best way to watch Fury Road is to focus on the individual background War Boys
this fandom is my supervillain origin story
BUT SERIOUSLY THIS FANDOM IS LIKE AN ORGANICALLY GROWN THESIS STATEMENT ON HOW FANDOM IS WILLING TO PUT CREATIVE EFFORT IN WHEN IT COMES TO HUMANIZING AND CONTEXTUALIZING MEN- EVEN NAMELESS MEN WHO APPEAR ONSCREEN FOR LESS THAN A MINUTE- BUT REFUSES TO DO THE SAME FOR WOMEN, EVEN WHEN THEIR JOURNEY IS THE FOCAL POINT OF THE STORY.
I mean I’m sure fandom does that but I think that person was just amused about all the funny shit happening in the background? Like watching Lord of the Rings and focusing on Legolas’ background expressions?
But it’s not just that one person. It’s them, and it’s the people creating OCs just for Immortan Joe to abuse, and it’s people shipping the Wives with characters like Rictus and Slit- the same characters who were trying to drag them back to a life of rape and abuse- and it’s people producing endless meta and backstory for the Ace or the Coma Doof Warrior when they can’t be arsed to do the same for the Keeper of the Seeds or the Valkyrie, and it’s the fact that we’re all apparently endlessly fascinated with War Boy culture but not with the Vuvalini, and it’s this shit:
so maybe that person, singular, was just joking. But this fandom, plural, isn’t. The fandom has wholeheartedly embraced this movie’s insignificant, inconsequential male characters and left the women in the dust, and it’s pretty fucking sad when this movie got popular in the first place because it was all about women.
i agree that i would like to see more fanworks exploring the wives and their story but there was also an excellent criticism of the film i read yesterday that mentions how little personality the wives are given, while the war boys are more fleshed out as a group and therefore it’s easier to focus on them. So this could be part of the reason many people in the fandom find them more interesting (and it’s also a major flaw in the film that the wives’ characters are not given much thought). But of course this may be only part of the reason, it’s very true that in any “fandom” many people put more focus on the male characters.
“how little personality the wives are given”
pardon my bluntness, but that’s just plain not true.
As I mentioned upthread, most of this movie’s setting and characterization come from the visuals rather than the dialogue. That means that anyone watching the movie closely- close enough to watch the War Boys in the background- they’d also catch the little details we get regarding the Wives and their personalities. We know Angharad is fierce and determined and idealistic, full of rage at Joe and still willing to extend compassion to the War Boys- even the ones like Nux, who are actively trying to take her back to the Citadel. We know she’s a leader, because Capable specifies that “we are not things” were her words. She’s also the wife who communicates the most with Furiosa while she’s alive, so we can infer that she’s the one who came up with the plan to run away. And, as Rosie Huntington-Whitley pointed out, we can see from her behaviour that she’s reckless when it comes to her own safety, maybe even self-destructive.
With Capable, we see her standing next to and helping Angharad- binding her wound, helping her lean out of the rig- so it seems like they were close. She’s also the one who steps into Angharad’s shoes immediately after she’s gone, demanding that Max turn the rig around, then running after Cheedo when she tries to go back. She also offers to go to the back of the rig, apparently out of a desire to be alone, so maybe she’s not as close to the others as she was to Angharad- or maybe she wants to have a moment to grieve in peace. We know that, like Angharad, she’s kind to Nux- and this is after she loses her best friend, partially because of him. We can see that she’s a caregiver and a lieutenant, although maybe not a natural leader.
Toast is pragmatic and gruff right off the bat, sighing about how Max shot Joe’s favourite wife. When Angharad tries and fails to load the gun, Toast grabs it from her, and they exchange a look that could be resentful or surprised or exasperated. When Cheedo runs away, she starts to run after her, then stops- either she doesn’t feel close enough to her to make a compelling argument, or she figures “let her go if that’s what she wants.” Again, pragmatic- but that pragmatism doesn’t lead her to give up after they lose Angharad. Instead, she insists “we’re going to the Green Place” and puts her hand on Capable’s back as she’s crying. So she has a softer side. We see another side to her when she’s playing with the little music box the Vuvalini presumably gave her- that, plus her talking about “shows” might indicate that she has an interest in arts in general. Also, she seems to be the wife that’s closest to Furiosa- Furiosa gives her the gun to train on Nux, and it’s seeing Toast in the opposite car that gives Furiosa the strength to get up again after she’s been stabbed. So there’s a connection there.
The Dag is the quirkiest one of all of them, and the most outspoken- insulting Max (the man HOLDING A GUN) to his face right after he gets in the rig, hissing at Joe when he drives past, and even biting Nux when he tries to grab them. She also has a more idiosyncratic way of speaking- “is that the wind, or a furious vexation?” “wring your hands and tear your hair, but you’re not going back to him.” She’s prepared to be violent, but also hoped that the Vuvalini would be “above all that.” And of course, we know she’s enamoured with plants and growing things. She’s also the most intuitive, realizing right away that “the creepy place with all the crows” is the former Green Place and sighting Joe’s army in the distance. And she’s spiritual, even though we don’t see any religion in the Citadel besides Joe’s war cult. So she’s a bit spacey, lives in her own world, but she’s also fierce when called on to be. And of course, lots of people have noted how protective and close she is towards Cheedo.
Cheedo is the one with the most clear-cut arc (going from trying to run back to Joe to tricking Rictus into letting her save Furiosa) but we also get other tidbits of her personality: she talks about Joe giving them the “high life,” implying that she’s familiar with the alternative, so it’s possible she grew up among the Wretched. She also tried to pull Dag back during the initial fight with Max, so she’s more cautious than the others, and in her own way, as protective of the Dag as she is towards Cheedo. She initially looks to Angharad when Max tells her to do something, so she’s not very confident in her own judgement yet. In general, she gives off the vibe of having escaped physically but not mentally- she still doesn’t quite believe that she can survive on her own, probably because that’s the message Joe drilled into them. But by the end of the movie, she’s the one who saves the day: she’s realized she has the strength to save herself, that she doesn’t need to look to the others to protect and guide her anymore.
?????????? THE WAR BOYS???? ARE MORE FLESHED OUT THAN THE WIVES????? B U L L S H I T
*SLOW CLAP*
Wow. It kills me to watch people pull some cirque du soleil shit to justify their fandom blinders. IT’S NOT THAT THE WAR BOYS ARE DUDES, IT’S BECAUSE THEY ARE MORE FLESHED OUT EVEN THOUGH THEY WERE ALL BACKGROUND CHARACTERS THAT BARELY GOT NAMES OR GOT TO SPEAK BEYOND GRUNTS!!!! LET’S PRETEND LIKE THE WIVES WEREN’T ALL GIVEN NAMES AND VOICES AND A JOURNEY, BECAUSE UGH, LADIES!
At this point, I seriously fucking wonder what kind of “character development” it would take for them to be considered fleshed out characters.
A perfect single fandom rebuttal to that “no, it’s not misogyny, it’s statistics!” post.
fearlessstateofmind backup 