I actually thought that made sense in the context of the film. Immortan Joe is going to take the finest to be his wives/slaves. Now, in an apocalyptic setting people wouldn’t look as good as they do, but I’m willing to accept that implausibility.
Looking for plausibility is ludicrous in a stylized setting like this, in the same way as it is in steampunk settings or Fallout. You have to accept the premise of the world just being like it is and then go with the story in that setting.
I didn’t get this feeling at all. It was plenty violent enough for me, and creatively so. At no point was there time to slow down for sex. That’s not what the movie’s about anyway. (You may as well complain that Pulp Fiction doesn’t have any sex. Some movies aren’t interested in it.)
It’s not a feeling, the movie will literally cut away from the gory stuff. Two examples are the removal of the main bad guy’s mask (quick cut away), cutting the baby from the womb(removes focus from stomach). There are tons more examples throughout the movie. That it was gory enough for you doesn’t change this.
Why do this in an R rated movie? You have all this over the top action going on constantly but then you decide to tone it down for some reason. To appeal to the masses? To appeal to women?
Who knows?
Both of those examples seem more like artistic choices than ratings choices. Or at least that’s the impression I was left with.
Because a glimpse of something is sometimes more powerful than lingering on it.
Not every R-rated movie needs to play to grindhouse audiences.
-Tom
I also thought the cutting away was both artistic license and effective.
In the case of Immortan Joe’s death, I thought it was absolutely an artistic choice. All this build up, all this fighting, and all this deification, and at the end, he’s just a man, and it’s over in a flash.
Same. I really don’t think gory shots in either scene would have added anything to the movie at all.
But hey, if you really want to see a fetus get hacked out of its mother’s womb, I’ve got some great French torture porn for you.
I don’t remember anything particularly gory from any of the Mad Max films. It’s just not George Miller’s style. I thought the guy jumping onto the spiked Beetle was going to be disgusting and I am glad that the horror of that was left to my imagination. Sometimes the implication of violence is much more effective than some possibly laughable practical effect.
Plus, why waste money on needless gore when you have a bunch of awesome cars to build (and destroy).
Yep, same here. It never seemed to me that the movie was ‘toned down’. It felt like Miller’s deliberate artistic choice. It’s like saying the movie was toned down because it could have started earlier in the timeline and shown how Immortan Joe abuses and rapes the women because, you know, R rating.
There’s also the school of thought that says that even with huge CGI budgets, “organic” effects like heads exploding or limbs getting ripped off still don’t look all that great, and “practical effects” (i.e., latex and colored KY jelly) aren’t much better if they’re given center-screen.
Now don’t get me wrong, I love me some Walking Dead and they do a pretty good job, but even in those shows I’m taken out of the action when gratuitous gore is shown. Give me “Alien” any day where the horrific kills were almost all off-screen; that’s far scarier and more disturbing.
Re: the “birth” scene, I think there’s probably some kind of feminist argument that could be made about how choosing not to focus on the gore or the body is an informed choice about the representation of women’s bodies as objects, or agency about how she’s portrayed, or something.
I don’t really know how to make that argument. But I think there’s probably one in there.
It’s feminist in that in it respects her as a full character in the narrative, I guess.
The way I see it, if you’re going to show a character being graphically destroyed, it’s should serve a purpose. I.e, are we supposed to enjoy it? That doesn’t work here though. Angharad is not empty cannon fodder, she’s a character. And she’s not being punished for a moral transgression, she’s firmly one of the good guys. She’s brave. She puts herself between the others and Joe’s bullets. She even earns Max’s respect.
On the flip side, you could do it to underline how horrible everything is, how dehumanizing Joe’s regime is, but we’ve had an hour of that already. It’s entirely redundant. And besides, she’s unconcious and dying. If you’re going to do that, she really needs to be concious to make the audience feel the the horror.
So basically, showing the camera in her cesarean would be entirely gratuitous.
Meh, it’s Mad Max, not a Saw movie. It’s not about the gore.
Yeah, they’ve never been gory, although have had some violent moments that are played for laughs, like when Humongus’s lackey in Road Warrior gets his fingers cut off.
I definitely miss the loss of nudity of the early films. Highly like that was a sign of changing times and the attempt to appeal to a broader audience (like Thunderdome). Missed it a lot, actually, and it especially stood out with the inclusion of a sex slave plot.
I think the lack of nudity was a good choice. Sure, thematically it’d be great to see the brides reclaim their sexuality the same way Max reclaims his blood bag status, but in the context of a relentless chase there’s really no space for it. And if you show it in the context their sex slave status, you risk running into ‘Look at this bad thing…let’s look at it some more…it’s so very bad. Mmmm.’ territory.
Pretty much what Sörën said, except. The women did reclaim their sexuality. They all started of wearing practically nothing, but by the end they all had acquired more clothing than they started with. And the one gal had started up a relationship with the war boy- a relationship based on mutual respect and attraction, not possessiveness, ownership and expectation.
I find it hilarious, but completely expected that Desslock is finding ways to not like the movie. He complains when fictions (comics, for example) are too preachy, and wear their ‘feminist agenda’ on their sleeve- “why do they have to write a diatribe, why do they have to make sick a big deal of it?”. Then when something more ‘subtle’ (a hilarious term to use with this movie, but it fits) like this comes along, he ties himself in knots to find reasons to dislike it. Ah, well.
Quit manufacturing your bullshit and attributing it to me, jackass. Retract that shit immediately or provide the “feminist agenda” quotes. Seriously, fuck you.