Warning: This post contains several variations of the word ass.
This week’s outing was not really what I had in mind. I never considered doing a movie for one of these, but since we are here…
Let’s talk about Mad Max: Fury Road.
Photo from GamesRader
Photo from It takes a lot for me to really care about a movie, let alone feel inspired by one. The last time I felt like a movie blew my mind was Avatar 3D. Maybe if I saw MMFR again, I wouldn’t feel the same. Maybe if there hadn’t been grown men throwing a fit and crying, I would have never seen it. (Actually, that is 100% true.) Maybe, if I hadn’t read about a girl who was born with half an arm and was so happy to see a badass, never back down, do what it takes, heroine, I wouldn’t have realized how much this movie was needed.
That’s a lot of maybes. One thing I do know, I want more.
I left the theater wondering why we sterilize our entertainment? Even the goriest of scenes is sterilized. After all, we are sitting safe in a theater or couch and it’s all make-believe. People ask me how I can pay to be scared. I don’t just want scary though. If that was the case, I’d just turn off the light at night and sprint to my bed or be content trying to beat the dogs in the RV and slam the door shut behind them after their last walk of the night in a strange place. What I want is scary while knowing I’m completely safe.
No matter what we witness on the screen we can walk outside, squint our eyes at the bright sun, enjoy the warm air, and move on with our life. That’s the point of entertainment.
What I really mean when I say we sterilize everything is that we seem to think only beautiful people can be heroes or interesting. Only beautiful people have a story worth telling. Not that Charlize Theron is not one of the most beautiful women on the planet, even with 1.5 arms. Usually, if we have a movie that’s about someone disabled, it is either the story before they became disabled (sports movies, war movies), they are brilliant (Stephen Hawking), or it is an existential, life is terrible so what is the point, they die at the end soul-crushing endeavor. Occasionally, I’ve seen the touchy feely disabled person makes a friend movie. I can enjoy all of these. Well, okay not the existential stuff. I want some escape after all.
What I’ve never seen is someone who is already disabled slaying the antagonist and rescuing people from the clutches of a heinous overlord.
I left the theater wanting to make ALL the movies. Unfortunately, I don’t know how to make movies and more importantly, I’m not inclined to learn.
I want to live in a world where blockbuster movies are filled with different looking people. Maybe they are beautiful, maybe they have giant scars on their face, maybe they are missing limbs, or something else we, as a society, would regulate to sitting on the sidelines of life. Not worthy of sharing stories that weren’t centered around the obvious handicap. Don’t even mention it in the movie unless it is to give them a badass mechanical arm they can whip off and hit someone with. I don’t need to know the story behind the scar or wheelchair. I don’t need it to be center stage of the plot or a part at all. No one gives the back story of how someone became beautiful. We don’t get their family tree or their workout program, except Rocky.
I just want to see people of all types projected on a 2 story screen as normal, whole, human beings, that may or may not whip off a mechanical arm and beat some bad guys.