The first time I experienced Fury Road I really did not know what to make of it and when I watched it again a few years later I had really come to appreciate the immense technical craft that went into creating a film like this but still felt at a distance. As the old saying goes, the third time's the charm as I was fully won over and enthralled by Fury Road this time. Maybe it was just a matter of watching it on the best tv I have ever had, or at least what my parents have, but god did the visuals ever pop this time around. Again, I had already gained an appreciation for the craft, but some of the stuff cooked up in this film is truly just so distinct and stunning. Even more so now, I am just beyond impressed at how basically any of these extended action sequences were filmed and made legible as they are in this film, because just trying to contemplate that now is staggering. Honestly I had to delete several more sentences that are just some variation of "this technical aspect is kind of insane in how great it is" so let me just say its kind of insane how great all of the technical aspects are for this film.

Despite all of that, the richness of the character exploration and what this film really had on its mind (aside from being exponentially cooler than almost anything else in the surrounding cinematic landscape). Although a bit blunt, the main villain of Immortan Joe really comes off as quite compelling in how the world around him informs the viewer of what he fully represents and his own methods of maintaining authority and fostering intense obedience or cult-like devotion. In him, it almost is capital incarnate with the intense hoarding of resources and reducing human life and human beings down to property who's supposed value as defined by him is his alone to extract and control. As such, it really becomes clear why the majority of people ostensibly 'worship' him behind a thin veneer of contempt and hatred, but also why he would cultivate a cult of personality to construct a truly fervent group of men to enforce his order and make death in his service the ultimate reward. Throw in an incredible character design and a strong performance, and Immortan Joe is quite the effective villain to contrast the three major arcs against.

On this trip down Fury Road, I really came to appreciate more and more the arc that Hoult's character goes through. Through him, there is almost a type of a light at the end of the tunnel arc for him, as the film explores a War Boy who begins to question the ideology that has been peddled to him. While veering into potentially familiar waters with how it ends, Hoult really comes to imbue his character with such intense pathos as he struggles a great bit with his sense of purpose and what he should be working towards and honestly, there is a great sense of catharsis in the process of this journey. In a time where there feels like an ever growing number of real world War Boy types, seeing a character come back from the darkness not only feels like a relief, but something that is necessary. Even in this bleak post-apocalypse world, there are still avenues to change and work towards something better and it just feels vital to show someone make that progress in rejecting dominant narratives that peddled empowerment and glory while only ensuring obedience and the further entrenchment of oppression.

Then, there is Max. Perhaps this is too brief and not doing his arc justice, but I did find Hardy's own character to be far more fascinating when put into a more holistic view alongside Hoult's War Boy and Theron's Furiosa. In popular discourse, there seemed to be a bit of a larger narrative that Max is sort irrelevant, or more kindly just not as important in this film because it is more so Furiosa's story and while I can sort of see where that is coming from, it can sort of diminish the impact of his journey in this film. If Hoult's character explores someone going through the journey from the inside of recognizing the failing's of his ideological worldview and working to change them, Hardy's Max is an effective exploration of the supposed neutral party coming to realize how untenable their position truly is. Max is something of a more prototypical hero type of being self-sufficient and self-reliant and determined to go his own way because he can make it on his own. But through his interactions with Furiosa and the many women along the journey, it was also heartening to see Max reject his stubborn neutrality as it was seeing Hoult undo the poisonous ideology that had been fed to him in the recognition of the importance of actually confronting and bringing the Immortan Joe's of the world. For the world to truly become inhabitable and liveable for most people the Joe's of the world (capital) can not simply be survived under (or seen as apart from) by rugged individualism, but must be met with collective force that addresses a wide range of social ills. As such, Max's arc becomes essential to the text and should not simply be made as a backseat passenger to Furiosa's.

However, Furiosa's journey is still essential in its own right and provides its own effective commentary on facing the present moment. In a way, her arc has its own similarities to Max's. Instead of seeking to escape alone and survive on rugged individualism, she has a vision of escaping the world of Immortan Joe (capital) and returning to a type of edenistic/utopian place where the troubles of this world will melt away. She and the women who accompany her on this flight to freedom do not need to be aware of the realities of their world and be hardened against them, they are already there by the start of the film. Yet, the film must make them confront that there is no simple utopia to escape to, there is no fantasy that can be easily obtained to avoid the struggles of the world. Instead, the world and those in power must be confronted fully and deposed. Here, Furiosa is the leader, an organic leader, for these people that Max, an outsider, really could never be and is essential in fighting and helping to set in motion the process of forming a more equitable world. Together, with Hoult and Hardy, Theron's Furiosa helps to create a compelling set of three building narratives from different places along the spectrum that show the inadequacies of upholding or seeking to avoid oppressive systems and that what is needed is some form of direct action to begin to actively break them down and build something better. Again, in 2024, these ideas and beliefs feel all the more pertinent and vital and certainly helped me to gain a depth of appreciation for Fury Road that I did not have but certainly do now!