“Initially, there wasn’t a feminist agenda,” director George Miller insisted.

This quote about Mad Max: Fury Road made me want to gnaw on my own knuckle in cartoonish excitement because DO YOU SEE WHAT HIS LOGIC DOES THERE? Too many directors and writers would stop at “I needed a warrior.” They never take that next step to understand that it couldn’t be a man taking five wives from another man. 

For most action movies, the first half of this quote is enough. It’s enough to be Liam Neeson or Jason Statham or Clive Owen as a good man rescuing the poor women from the bad man. Easy money, right?  But Miller had the instinct to realize that a woman helping other women is not only a more interesting story to tell–it’s the story we should be telling all along.

(via rashaka)

Just because it’s a woman taking the five wives doesn’t make them LESS OF AN OBJECT, for fuck’s sake, they’re still being treated as property by the antagonist and the story still hinges on a hero rescuing people who were deemed unfit to rescue themselves.

(via sciencemyfiction)

NOOOOOOOO. No no no. Did you even watch the movie????  One of the first lines of the film is from the old woman at the Citadel.  The woman says “She didn’t take them, they begged her to go!”  

Later, it is again repeated that the plan to leave was Angharad’s master plan, and Furiosa was brought in as their instrument for escape. The Wives have agency since the very beginning of the film.  

(via leclairage)

Like, compare with Max, who is literally unable to rescue himself (the best he managed is to keep from getting blown up before a sandstorm intervened).

(via ayyysexual)

Yes, they ARE being treated as property by the villain (I’m not going to call him the antagonist, because an antagonist is not necessarily evil, merely opposed to the goals of the hero).

The villain treats everyone as his property. That’s what makes him a villain, not just “the guy in charge who keeps everything running smoothly.”

Personally, I still think the movie would have not been essentially different if Furiosa had been a man – but obviously I have to bow at least somewhat to the thoughts and creative processes of the writer.

The wives couldn’t rescue themselves because they’d been kept in a harem for years. They’re tough women who do their best in every situation they’re in, they show tremendous courage, but they couldn’t rescue themselves because they were sheltered and didn’t have the survival skills. So, they asked for help. They show a solid motivation for their escape – to keep their kids from being raised by an abusive villain who treats other people as property (In many cases, a battered wife will only flee her husband when he starts threatening the children).

Not being able to do something is not the same thing as not having agency. Not knowing how to fight, how to survive, or what to do on the road doesn’t mean you don’t have agency.

I’d suggest that very few of the people reading this post would last five minutes on the Fury Road.

(via jenniferrpovey)