The below was first posted on my personal FB page on February 26, 2023.
It’s been a while since I nerded out about a movie in one of my FB notes! So today, I’ll be nerding out about Mad Max: Fury Road (2015).
You’d think that, being an action movie and all, Fury Road would be little more than cool explosions, car chases, hot chicks, and manly men being manly men. But Fury Road isn’t just a little more than all that. It is way more than all that! Please do not let the genre of “action movie” blind you from the fact that this movie is a work of art! All the spectacle in Fury Road is just the very tip of an iceberg filled with the usual attributes expected of great art, including the exploration of deep, universal themes; effective execution of character development; and the maximizing of its genre (in this case, visual storytelling). To prove that Fury Road does all this and more, I decided to examine the movie’s introduction to Nux, my favorite character.
Our introduction to Nux begins here, and in particular from 0:08 to 2:00.
Nux’s limp posture, pale complexion, and thin physique; the unconscious War Boys around him; and the fact that he is undergoing a blood transfusion all tell us, the audience, that he is severely ill. So, right off the bat, we see the movie maximizing on the tools which the genre of film, or visual storytelling, has to offer. Everything that the scene shows us points us to key information about Nux. Not a single visual detail is wasted.
Our impression of Nux’s illness is confirmed in the dialogue about a minute later when the Organic Mechanic (ie the doctor) and Slit tell him that he can barely stand and that he’s “already a corpse.” Nux shouts that he doesn’t want to stay behind and “die soft.” He is bent on dying “historic on the Fury Road.” The dialogue is sparse but efficient - the best kind of dialogue. What few lines that are delivered combine with the visual details we’ve already been told so that we understand that Nux is dying, and furthermore, that he knows he’s dying. All his hope seems to lie in the war raging above because in war, he hopes to die in a spectacular manner and so, be redeemed from the death he cannot escape.
The manner in which the war drums and commotion of the War Boys stir Nux out of his daze and into action perfectly represents his desires and values as well. The hope for a glorious death seems to give him more strength than even Max’s blood transfusion. Again, his one reason for living, the one impetus driving his spirit forward as his body fails, is the dream of using his inevitable death to achieve meaning.
The scene also introduces us to Nux’s relationship with Slit, which in turn tells us more about the world and culture in which the War Boys live. Slit is Nux’s “lancer” and acts as a supporting partner in combat while out on the road. However, despite working so closely together, Slit tries to abandon Nux and even tries to sabotage him by taking his wheel to “promote” himself. He only agrees to team up with Nux again when Nux asserts his dominance with a headbutt. From this exchange, we see that friendship doesn’t exist between War Boys. Only survival, skills on the road, and a glorious death are valued. Human bonds are not.
So, in less than 2 minutes, the movie uses visual details, acting, dialogue, and sound to show the audience who Nux is (a dying War Boy), what his motivations are (to die a “historic” death), and what kind of world he lives in (a world that glorifies death on the battlefield above all else, including human relationships).
This is a masterful display of wielding every tool the medium of film has to offer in order to effectively and efficiently tell a detailed story. Had the movie been a stereotypical, junk-food-for-the-mind, easy-watching type of action movie, we may have had to sit through ten minutes of dialogue regarding crap we don’t care about. Or maybe the set, make up, and costumes wouldn’t have emphasized Nux’s illness, and as a result, we could have totally missed the fact that he’s as sick as he is. Or maybe we wouldn’t have had an intro to Nux at all and just gone straight to the car chase, which still would have provided entertaining action but would have totally cut out the opportunity to develop a three-dimensional character.
But wait, that’s not all! There are other details too.
The light shining down on Nux spotlights him in a way that visually separates him from the other War Boys sprawled out in the dark. He seems set apart somehow, even in a divine way. Later on in the movie, he confesses that he thought he had been spared from death for this long so that he could achieve something great. And indeed, as the movie progresses, it becomes clear that he was always different from the other War Boys. He comes to cast off the brainwashing that enslaves the others and chooses to die in a way that he personally finds worthy and meaningful. As a result, he obtains a truly glorious death rather than throwing himself into death’s arms as battle fodder for a false god.
Furthermore, we see Nux physically connected to Max both through the chain and tube used for his blood transfusion. This literal connection both symbolizes and foreshadows how the fates of the two men are interlinked and how Max’s presence in Nux’s life will become a vital catalyst for Nux’s transformation from a suicidal War Boy, who sees hope only in death, to someone who wants to live to protect his friends and give them a life that sustains hope.
So, Nux’s introduction not only familiarizes us with the his identity, motivations, and world but also hints at his true purpose and fate on the Fury Road upfront. This foreshadowing allows a smooth and gradual development of Nux’s character during the movie - the perfect set up. Both his introduction and character development underline the major themes of the movie: survival, death, hope, and redemption. As a result, Nux, though a secondary character with his own complete character arc, does not distract us from the tone of the movie, the messages it conveys, or the arcs and development of the primary characters. Instead, he supports and adds to all of the above.
I could go on forever about Fury Road. In fact, this FB note was originally 7 single-spaced pages of what was essentially high-falutin fan-girling. But I’ll stop here. Hopefully, though, you can see how Fury Road, though an “action movie,” lacks the superficiality of movies like, say, The Fast and Furious franchise (which I will openly admit that I've never watched because of said superficiality; I feel like the trailers basically show me everything I need to know) or even the John Wick franchise (which I absolutely love because of the creative choreography and the good-old fashioned cool factor that is Keanu Reeves. [Give him guns! Lots of guns!])
Instead, Fury Road delivers on so many of the key qualities that great, artistic movies have. It relays key details of the character, plot, and world through efficient visual storytelling; foreshadows then delivers on what was foreshadowed; develops its characters and enforces overarching themes through that development; and, of course, entertains the audience through eye-watering spectacle without forgoing any artistic integrity.
