5Rhetorical Analysis
George Miller’s masterful reimagining of a post‐apocalyptic future in Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), which is based on the same world as his 1979 original, Mad Max, tells the story of Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy), a loner with an ambiguous backstory, and Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), who is seeking to escape the mad clutches of a grotesque and despotic warlord. The tale eventually leads Max and Furiosa to return to the source of their imprisonment in a desperate attempt to bring freedom to those still living under the oppressive weight of their captors. With striking aesthetics, compelling performances by both leads, a brilliant sound and music design, and spectacular, almost entirely practical, visual effects, Mad Max: Fury Road is an exciting and surprisingly powerful piece. But it is also an allegory: an extended reflection on the nature of humanity when faced with desperation and the loss of a civil society, in this case brought about by environmental devastation fueled by greed. The film works to discomfort its viewers, dramatizing in stunning high definition an increasingly possible future, in order to prompt action from a population prodded out of its comfortable state of apathy toward violence, consumerism, and a complicity in environmental ...
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