The latest installment in the Mad Max series, Furiosa, comes 10 years after the release of director George Miller’s groundbreaking reboot, Fury Road (2015).
As we showed in our 2019 book, Miller and the ongoing Mad Max series have been attuned to the changing sensibilities of the zeitgeist, while capitalizing on tropes of disability, gender, trauma, and myth to propel the films to cult status, a global market, and an international fanbase.
In the earlier films, Max (Mel Gibson) reflected the era of Gen-X masculinity; Charlize Theron’s Furiosa in Fury Road represented a more inclusive form of heroism, a post-feminist celebration of teamwork.
Fury Road’s widely praised feature of a disabled female protagonist out-performing a male action hero was something never before seen in an action movie.
Furiosa has promised to tell the origin story of her disability and explain the experiences that shaped her to become the strong, disabled female leader that she is in Fury Road.
Unfortunately, aside from a clever reference to Max’s own insane origin story, the film’s focus on Furiosa’s amputation exploits her disability, foreclosing any associated commentary or critique that has previously been deployed in each of the progressive Mad Max films.
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Haunted by the past
Miller and his co-writers have consistently portrayed the film’s main antagonists as survivors of deeply traumatic events.
In the 1979 original, Max becomes aware of the madness of his emerging desire for revenge and says that spending too much time on the road will make him “terminally mad”.
As he spends more time in the wilderness and descends into terminal madness, characters in the second and third films berate him for continuing to harbor antisocial sadness and vengeful rage.
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As Max withdraws further from society, the film chronicles the extreme patriarchy and breakdown of a post-apocalyptic society. Max’s mental trauma is reflected in his body as a physical disability.
Fury Road masterfully depicts Max (Tom Hardy) struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder, recurring feelings of guilt and hallucinations.
Surprisingly, in Fury Road, the cause of Furiosa’s disability is never revealed or explained; her missing arm is never portrayed as a particular hardship or disadvantage. The focus is on her heroism and leadership, and her emotions range from intense rage to sympathy.
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In the Fury Road prequel, Furiosa (now played by Anya Taylor-Joy) displays very little emotion, partly as a survival mechanism but also a result of post-traumatic mutism and hypervigilance.
A brief dream montage depicting her traumatic experiences, complete with a startled fight-or-flight reflex, offers little in the way of empathy.
The film promised to offer some insight into Furiosa’s motivations, but by focusing primarily on the events leading up to her amputation rather than delving into her inner world, audiences are robbed of the opportunity to truly understand the character.
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In the new film, Furiosa shows very little emotion. Jacinto Boland/Warner Bros. Pictures
As Furiosa puts herself into increasingly dangerous situations, threatening her body and her life, she senses an inevitable outcome: when will she lose her arm?
Whereas Fury Road’s portrayal of disability, gender, and leadership is complex, with Furiosa’s strength and evolving leadership expressed through expressive facial expressions and empathy for others, this Furiosa remains one-dimensional.
This is a far cry from Fury Road’s innovations in disability and gender representation, which conceal more than it reveals.
Story Prosthesis
Cultural disability theorists David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder have written that there is a tendency in film and popular literature to use disability as a “narrative adjunct”.
“As a crutch on which stories can be relied upon for their expressive power, their subversive potential, and their analytical insight.”
When disability is used as a narrative adjunct, the story focuses on disability as a tragedy or on overcoming the tragedy of the disabled body.
The origin story of Furiosa’s disability is the crutch the film relies on, and this focus comes at the expense of the representation of disability and trauma explored through subtext in previous films.
>Furiosa’s disability origin story came at the expense of representation of disability and trauma. Jacinto Boland/Warner Bros. Pictures
Miller’s criticism of the rising number of road fatalities in the 1970s was the inspiration for the first two films.
As the series progressed, the films offered commentary on catastrophe, capitalism and survivalism, depicting tyrannical leaders sacrificing the planet and the health of their people for profit and power.
Fury Road focuses on disabled and traumatized characters – there’s hardly a scene without them – and their disabilities and aging characters offer hope for new beginnings and alternatives to violent, tyrannical rulers.
The drama hinges on the possibility that the next scene will be the moment she loses her arm. Jacin Boland/Warner Bros. Pictures
Furiosa barely tells any of these broader stories, with the drama hinged on the possibility that the next scene will be the moment Furiosa loses her arm.
It’s a shame to see Fury Road regress from its complex portrayal of disability and gender to an exploitative concern with how and when Furiosa acquired her disability (rather than the person she has become).
Fury Road asked us to better understand disability; Furiosa feeds on voyeuristic anticipation.
Furiosa’s end titles are punctuated with a brief iconic clip from Fury Road – eye-catching imagery such as this only underscores the power and resonance of the former film, at the expense of the latter.
Katie Ellis, Professor in the School of Internet Studies, Curtin University; Mick Broderick, Adjunct Professor in the Centre for Culture and Technology, Curtin University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.