Amph Mad Max Franchise (Now: Furiosa)

To get into a little more detail -

Spoiler

It doesn't last super long - probably ten seconds or so in total - but you can see the fire and the silhouettes of Mary on the cross surrounded by Dementus' goons reflecting directly in Furiosa's eye as the camera keeps pushing in towards her. It all fades to black right after that, after her eye and the reflection take up the whole frame, and then that's when the chapter two title card comes up.

 

Here's a fun video with George Miller

 

A bit more concept art for Furiosa, these pieces from Matt Hatton:

 

Mad Max was the best video game released on September 1, 2015. Fight me.

But seriously, I spent over 50 hours with it and loved it. If I had the time I’d go back and replay it, would love to revisit it. Give it a shot, it goes on sale for like five bucks all the time.

 

What a wonderful person. And clearly an artist in his bones.

 

An eBay pickup. There's a few variants of Furiosa, all from Fury Road. I picked the one with her mechanical arm, but not as pricey as the exclusive one. I guess time will tell if there will be any ones coming out for the new movie.


Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk

 

Does the Bullet Farm have to exist? The conditions there seemed awful at baseline, and it was only needed to fuel the exaggerated, hyper-militarized tripartite society that had arisen. Even Gastown seems kind of pointless. High mobility roaming is really important if you are going to be a bunch of motor cycle gangs. Farming, by contrast, has always favored being stationary. Or even if migratory, you'd have to assume that would be with cattle, not something that would be particularly helped by petroleum.

It honestly seems like the most practical course of action would be to shut both down. A minimal defense force could protect the Citadel, but most people can/should just be redistributed as agricultural workers.

 

All I have to say is that it was amazing. It’s just a shame that the third and final film in the trilogy is unlikely to get made.

@Jabba-wocky for the love of Immortan Joe, stop analysing a metal fantasy film like you’re an anthropologist. Your critique here is really reaching; when roving gangs have ammunition and gasoline how is the Citadel meant to maintain its defences without ammunition or high explosives? Clearly the best way to avoid perpetual siege is to carry a big stick, and an alliance with Gastown and Bullet Farm is the best way to maintain dominance.

 

Just saw it. As others have said, it doesn’t reach the same heights as Fury Road, but is still really good in its own right.

 

I had no idea this existed

 

It’s not a critique. Rather, like 2ndQuest started—and the film itself seems to encourage—I’m trying to take the world-building seriously in imagining a post Fury Road settlement.

As to your question, the citadel is defensible because. . .its a citadel. The steep height makes it pretty impassable for motorcycles and obviates the gangs’ mobility advantage. These groups can’t really do siege warfare. You could probably wait them out, in large part. You certainly don’t need a production as big as the bullet farm, setting aside anyone’s willingness to work their when their life isn’t being threatened.

 

There’s still a certain amount of suspension of disbelief needed, especially for a fantasy like Mad Max.

But in any case, your presumption that the Citadel could just hold out indefinitely with no explosives or ammunition just doesn’t make sense. The roving gangs, which are now going to have both endless oil supply and ammunition, can easily make life hell for the occupants of the Citadel. They’ve got hang-gliders from which they could drop explosives upon and into the openings of the citadel. The defences are also mechanical (like the loading gantry from which they enter and exit) not to mention the whole thing probably uses some sort of mechanical fuel-based pumping system to actually irrigate the farming operation. Not to mention that Furiosa likely needs to care for the population outside the Citadel, who may not be able to be sustained within the walls of the citadel indefinitely. Once you’ve established your need for fuel you need Gastown, and now that your lifeline is vulnerable to roving gangs, you need the mineral resources of the Bullet Farm.

 

https://twitter.com/edgarwright/status/1797444091707559991

 

How would they have "an endless supply?" Think about the economics of what is laid out. The gangs basically require a large, oppressed underclass to work in Gas Town and Bullet Farm. This allows them the resources they need to maintain their violent dominance. The Citadel's part of this equation, as we see in this film, is they produce foodstuffs sufficient to feed the other two sites and then trade for resources. After all, when Dementus took over Gas Town, there was no suggestion that anyone would starve or otherwise suffer. It was that he had leverage to demand more food in exchange for a continued supply of gasoline.

What this likely means is that the other two sites could be completely abandoned. Repurposing workers in the Citadel would probably allow food production to be enhanced ever further. With some rearrangement, the palatial upper chambers could also be made to accommodate more people as well.

While the water pumps might require gasoline and elevators certainly do, the key question is whether there are manual means of activating either. Even if there are not, then at the very minimum this would allow the abandonment of Bullet Farm to focus on the only two sites that are actually needed. An army which is actually defensive in nature can be far smaller and more efficient than in a state where supporting the military is the whole point of its existence. There is no longer a need for the War Boys to live as a privileged elite, or for so much money to go into war caravans. I think over time the natural drift of the Wastelands would be more sedentary and agrarian, which the current economic structure really isn't suited for.

 

There’s a lot of if’s doing heaps of legwork there.

- they’d need to increase the food supply to give the population the extra calories they are being deprived of, which will likely require greening the area around the Citadel;
- they’d need to adequately house and feed the increased population within the Citadel in order to avoid sieges by the roving gangs who have a technological advantage, which will likely not be sustainable for a long term siege;
- the population will probably get tired of the sieges and Furiosa’s refusal to maintain a stronger fuel and mineral based defence force to deter attacks, leading to an unstable situation internally;
- they’d have to create a lift, pump and defence system which is both as efficient in protecting the increased (and likely increasing) population, and also doesn’t require mechanical technology, which even if possible does not address the issues raised by the first three points.

Given the limited resources you’re probably going to still have the issue of roving gangs for the foreseeable future, and you’re definitely not going to be able to feed them all unless you can bring them to heel. Rather than risk endless sieges in the Citadel, creating an arrangement where good rulers of Gas Town and Buller Farm are installed and a strong defence force is created to allow trade between the three, is probably the most sustainable way to go. This stability will likely reduce the conflict overall, as you’ll have the roving gangs dissipate as they see the benefit of becoming ‘citizens’ of the triumvirate and then you can dismantle at least Bullet Farm.

 

Again, is this much of a challenge? The usual rate-limiting factor in pre-industrial agriculture is access to farm workers, followed by access to good irrigation. The former being why people used to encourage such large families. Converting hundreds of people from "warriors" into farmers would support this pretty well. Let alone what would happen if there was no longer an elite hoarding resources to have an especially sumptuous lifestyle.

I think you're really over-estimating the potential for siege. First, the economic structure we saw suggested gangs were getting regular food shipments to sustain themselves. There clearly seems to be pretty limited capacity for mobile refrigeration. I don't see even see much set up for salting/smoking/pickling that could happen on a roving basis. Whereas these latter techniques are all relatively low tech, and available to the Citadel. It seems like the motorcycle gangs would wilt in only a few weeks.

Indeed, if this were so possible, we have to ask why Dementus never tried to put anyone under siege. Instead, they retreated and sought an immediate way inside. I think this all very strongly suggests it was not practical/possible, just as our reasoning above would also suggest.

I think you're ignoring the bigger point. The people are already tired of something: working in the Bullet Farm and Gas Town. These are inhumane, uncomfortable, and only exist to serve the military superstructure. As Toussaint L'Overture found after establishing control over Haiti after the War of Knives, it is very hard to convince people to keep doing something they were only compelled to do by a forceful, unrelenting campaign of terror. If society is no longer dedicated to perpetual war, and there are no longer sociopaths threatening to murder you for non-compliance, exactly what lever is there to make someone stay in a hellish underground mine thing making bullets?

You're right that the system might not be sustainable in the long term. Systems founded on violence tend not to be. But if they can't find a stable, peaceful settlement, that doesn't mean the current tripartite alliance will hold either. Too many want the world to be otherwise, and too much of that system is superfluous to any imagined society that is not based in fanatical bloodshed. Like many good narratives, the films stop where they do because of the world of those films is pushed out of existence by the events depicted onscreen.

 

I think this is a massive leap. There are various gangs roving around. Nothing you suggest would stop them doing this. They want what Furiosa has and will try to take it by force using the bullets and gas which Furiosa has abandoned. You’re ignoring the material differential in arms which you have set up - roving gangs have machinery, oil and bullets, and Furiosa is now bound to defend her Citadel, with a growing population, without these things.

They did try a siege. It was forestalled as soon as it began due to the devotion and armaments of the War Boys.

You’re missing the entire point of this universe. There are sociopaths threatening to murder them. There are gangs of them, separate to the Citadel, GasTown or the Bullet Farm. How is Furiosa’s people going to defend themselves? Someone else will just take over Bullet Farm and Gas Town and use those resources to enforce their will upon the Citadel. The only way to stop this is for Furiosa to enforce her regime, which means defending it, which means minerals and oil.

 

I just don’t agree with your reading of what happened. Yes, it’s incidentally true that the War Boys routed Dementus. That was the best conflict resolution for Mutant Albino Guy because he didn’t want to lose face with his cult. Likewise, Dementus seemed to be counting on shock and awe to force a surrender, not a protracted siege in the classical sense.

Everything in this universe we’ve seen has involved very short, heavily violent, decisive encounters. But if one side decided to withdraw into their defenses, what would others do? Dementia couldn’t even breach the iron gate of Gas Town. He had to be let in. You’re telling me he’s going to scale a mountain hundreds of feet high? Really? That people are interested in waiting around for weeks on end, being externally supplied (from something/one???) while they await the internal collapse of a fortress that has its own internal water and food supply, which they do not?

The structure of this world suggests that gangs are opportunistic. They go after easy targets. The Citadel decidedly is not.

 

How are the gangs being sustained in the first place? Clearly there’s enough to supply themselves beyond the Citadel. Given the value of the Citadel, I can totally see them laying siege to it for a long time, using hanggliders, etc, especially if Furiosa now has none of the weapons they’d now be deprived of and has a greatly reduced defensive capability. The Citadel, GasTown and Bullet Farm actually rely upon their munitions and fuel to deter the gangs.

 

Hey Wocky:

 

Okay, but this is where you walk into a contradiction:

A. If the gangs can sustain themselves without the Citadel, it’s equally logical that the Citadel should have some access to weapons with Bullet Farm and Gas Town. (In fact, we’d expect this to be the case regardless because ammo usage will drop dramatically if they are not engaging in active daily sorties).

B. If, on the other hand, it’s your position that the Citadel requires Bullet Farm to have any level of munitions, the gangs also need to have the Citadel for any level of food by the same logic.

I think you are also just ignoring the basic/obvious fact that what you can support by roving/pillaging is much greater than what you can support by intensive, prolonged occupation of a single place where you exhaust local resources without giving them a chance to replenish. They would then either need complex supply lines or would have to break their siege. Both of those have always been complex, even for highly complex societies. Let alone chaotic motorcycle gangs led by mentally ill people that are constantly betraying one another.