of my favorite Christmas movies is called Christmas, Again. It’s about lonely dude who sells Christmas trees on a street corner in New York. It’s a pretty simple movie. There’s no overt message to it. It’s just about a guy trying to get through the holidays.
And then I thought about Max being that guy. Down the rabbit hole I went. Lol.
I apologize to each and every one of you. I didn’t do anything personally wrong, but I feel as a white dude it’s my responsibility to apologize for the election. My people clearly didn’t know what the fuck they were doing when casting their votes. Irrationality and outrage won over pragmatism. My apologies.
However, to those Americans who feel they have to immigrate to a different country, just remember the message Mad Max: Fury Road sent all of us. The green place isn’t anywhere else but here. We have to fix our own home to find any semblance of peace. Stay safe and I wish all of you a fruitful future. Much love.
Not gonna make this a political blog, clearly. It’s a Mad Max blog. However, I will respond because I knew by making that post, some people would respond. And perhaps not kindly. So respond I shall. However, this will be the ONLY response because I refuse to have this blog turn into a shit show. I will not respond to you again.
I think your definition of fascism is skewed. But regardless, you think wrong of me. It’s not a matter of people exercising their constitutional right or voting for a candidate I don’t like. It’s that a lot of the American people voted for a man who is, by every measure, unqualified for the job of President of the United States. This is not arguable. Look at his resume. He’s had nothing to do with politics his entire life. He just decided one day on a whim that he’d run for President. So he did. Whether people look favorably upon someone like Clinton is irrelevant to me. It’s that a lot of people chose someone SO unfit in comparison. At least Clinton has 40 years of experience in politics.
What I’m saying is, this was supposed to be a no-brainer. Voting for Trump was a mistake. He could have been the nicest guy in the world and it would still be a mistake, because he’s the most unqualified candidate BY FAR. Not just in this election, but in American history.
Fascist shit is what you’re afraid of?
The people you call fascist? They voted for someone experienced. They voted for someone who spent 40 years in politics. They made the SMART decision. They made the PRAGMATIC decision. Anyone who voted for Trump didn’t and there’s nothing you can say or do to change that.
So yes, I will apologize for those people who voted for Trump. Because despite my distaste for their decision, I assume most of it was based on irrationality. Maybe they did it because they were ill informed. Maybe they did it because their emotions got the best of them in a stressful time. I don’t know. I try to stay optimistic about people. Especially in a time like this.
However, I’d like to say to take your accusations of fascism and shove them right up your ass. Goodbye now.
I apologize to each and every one of you. I didn’t do anything personally wrong, but I feel as a white dude it’s my responsibility to apologize for the election. My people clearly didn’t know what the fuck they were doing when casting their votes. Irrationality and outrage won over pragmatism. My apologies.
However, to those Americans who feel they have to immigrate to a different country, just remember the message Mad Max: Fury Road sent all of us. The green place isn’t anywhere else but here. We have to fix our own home to find any semblance of peace. Stay safe and I wish all of you a fruitful future. Much love.
when do you think furiosa makes the decision to traitor joe and flee the citadel? do you think she is sad about leaving her crew behind? is that part of the redemption she seeks? i like your meta so am curious to hear what you think.
When do I think she decides to leave? I’m guessing quite a bit before the start of the movie considering she had an entire plan laid out and made a deal with the dudes in the canyon. It certainly wasn’t impulsive. Furiosa seems like a pretty good planner.
As for her crew… I don’t think she has any regrets. Furiosa may have liked her crew, or maybe she didn’t. I don’t know. But I think either way, she’s okay with the decision she made. Deep down, she knows she made the right one. That’s just how I see it. I’m sure others feel differently and that’s fine.
(AKA Quiet forgets to record his theories for months at a time.)
So I’ve seen a lot of people discussing continuity issues between Mad Max: Fury Road and the other Mad Max films. The problem I have with all the theories of ‘Hardy!Max is the son of/some guy mimicking Gibson!Max’ is the fact that both versions wear the same brace on the same presumably busted leg:
They’re clearly supposed to be the same guy; it’s too much of a coincidence otherwise. Except they’re unlikely to be the same guy. Gibson!Max has a son, whereas Hardy!Max‘s flashbacks mostly feature a young girl. Gibson!Max’s custom car blew up, but it’s back again at the start of Fury Road. Fury Road can’t be set before the original Mad Max either, because Max is still a cop in the original.
The best answer I can think of is that Mad Max never actually existed.
I don’t mean that in a literal sense, of course; I’m sure there was a tough guy named Max Rockatansky wandering around the desert at some point. But I think that as time passed stories about him spread through word of mouth, changing in the telling and eventually mixing together into the legend of the man we now know as Mad Max. I think that what we see in the films is wasteland mythology.
Mythology explains every continuity error in the timeline. It also explains why Fury Road is named after Furiosa and a throwaway comment made by Nux, as well as why Max and his actions mostly slot right out of the film’s storyline. It was never his story to begin with. Just as ancient Greek writers loved to shoehorn in cameos by Heracles, some wasteland storyteller added ‘…and Max was there and helped out a bunch’ to an existing tale.
TL;DR - the Mad Max films aren’t a coherent storyline, but a loosely connected series of wasteland legends.
Interesting sidenote: It’s been pointed out to me that the basics of this theory can also be applied to James Bond.
I agree, max is a mythical figure, he’s james bond, he’s the silent guy who randomly comes, gets involved and then leaves to never be seen again, he’s the phantom of the old world, he’s the mirror of the wasteland, he’s the santa claus, he could even be death himself…
I’m not into the Max is not Max theories, but I wanna poke a hole: couldn’t he be wearing the brace as tribute, or as reutilised armour, or, you know, any other reason besides it being an actual brace? Could be altered not to inconvenience a healthy leg.
He ~~could~~ but imho, who would put something heavy and impractical on their healthy leg just because, in a world like wasteland where it is pretty much a win if you can run fast and so…
now thanks to the comics we know that girl from his flashbacks is Glory, so there is no longer the son-daughter paradox, so… Max is Max?
We are talking about a world where fashion choices for warriors include mannequin heads, belts with bundles of loose chains, iron masks and iron underpants, so…
I would like to add that max moves like he’s still got a busted leg in some of mmfr, and the max of the mmfr video game looks very much like a hybrid of the hardy!max and the Gibson!max. The game also emphasises heavily his wounded leg and shows to an even further extent how he moves differently from an able bodied person.
If you take the comic books as cannon, he’s explicitly stated as being the same person in all the movies. The story with Glory is rather different from the version in the video game though. The video game also uses a different character design for his wife (presumably), and she’s pictured with an ostensibly female child who is not explicitly named or discussed. I tend to cobble together the parts I like best of the video game and comic versions of the Glory story, but I am solidly team only one Max. I just think this is a case of “Same story, different versions, all are true.” The first movie, the video game, and Fury Road are the only three told from his POV. The middle two movies and the comic books are told by people who met him or in the case of the comics, heard about them from other people. It only makes sense that the character would come off differently and emphasize different traits and details when told from different POVs.
@cutestormsloth: Do you not think it a little odd that he flashes back to this Glory (and occasionally some old guy, I seem to remember), but not his actual wife and child?
@flamethrowing-hurdy-gurdy: Yeah but most of that’s worn by the warboys, who seem to be insanely demonstrative even by wasteland standards. Max doesn’t wear anything impractical other than the brace, and neither do the Vuvulini, the Rock Riders or the Buzzards. Even Furiosa - who I think technically isn’t one of the warboys - has a purely practical outfit.
@almostdefinitelydying: Good to know!
@livia-lerynn: Also good to know! Though I would argue that the ‘same story, different versions, all true’ theory does encapsulate mythology. Or at least how mythology begins. Which does make sense, given that Mad Max is set within living memory of civilisation’s breakdown.
Oh yes, this is definitely how mythology works. Miller is doing it on purpose so we get the fun, crazy meta-ness of an intentionally created myth attaining mythic cultural status.
What I’ve experienced is that most people who adhere to the “more than one Max” theory are the people who are still salty about Mel Gibson not playing the role anymore. Ya know, people like Quentin Tarantino, or the obnoxious people on reddit.
I’m just not a fan of any thing that takes away from Max’s character development. His journey throughout these movies are only really powerful because we know he’s the same person. His character arc in Fury Road is so great in part because of what’s come before. Take the other movies away and it just doesn’t sit right with me.
I love the image of mother’s milk being a purifying, innocence-restoring force - literal washing and taking-in actually drinking-in the unconditional acceptance of the feminine principle. Could this BE a more powerful image of transformation? of acceptance?
It could, if the milk were given freely instead of taken by force.
(Sorry, kinda hated to do that. :/ )
# ACTUALLY SORRY
# BUT IT’S…I CAN’T NOT THINK ABOUT THAT
# THEY DON’T GIVE THEIR ACCEPTANCE
# THEY’RE BEING MILKED FOR A COMMODITY
# IT’S A FORM OF RAPE REALLY
# WHICH SKEWS THE METAPHOR QUITE A BIT
# OR MAYBE THE METAPHOR STANDS BUT ONLY IF THIS PART IS ABSOLUTELY REMEMBERED
# IT CAN’T BE BRUSHED ASIDE
But that’s why the metaphor works. Everything in and on that truck is a product of slavery, of exploitation, of rape of one form or another. And yet on this journey, they redefine everything - they transform the meaning of each evidence of violence, of each product of violence into something new, something worth healing.
Anyone who has gone through abuse recovery has come face to face with this moment - you cannot ever escape the reality of violence done to you. What you must do to heal, then, is to transform the damage into something new, something whole.
They cannot change that the mother’s milk was forcibly taken. But they can transform this ‘essence of motherhood’ into one of unconditional love.
@redshoesnblueskies‘s tags: #I cannot help but think ‘washed in the blood of the lamb’ #whenever I see this scene #I’m not even christian#but the image is SO POWERFUL to me #that he has just commited this act of murder #that was so psychologically violent to him #that he is almost back to non-verbal #….and then he WASHES IN MOTHER’S MILK? #and it RESTORES HIM? #the movie is not even TRYING to be subtle here #fury road #meta on meta
I want to dig deeper into this comparison between the blood of the lamb and mothersmilk, because I think it’s a subtle but incredibly powerful way the movie subverts violent maleness and opens the way to another (feminist) mode of thought.
Blood is a critical part of the Christian faith. We see it most prominently in the last supper (”this wine is my blood”) and in Jesus’s crucifixion. But we also see it in the Old Testament, when Moses tells the Hebrews to mark their lintels with the blood of a lamb– it’s the same concept: sacrifice dearly now for something great and blissful to come.
But female blood– an indicator of an equally earthshaking sacrifice (pregnancy, childbirth, childrearing) for an equally worldchanging revelation (life enduring)– is barely mentioned in the Bible, and when it is, it’s treated like a sin. Give Leviticus 15 a read.
So why is all this violent blood–this blood taken by patriarchal force from an innocent lamb (or sinless godchild)– so much more holy and pure and purifying than the blood that flows freely from a woman, which indicates her ability to create a covenant of her own?
Of course the answer is because everything I’ve talked about is set in a patriarchal framework, which only values masculine expressions of holiness and purity, aka, blood sacrifice. I have Opinions on this relationship, but that’s a whole ‘nother post.
Transfer that right over to the MMFR verse, and it fits in absolutely seamlessly (hey hey patriarchy). Joe is Father and Holy Spirit and the warboys are his sacrificial Sons. The “blood of the lamb”, therefore, is all the blood that is spilt to further Joe’s kingdom on earth, to clear the way to heaven (Valhalla). All the blood spilt in Joe’s name.
Including the Bullet Farmer’s, in which Max comes back drenched.
But Max’s covenant isn’t with Joe or his particular brand of salvation, and rightly so. The entire point of the movie is to show how damaging it is and to dismantle it.
So Max discards the unsustainable, violent, patriarchal convenant, writ in blood, for a kinder one, bathed in half of what the Hebrews were promised when Moses led them out of Egypt: a land of milk and honey (Exodus 3:8). This, metaphorically, is what Furiosa hopes to build with the last of the things– got by violent patriarchy– she stole from that patriarchy and claimed for herself, the sisters, the Vuvalini, and any who would join her. Like @redshoesnblueskies says, the metaphor works precisely because it upends the (violently patriarchal) notion that every new revelation, every new sacrament must be borne on a tide of sacrificial blood.
They do make blood sacrifices (Keeper, Valkyrie, Nux), but they don’t make them for their own ends. The system they’re trying to vanquish is forcing blood on them, because it knows no other way to achieve its ends.
So they arrive at their land of milk and honey, which was back where they’d started. The mothersmilk restores Max, and the new nonviolent matriarchal covenant the women have made along the way restores the entire Citadel: the Wretched are truly redeemed as they’re pulled up onto the rising platform, and in a particularly poignant moment, the Milking Mothers– having had their milk taken from them forcibly for so long– bathe the parched people below in a freely-given and blessedly free, life-giving rush of nourishment (literally water; symbolically the milk that will nurse them to strength).
TL;DR MMFR is a weird Exodus story but instead of being led by God they’re running from God and in the end they make their own damn land of milk and honey because feminism rules.
I love the image of mother’s milk being a purifying, innocence-restoring force - literal washing and taking-in actually drinking-in the unconditional acceptance of the feminine principle. Could this BE a more powerful image of transformation? of acceptance?
It could, if the milk were given freely instead of taken by force.
(Sorry, kinda hated to do that. :/ )
# ACTUALLY SORRY
# BUT IT’S…I CAN’T NOT THINK ABOUT THAT
# THEY DON’T GIVE THEIR ACCEPTANCE
# THEY’RE BEING MILKED FOR A COMMODITY
# IT’S A FORM OF RAPE REALLY
# WHICH SKEWS THE METAPHOR QUITE A BIT
# OR MAYBE THE METAPHOR STANDS BUT ONLY IF THIS PART IS ABSOLUTELY REMEMBERED
# IT CAN’T BE BRUSHED ASIDE
But that’s why the metaphor works. Everything in and on that truck is a product of slavery, of exploitation, of rape of one form or another. And yet on this journey, they redefine everything - they transform the meaning of each evidence of violence, of each product of violence into something new, something worth healing.
Anyone who has gone through abuse recovery has come face to face with this moment - you cannot ever escape the reality of violence done to you. What you must do to heal, then, is to transform the damage into something new, something whole.
They cannot change that the mother’s milk was forcibly taken. But they can transform this ‘essence of motherhood’ into one of unconditional love.
@redshoesnblueskies‘s tags: #I cannot help but think ‘washed in the blood of the lamb’ #whenever I see this scene #I’m not even christian#but the image is SO POWERFUL to me #that he has just commited this act of murder #that was so psychologically violent to him #that he is almost back to non-verbal #….and then he WASHES IN MOTHER’S MILK? #and it RESTORES HIM? #the movie is not even TRYING to be subtle here #fury road #meta on meta
I want to dig deeper into this comparison between the blood of the lamb and mothersmilk, because I think it’s a subtle but incredibly powerful way the movie subverts violent maleness and opens the way to another (feminist) mode of thought.
Blood is a critical part of the Christian faith. We see it most prominently in the last supper (”this wine is my blood”) and in Jesus’s crucifixion. But we also see it in the Old Testament, when Moses tells the Hebrews to mark their lintels with the blood of a lamb– it’s the same concept: sacrifice dearly now for something great and blissful to come.
But female blood– an indicator of an equally earthshaking sacrifice (pregnancy, childbirth, childrearing) for an equally worldchanging revelation (life enduring)– is barely mentioned in the Bible, and when it is, it’s treated like a sin. Give Leviticus 15 a read.
So why is all this violent blood–this blood taken by patriarchal force from an innocent lamb (or sinless godchild)– so much more holy and pure and purifying than the blood that flows freely from a woman, which indicates her ability to create a covenant of her own?
Of course the answer is because everything I’ve talked about is set in a patriarchal framework, which only values masculine expressions of holiness and purity, aka, blood sacrifice. I have Opinions on this relationship, but that’s a whole ‘nother post.
Transfer that right over to the MMFR verse, and it fits in absolutely seamlessly (hey hey patriarchy). Joe is Father and Holy Spirit and the warboys are his sacrificial Sons. The “blood of the lamb”, therefore, is all the blood that is spilt to further Joe’s kingdom on earth, to clear the way to heaven (Valhalla). All the blood spilt in Joe’s name.
Including the Bullet Farmer’s, in which Max comes back drenched.
But Max’s covenant isn’t with Joe or his particular brand of salvation, and rightly so. The entire point of the movie is to show how damaging it is and to dismantle it.
So Max discards the unsustainable, violent, patriarchal convenant, writ in blood, for a kinder one, bathed in half of what the Hebrews were promised when Moses led them out of Egypt: a land of milk and honey (Exodus 3:8). This, metaphorically, is what Furiosa hopes to build with the last of the things– got by violent patriarchy– she stole from that patriarchy and claimed for herself, the sisters, the Vuvalini, and any who would join her. Like @redshoesnblueskies says, the metaphor works precisely because it upends the (violently patriarchal) notion that every new revelation, every new sacrament must be borne on a tide of sacrificial blood.
They do make blood sacrifices (Keeper, Valkyrie, Nux), but they don’t make them for their own ends. The system they’re trying to vanquish is forcing blood on them, because it knows no other way to achieve its ends.
So they arrive at their land of milk and honey, which was back where they’d started. The mothersmilk restores Max, and the new nonviolent matriarchal covenant the women have made along the way restores the entire Citadel: the Wretched are truly redeemed as they’re pulled up onto the rising platform, and in a particularly poignant moment, the Milking Mothers– having had their milk taken from them forcibly for so long– bathe the parched people below in a freely-given and blessedly free, life-giving rush of nourishment (literally water; symbolically the milk that will nurse them to strength).
TL;DR MMFR is a weird Exodus story but instead of being led by God they’re running from God and in the end they make their own damn land of milk and honey because feminism rules.
Getting Max right as a character is essential to any thing involving the Mad Max franchise. On the surface, he’s a pretty simple character. But that’s why it’s so easy to mess up his characterization. It’s kind of in the same way that post-apocalyptic writers and filmmakers who were inspired by Mad Max ended up not understanding its themes in the first place. Mad Max as a franchise has always been a critique of toxic-masculinity. It’s also been a critique of the “one man alone versus all” idea. Max loses his humanity by trying to be this way which is why his arc is always him begrudgingly helping other people while regaining said humanity. Then he loses it again. He’s in a never ending loop of loss and tragedy. For this reason, toxic-masculinity is the over-arching villain of the Mad Max franchise. It’s holding our hero back one way or another. Other writers and filmmakers instead make toxic-masculinity the heroes of their worlds. See what I’m saying here? So did this game understand what makes Max tick?
Avalanche Studios, for the most part, gets it. I can happily say that. From the story missions, they get his arc right from the beginning. He loses his stuff, which forces him to interact with other people in order to go get his stuff back. During this time, he begins to regain something more important instead. His humanity and heart. And then, he loses them both while regaining the stuff he lost in the beginning of the game(namely, his car). This is perfect. Period. There’s nothing in Max’s characterization from the written narrative that screams OOC.
This also brings me to something important. Remember the Fury Road prequel comics? For anyone who doesn’t know, this game is nearly the same story as Max’s two part comic. There’s differences of course but a lot of it is the same story. So essentially, this game is a prequel to Fury Road, albeit a non canon version(even though there’s no such thing as a strict canon in the Mad Max franchise). I was a tad bit surprised, mostly because the developers said they were really doing their own thing and that this was a separate story from Fury Road, bult a lot of the characters are connected to the characters in Fury Road(the villain of the game is the son of Immortan Joe and Ms Giddy’s daughter is in the game as well). And of course, there’s Gastown. So all of this is why Avalanche got Max’s arc pretty right. It’s damn near straight from Miller himself.
But it’s not just the story missions that define Max as a character in the game. What about Max in gameplay? I’ve already mentioned in the previous post that the collection system can be at odds with his character. Well, so can the combat. Slightly. It depends on how you view it.
Max can be a one man army. This is kind of bad although we’ve seen him do this in the movies before(at the end of the first movie). I’m talking taking on hordes of war boys in close combat. However, this is not all quite as terrible as I expected. Mostly because although there’s way too much of Max beating the shit out of tons of people, his style of combat is pretty much what I envisioned in my head. Really good with cars and on the ground, really good in close quarters. Melee combat is something I envisioned Max would be really good at. The combat system is a pretty visceral in general. The issue here is that it’s taken to its very extreme. I can sort of understand this considering this is a video game but it’s also the safest kind of system. I think they could have gone to a more creative route. I don’t mind getting into hand to hand fights. But eventually, you do it so much it becomes a bit out of character for Max. So essentially, they got how he fights correct. But he wouldn’t get into that many fights in the first place. So it’s half and half here.
Some other parts of the gameplay works in terms of character. Like, you can check out camps from a distance to see what their defenses are like and how to get past them. I feel like if Max were to ever infiltrate a base camp, he’d do it first by seeing what he could gather from a distance before working his way closer. However, this system is really simple which is unfortunate. If it was more developed and gave Max more ways to get into the camps, that would have been great. Also, the entire point of these camps are all the same. To stop the villain of the game from getting oil, but it’s tough to say Max would ever risk himself to do that for other people, even if there was something in it for him. At the very least, he wouldn’t do it more than once or twice. There are LOTS of camps in this game.
You could probably play this game at a certain pace where it would be more believable for Max. If you were to 100% everything, it wouldn’t quite feel in character. But like I said in my previous post, I feel as if you have to find the correct pace yourself. The developers didn’t really try to set one to begin with.
Max’s character overall is done pretty well. Some of the gameplay elements are either taken to the extreme or not developed enough, but they do derive from Max’s canon characterization in one way or another. For a game based on Mad Max, they made sure to get the titular character mostly right. Much respect to them for that, even if they didn’t quite find the balance they needed for it to be perfect.
Furiosa catching Max by his leg brace as he falls off the truck... man, that gets me every time. Not just the fact that she caught him by his leg brace with her metal arm(which is still cool ass imagery btw), but she did it out of pure desperation. It was like a gut instinct. She just reached out because seeing him die would have been too much. Not after he helped them(and her).
Then of course, there’s the fact that she only was able to save him because of their disabilities. There’s no way she would have had the strength to hold on as long as she did if she didn’t have that metal arm and he probably would have just slipped through if he hadn’t had his leg brace.
That’s called George Miller being a genius. You know in the trailers where they call him a mastermind? Yea, you thought that was hyperbole. Nothing but truth.
Video games flow. I mean, as an entire medium of entertainment. In similar ways to movies and tv shows. Certain genres become popular and then overused. Eventually, developers move on from that genre and find a new one to use until everyone’s tired of that one. See what I mean by flow? However, I’m not entirely sure that the open world genre will ever not be popular, simply because of the way that developers are trying to find new ways to handle narrative in video games. The open world genre is perfect for emergent narrative. Basically, the stories in between the written plot that are told. But not by the developers, but by you. The developers set you loose in a world that can be random and weird like no other. A game like say, Far Cry 2, is one of these examples. Its written narrative is rather light on paper. There’s not much to it. But it does have a basic arc for your character, which only becomes powerful by your own participation in the game. Spend 20 hours in the game world and that arc will hit you emotionally. But if you were to read that arc on paper, it would sound like nothing much at all. This is what video games can do that other mediums can’t. By your own participation, YOU gave that story power.
Then there’s Mad Max.
Mad Max has a bad case of Open World Syndrome(forget where that term came from but it’s a good one). In which, the developer created this beautiful and stunning open world, but struggle to fill it with meaningful content. Especially content that you could see Max actually doing.
For example, there’s the collection system which is basically a knock off of any other open world collection system. But that’s not the issue. This would be fine. However, collecting a bunch of cars is not exactly how I envisioned Max out in the wasteland. The game tries to explain it away by saying that it’ll help him out but I never used a single car I collected(excluding the one with the dog of course). It’s just there to be there. That’s a problem. If a system is there just because you can’t find anything else to put there, then take it out and don’t replace it. Just leave the game as it is without it at that point. More content doesn’t automatically mean more value. It has to be quality content for it work that way.
Of course, this was all a fear for me when I heard they were making a Mad Max game. Having Max do stuff that he just wouldn’t do grates on me. Max is not a fucking car collector. He’s just not. He wants one car. His interceptor or a valid replacement. Just him and his vehicle. He’s not gonna spend his time stashing cars, especially in a place where there are tons of people.
Other parts of the collection system make a bit more sense from Max’s perspective. Collecting relics(photos)? I’m not sure he’d do that but I could see him running across a lot of them in his travels and pondering the way that Max ponders in this game when he looks at pictures before the world went to complete shit. That’s believable. I can see Max alone with his thoughts being confronted with an image from a world he once knew. It’s tragic.
Then there are races. I guess these are kind of fine but there are so many of them and really only one or two races matter in the context of the narrative, in which you understand why Max is racing in the first place, so they get a pass. But I can’t see Max just racing for the hell of it.
Do you see where I’m getting at it? Video games can be fun. They can have these systems in place. But I’m also a huge Mad Max fan. So anything in this video game that might be fun but doesn’t make sense for Max’s character, I check it off as a con of the game. The cohesion between gameplay and characters is important to me, especially considering a lot of games don’t even try. Nathan Drake is a mass murderer in the gameplay of Uncharted. Is it ever mentioned in the narrative? No. He’s still an every man apparently.
There’s also the simple task of collecting as much scrap as you can. Funny enough, though there’s a ton of spots in the world to check off, this works. It makes Max actually feel like a scavenger in the wasteland. Trying to collect as much scrap as possible so he can make his car faster to get the hell away from people? Yep.
The threat system in this game, where regions are patrolled or occupied by Scrotus’(I’ll explain him in a later post) army of war boys, works well overall. Doing this helps out whoever controlled the region before Scrotus decided to be an asshole. I’m okay with this system, primarily because of the way it was handled. I think it works in the context of Max’s character arc. The longer he interacts with people, the more he’s drawn to their cause. But also, the game’s narrative does complicate this a bit by making sure there’s always something in it for Max so it never feels like he’s doing TOO much out of nowhere for people he doesn’t know. If there’s anything bad about this system is that there is so much threat in these regions that if you were to 100% them as you drive across each region, it creates a horrible pacing for the narrative. Doing too much might make the narrative emotionally obsolete for the player. So I recommend for any new player to try to strike a balance in between lowering threat in regions and doing story missions.
With all that said, this world... is fucking beautiful. I’m talking, this is the best looking post apocalyptic world I’ve ever seen in a video game and I’ve played a lot of them. It absolutely rivals the movies. I’m serious. I was blown away by how good it looked. Not only that, but its PC optimization is second to none. I don’t have the strongest computer in the world but it ran so smoothly and looked so good, I just... I don’t get impressed often by this sort of shit but Avalanche Studios knows how to make their games work on every platform for sure. As you can see, I’ve been plastering stills of the world all up and down this post. These are stills that I took myself with the in game system. I must have taken over 200 hundred of these during my journey throughout the Wasteland. It was addicting. Every beautiful view, I just had to stop and take a still of it.
Not only is this a beautiful world, there’s some incredible detail here. Like this for example:
Yes... that’s a toilet. Lol. No but seriously, that is fantastic. It’s humanizing for even the villains. They needed a bathroom, so they created one. But instead of flushing, the waste just goes down a cliff. Hopefully nobody walks or drives by, right?
I have to say though, the most interesting places I went to, I didn’t take many stills at all. They just so happened to be the most immersive parts of the game. The airport for example is both creepy as hell and fascinating to trek through. I did get this still of a church buried under sand dunes though which was also incredible:
There’s also a really smart decision by the developers to have Gastown visible from nearly anywhere in the game world. It gives off this ominous presence, becoming more impactful the closer you get to it. That’s a narrative technique that works well outside of the cut scenes. I’ll talk more about that in a later post.
You remember the sandstorm in Fury Road? Yea, there are those as well. I have to say though, from a gameplay perspective, it doesn’t quite work. Mostly because there isn’t really an incentive to drive in them. So you just have to stand in a hut until it passes which can sometimes feel like forever. Sure, in these sandstorms, there are scrap boxes that contain more scrap than normal but it’s really nothing to write home about. I found myself making myself something to eat whenever a storm hits, after finding shelter obviously.
So this is where we’re at with Mad Max’s open world philosophy. Mad Max is being pulled into two different directions. It’s trying to be Mad Max, but it’s also trying to be a standalone open world game. It should have just tried to be a Mad Max open world game, period. All this unnecessary filler just gets in the way of being in the world and can take away from the immersive parts of the game, as well as the narrative. I think Avalanche put a lot of work into the game world and how it looks. They also show at least somewhat of an understanding of how a Mad Max game SHOULD work. But sometimes it gets bogged down with stuff they thought they had to put in there for the sake of just having stuff. It’s unfortunate. That kind of game developer philosophy is a bad one and always has been. That kind of philosophy takes away from the interactive element being able to inform the narrative. It’s the kind of thing a game like Far Cry 2 excelled at because even though it had very limited content and tasks within in the game, they were all in service of its themes. It’s something I wish the Mad Max video game could have pulled off. Regardless, the world is so beautiful and so visually well crafted, I couldn’t help but continue playing the game without feeling like I was wasting my time. But that might be my bias showing.
This is basically just an introductory post and will also serve as a master post. I’m gonna break the game down into separate posts so I’m gonna link them all here and then link this into my about me section. So if anyone in the future ends up struggling to find these, you can just click on my about me and you’ll be linked to here. I’m also going to reblog this post when I’m all done.
Since you all know I’m a Mad Max fan, I’m also a huge gamer so this isn’t just gonna be a story breakdown. I’m gonna be talking about game mechanics too, in case you maybe thought I would skip them over.
Anyway, my overall thoughts stray toward the positive side but there’s quite a few things I thought could have been done better and I’ll get into that soon. So, stay tuned.
Don’t worry my dear followers, I’ll have some posts up soon about the Mad Max video game. I’m 40 hours into this shit and I’m still not done. I have a lot of thoughts, so be prepared. Lol.
