Film Review: Quality (Exploitation Cinema) - Mad Max: Fury Road

An exploitation film is a movie that intends to attract audience and gain huge amount of money because of it. These movies tend to use elements that are popular at the given time and therefore bringing bigger audience to watch it. Most of these movies have a poor quality and low budget, which is why they try to lure in more people. These movies often are considered to be B-movies and the factors that make them exploitation is showing things such as sex/nudity, violence, monsters, disasters etc.

Fig 1: Poster.

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) is the forth instalment of the Mad Max series, made in Australia. The film is set in a post-apocalyptic world where there is no water (at least people cannot access it) and the people are lead by Immortan Joe and his army or War Boys. Max is a survivor of a nuclear holocaust, who gets captured and is used as a blood bag, until he manages to get away, meeting Furiosa and aiding her to escape and find the place she is looking for.

Keeping up with a popular trend, one of the leading roles is a female heroine, Furiosa, a very strong character. She is the part of Immortan Joe's army, which is as seen hardly have or doesn't have a female member at all. She helps the five wives to escape from Joe and get away from the horrible place the movie is set in. Although we expect Max to be the protagonist, we later discover he is only a support, and Furiosa is the leading character, as Max does not have a set of goal, while Furiosa has one and she acts on it too.

Also, the five wives are barely covered, beautiful young women, who look different from one another (clearly targeting different preferences of the audience). Their costumes are not exactly supposed to cover much up, therefore we can see a lot of their bodies. However, for other audience preferences and interest purpose, the War Boys are muscular half naked young males. 

Fig 2: The five wives.

The film not necessarily has a complex plot, as they travel from one place to another, and than back to where they started at. But the violence, apocalyptic environment and war themes grab the attention. The soldiers do not appear in combat suits and the vehicles aren't military vehicles either, such as tanks, but rather heavily armed trucks/cars with various unique and intimidating weaponry. The chase is very intense and show great amount of danger and no fear of death. The film also contains gore, torture and body horror, as Max is taken into the War Boy's base and is chained up, tattooed and branded. There is also countless amount of deaths, but one of the most violent and gruesome is Immortan Joe's death which shows his body modification being ripped of, instantly killing him.

Fig 3: One of the cars.

List of Illustration:

Figure 1: Poster. [online] At: http://madmax.wikia.com/wiki/Mad_Max:_Fury_Road (Accessed on 09/11/2017)

Figure 2: The five wives. [online] At: http://madmax.wikia.com/wiki/Immortan_Joe%27s_Wives (Accessed on 09/11/2017)

Figure 3: One of the cars. [online] At: https://www.scifidesign.com/2015/05/05/the-vehicles-from-mad-max-fury-road/ (Accessed on 09/11/2017)