That is... a terrible analysis... (Gaming)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Wednesday, June 01, 2016, 17:35 (3100 days ago) @ Korny

MMFR deserves all the credit in the world for delivering an aesthetic style, a look, a certain energy, and nailing it out of the park in each and every way. The commitment to perfection across all aspects of the production shows, and it is truly impressive. But I also think it is a completely flat, meaningless, boring story with no characters worth caring about. I still can't wrap my head around the fact that people praise MMFR for its "strong female characters"... there isn't a strong character, male or female, within 100 miles of that movie IMO. It's not overtly sexist, and it drives home a message of equality in the most simplistic way possible, so it does deserve a shred of credit there. But people go on about Furiosa like she's the standard all female characters should now be held up against, when in reality she's as flat and 1-dimensional as everyone else in the movie.

The film relies on nothing but the most obvious manipulative tactics to try and make us care about any of the characters. They don't do anything to make us care about any of the women trying to escape, but they're all beautiful and being held captive by people who look like monsters, so that's all the development we need there, right?

The point wasn't to give each of the wives their own arc before we had an Avengers film with them together. They served as a plot device, and STILL had distinct characteristics, and each contributed to the group in one way or another by the end (even the hopeless Cheedo).

You're twisting my meaning. I don't need a multi-episode arc's worth of development to care about a character. I cared about Matt Murdock after the very first scene in Daredevil. Every character in MMFR is a caricature; 1-note, 1-dimensional, flat, lifeless, boring.

And then they go ahead and kill the pregnant one(who we don't care about aside from the fact that she's pregnant) just to make sure we really hate the bad guy, but again, he looks like a monster so we already know we're supposed to hate him.

Except you're completely wrong. The bad guy doesn't kill her (if anything, he actively tries to keep her from harm multiple times, for selfish reasons, of course, but he doesn't directly contribute to her death), circumstance does. She was the wives' pillar. The true leader who was always willing to do what needed to be done, and so she had to die, from a storytelling standpoint. Her actions saved Max (and the group) multiple times, but ultimately played a big part in how she died.

Again, twisting my meaning. Yes, the bad guy wanted her alive, but she died in the process of escaping his evil clutches. We're supposed to feel bad about her death, but as I already said, there is so little to her character (or anyone else's) that I had no investment in what happened to her or anyone else. It's a testament to how poor the storytelling is that I could watch a pregnant woman die and not care, given how sensitive I am to that sort of thing on a gut level.

There's also the skinny dude who flips sides more times than I can count,

He flips side once. Literally once in the movie, from the immortan's side, to the side of the wives. This is very telling with regards your poor critique...

Wrong. We see him flip sides multiple times, as he bounces back and forth between the two groups. He just agrees to go with whoever he's stuck with at the moment, and only finally commits to one side because of the pretty lady.

And then Furiosa, THE STRONGEST FEMALE CHARACTER OF ALL TIME, gets her 1 and only moment to show any strength of character since the start of the film, but instead she gives up and decides to lead the other women to their deaths out in the desert until Max talks her out of it.

Because she's not a superhero or master strategist. She was a glorified Uber driver who knew the rules of the world that they lived in. Again, she wasn't even the leader of the group. Most of her plans went downhill, but working side by side with Max, they complemented each other enough to get ahead.

Agreed. None of which is remarkable or special or anything beyond every other lame action movie ever made. 2 tough people get together and fight better than the bad guys. Big deal :)