The Bechdel Cast - Mad Max Fury Road

Episode Date: May 19, 2022

Caitlin the Doof and Immortan Jamie celebrate Caitlin's Birthday by redoing the episode on Mad Max Fury Road. (This episode contains spoilers) For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast. Follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP on Twitter.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, the President of the United States. One was the protege of Charles Manson. 26-year-old Lynette Fromm, nicknamed Squeaky. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange and violent summer, this season on the new podcast, Rip Current. Hear episodes of Rip Current early and completely ad-free and receive exclusive bonus content by subscribing to iHeartTrue Crime Plus only on Apple Podcasts.

What happens when a professional football player's career ends and the applause fades and the screaming fans move on? I am going to share my journey of how I went from Christianity to now a Hebrew Israelite. For some former NFL players, a new faith provides answers. You mix homesteading with guns and church. Voila! You got straightway. They try to save everybody. Listen to Spiraled on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the Bechdel cast, the questions asked, if movies have women in them,

are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effing vast, start changing it with the Bechdel cast. Jamie. Caitlin. Oh, what a day. What a lovely day. Witness me.

It's my birthday. Oh, my God day. What a lovely day. Witness me. It's my birthday. I'm, oh my God. I get it. I get it. I understand. What a lovely day for it to be my birthday. It's always a lovely day for it to be your birthday. Happy birthday. Thank you. I love you. What a day this is going to be. I mean, this is, we're not recording this on your birthday birthday but I feel like it's good we your birthday is tends to be kind of an event yeah I really think that I'm a special person and really think that my birthday is a special day for uh everyone

not just me well you're not a huge holiday person so this is your holiday. Like it all makes sense. I think I maybe I gave you or I didn't give it to you because I haven't. But a part of your birthday present, the spirit channeled survivor of Titanic book I have to give to you. Amongst other things that will be revealed at a later time. Happy birthday. Thank you. And we're doing a special i'm i'm excited uh i'm excited for this episode i've been kind of nervous for it because anytime we go into an episode where there's like a lot of you're like there's just so much there's a lot but yeah but i'm glad i'm glad that we're doing this here we we are. Same. Back in heaven where we live.

And what a lovely day it is. Truly. This is the Bechdel cast. My name is Caitlin Durante. My name is Jamie Loftus. And this is our podcast where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the Bechdel test simply as a jumping off point for our discussion. Jamie, I need you to tell me on this lovely day what the Bechdel test is. It's your birthday.

I'm happy to oblige. Thanks. So the Bechdel test, sometimes called the Bechdel-Wallace test, is a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel. There's many permutations of this test however the one we use requires the following that there be two characters of a marginalized gender well sometimes I sometimes my one of my synapses collapses mid-sentence uh this is like our audition monologue that we do every week right because it's like it feels so like it feels very rehearsed sometimes when i'm saying it because i just like

have it so committed to memory that i'm like wait did i like accidentally forget one of the that's it's just it's a whole thing every time i trip myself up because i'm i i worry because it's so ingrained in my brain that i'm going to switch a word and neither of us will notice because we're just like, yep, that's the monologue. This is our tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace. Wait, what is that a reference to? I don't think that this doesn't pass the bat because it's a Shakespeare passage. Everyone in my high school had to memorize this one Shakespeare passage. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace to the last syllable of recorded time.

I already fucked it up. And all the Shakespeare heads are going to be like, you fucking doofus. As I was saying, on your birthday, no less. Of all days. Of all days. So this also isn't coming out on my birthday i don't think okay because my birthday is a tuesday and we always release episodes on thursday but who knows maybe we'll mix it up this week i don't know look you'll find out when you're listening you'll know and then if you're

listening to it not the day it comes out which is probably a lot of people you'll be like shut up tell us what the bechdel test is well it's this here's the one we use now i'm really gonna fuck it up we require we require that we our version you've gotta have two characters of a marginalized gender with names speak to each other about something other than a man for more than two lines of dialogue. And these lines of dialogue should be narratively significant in some way, shape or form, not throw away dialogue for crying out loud. And, you know, because of the movie we're covering, it's smooth sailing, baby. Not a problem. It's not a problem.

From the director that brought you Babe, Pig in the City. And Happy Feet 1 and 2. Oh my gosh. I found someone took it upon themselves to write a passage on scholarly journal Wikipedia about the thematic similarities between Happy feet and mad max fury road and it actually completely scans yeah well i talked about happy feet on blank check yeah and i pointed out speaking of being scholarly in a very scholarly way i pointed out some of those same similarities. So an environmental family story. Also like Hugo Weaving plays this penguin that has this like extremist religious dogma that he's like trying to foist on to the other penguins in

the penguin community. Much like a Morton Joe is like foisting this like extremist religious dogma. Look, there's a lot of, there's a lot of similarities between Mad Max Fury Road and Happy Feet is a Morton Joe is like foisting this like extremist religious dogma. Look, there's a lot of, there's a lot of similarities between Mad Max, Fury Road and Happy Feet is all we're saying.

I love our canonical pronunciation of Happy Feet. Happy Feet. Happy Feet. There's, it reminds me of, there's this one acting choice that Tom from Succession makes. And I believe that that's his Christian name. Where every time he says he's talking about how Shiv cheated on him on on their wedding night. He says on our wedding night.

And I'm like, why is he saying it like that? But he says it like it has. He keeps saying wedding night. And it drives me. It drives me horny. I love it. Okie dokie. Wed happy feet wedding night happy feet i'm like is that shakespeare no that's maybe iambic pentameter no it's not i you know it's something though it's something though it's you know i trust i trust i believe that it's got to be something. And today we're talking about Mad Max Fury Road.

Whoa. Yeah. Yeah, we are. Magic Mike and Mad Max in the same couple of, I mean, we're really describing these, these monosyllabic men, aren't we? Yeah. So I guess the Magical Michael version of Mad Max would be like Maddening Maxwell that doesn't quite work but

yeah I guess I guess so also Steven Soderbergh loves this movie I found so many quotes from him being like woohoo I was like wow Magic Mike Mad Max it's all coming together do you think that he loved the original Mad Max so much that

he subconsciously channeled it into magic mike maybe i think we should go with this theory okay no one correct us it's caitlin's birthday we can't be wrong today exactly i can be wrong you can yell at me except in august yeah but I am infallible today. You're untouchable. You should say something really fucked up. All right, Caitlin. Okay, so, and last thing.

If you've been with us since the beginning, almost six years at this point, and you're like, hey, didn't these ladies cover Mad Max at some point? Yes, we did. It was extremely early in the podcast one of our first episodes yeah and there was a couple early episodes that about a year and a half ago we're like we want to redo these we've learned so much through doing this show and just through the general evolution of society and time. And this was one of the movies we've always been wanting to redo. So it's not in your imagination, but this is the all new and improved Mad Max Fury Road episode. Exactly. We are now better equipped to tackle the discussion that we want to have around this movie especially because it has since recording that original episode it has become one of my favorite movies of all time hence also why we're

doing it for my birthday and since it came out because we covered it like about a year after it came out i think roughly something like that maybe less yeah because it came out in 2015 yeah this summer of 2015 and then we recorded the episode early 2016 it was not that long after and and now it's you know considered for many the greatest action movie ever made so we can talk about how the perception of the movie has um evolved as well certainly there's there's just there's you know the passage of the movie has evolved as well. Certainly. There's just, you know, the passage of time. And can I just say, from 2016 to now, no notes, societally. I don't think anything has really happened. No, we're living in the greatest timeline. So, so Caitlin, the birthday gal, please do tell me, what is your history with Mad Max

Fury Road? I did see it in theaters when it came out, I think probably opening weekend. I was pretty jazzed to see it based on the trailers and the marketing and everything and I was blown away and have only developed a greater appreciation for it more and more as time goes on I would say I've seen this movie somewhere between like 60 and 70 times whoa yeah I didn't know it was that serious. Wow. It is. It's pretty serious. Because it's one of those movies that I am never not in the mood to watch. So like I am just, I will throw it on. It's my plane movie. So anytime I am on a flight, I will watch this movie both times. So on my journey to the place and then on my journey back home i watch it on dates all the time uh an emphasis on all the time because i'm always going on dates having a good brag you you do go on many successful dates and i i do i would not call

them successful but uh sorry go ahead ahead. It's your birthday. I'm fluffing. I'm fluffing. It's your birthday. True, true, true. Yes. No, I'm so good at dating. I'm so good at finding people I'm compatible with.

It's an incredible phenomenon. You can't stop falling in love. It is good to have go-to date movies I my no the jinx I was gonna say it's the jinx the jinx I've got to change it I've got to grow as a person but that's one way where I very firmly have not that's okay that's okay you know sometimes it's fine to be absolutely static here's in some ways it is comforting but in that one i would say maybe it could it could go um caitlin were you did you ever watch the original mad max movies yes so i have seen all of those but i have no real attachment to them especially compared to

the attachment i feel okay to this movie that was uh what i was curious about because it seems like there's a few camps of fans of this franchise some of whom are like this movie and then some of whom are like all all max cannon yeah um no i am not thrilled with any of the others mainly that mel gibson and i simply cannot stomach watching anything he's in except for chicken run which you only hear his voice so i give it a pass and it still feels bad yeah and it still feels bad um yeah i do i mean there we'll be talking about him plenty today but i do think that uh think that George Miller is a very interesting case of a filmmaker who has demonstrated a lot of growth throughout his career. Although there's a lot that I learned about the production of this movie that sounded not great. We'll get there.

Yeah, for sure. But it's really only this installment, Fury Road, that I have any attachment to so much that I got a tattoo of the war rig that Furiosa drives on my arm. And that, I think, concludes my relationship with this movie. Jamie, what is your history and relationship with Mad Max Fury Road? I had only seen it to prepare for the first time we did this episode about five years ago. That was the first time I saw it. Didn't like it the first time. This was in a phase of life where I was deeply against any aesthetic I perceived to be remotely steampunk. Look, I was in my early 20s. I was just, I had a hot take. I clung to it.

I don't stand by it. I will say. Speaking of growth. Speaking of growth. I've seen this movie a couple times in the interim. I think at least once with you. Yeah. But I like it more and more each time I see it.

I feel like it has a lot to do with just me understanding more about movies than I did six years ago. Understanding more about feminism than I did six years ago. Understanding more about environmentalism than I did six years ago. And also having a growing appreciation for action movies. It's still not my genre. I don't think it'll ever be my genre. However, I feel like I can now appreciate a well-crafted, paced, looking-ass action movie. So I have really grown to really love this movie.

And I had a really daunting slash fun time preparing for this episode. There's so much to go through. There's so much to talk about. It's very dense, but it doesn't feel dense. It's such, I mean, I guess it's like it's so dystopian. It's a dystopian romp. It is a romp, but it is. It's like a serious. Yeah, it's a dystopian romp it is a romp but it is it's like a serious yeah it's upsetting i think you you nailed it it's it's not tonally light no yet it is still a romp but it is

literally never not moving that's the beauty of romps it's a spectrum and it's very inclusive in this essay we will um no but for real probably for a couple hours so that's my history uh used to be a hater and then i got educated and i grew up literally is how i would describe what happened that warms my heart is it my favorite george miller movie it is not that is still babe babe but this is a close second because happy feet is one we i think we've maybe talked about this in our babe episode which is on the matreon and i think it's quite a good episode you did an incredible segment on how movie animals are treated thank you in that episode but uh in any case happy feet is one of those movies that I know I have seen at least three times.

And I could not tell you a single thing that happens in the movie. I have the same issue with a lot of Wes Anderson movies where I'm like, I remember how it looks. I remember how I was feeling. Couldn't tell you what happened. I could try to tell you and this isn't the time or place because I've've seen it a couple times to prepare for the blank check episode i did and i think i'm in the minority because i think that movie absolutely sucks shit no i think that people didn't i don't think that there's well it was like nominated for academy awards like i think it was like but people responded to it well like audiences was it well reviewed it was well reviewed bizarre i mean i understand why kids might like anyways you know what ultimately if happy feet hadn't performed well at the box office and critically we wouldn't have mad max

fury road now would we or so i read that is So, you know, no matter where you fall on the happy feet, criticism, enjoyment, oh meter, you got to hand it. You got to foot it to the happy feet. Because if that boring ass movie I can't remember with Elijah Wood Penguin. Am I correct? Correct. Correct. You know, then we wouldn't have this awesome movie we're talking about today true should we start talking about it yeah let me do the recap shall i let's do it so we hear some sound bites at the very beginning about water and fossil fuel shortages we hear about wars that have

happened as a result we hear about like nuclear skirmish we see a barren wasteland and then we meet max rokatansky played by tom hardy we get some voiceover from him in which he says that the only thing he cares about is survival max is then pursued by war boys who capture him and take him to this place called the citadel which is ruled by a morton joe played by hugh keys burn he is this tyrannical leader who controls access to people's food and water in the citadel right he has a bunch of people working for him many of whom are his offspring yeah others on the wik, someone, it might not be true by the time you listen to this episode,

but someone keeps referring to one of the sons as his large adult son. Would that be Rictus Erectus? Yes. Yes. Rictus Erectus

is repeatedly referred to as a large adult son and an accurate description of the character. Yeah. It is hard to tell because of how they're stylized. You're like, oh, which son is which son is which it's confusing sure but that's the point that yeah

others are people that he has either enslaved or manipulated via this religious ideology where a morton joe has convinced them that he is their redeemer and they will ride with him eternal on the highways of Valhalla. It is all I mean and I do I do appreciate the use of like any time there's like Norse mythology popping up you're like hmm this is probably not a character I'm gonna end up rooting for. Right. Which is an interesting story convention that pops up all the time yeah then we meet Furiosa played by Charlize Theron she seems to be pretty high up in Immortan Joe's ranks she drives a war rig which she boards to head to Gastown and the bullet farm two neighboring communities that barter and trade with the Citadel. We will soon find out

that they have similar tyrannical warmongering leadership. As Furiosa is driving, she veers off course. We are not sure why at first, but then we realize that in her war rig, Furiosa has Immortan Joe's wives, aka women who he has enslaved and who he assaults in order to bear him healthy offspring. And Furiosa is attempting to rescue these women and escape once and for all. And they are headed to somewhere called the Green Place.

Yes. When Immortan Joe discovers this, he sends out a bunch of his war boys in their vehicles to chase after and catch furiosa and bring the wives back again i just love uh the simple turn of phrase that is war boys because that's how i would describe them if i didn't know what they were called and that is just what they're called that is just what they're called. That is just what they're called. Yes. Yeah. This movie is perhaps not subtle. No. But, you know, that's not...

But that's not why we go to action movies. We don't go to action movies for the subtlety. No. I go to Babe for subtlety. And I kind of mean that. Yeah. So one such war boy is Nux, played by Nicholas Holt, who Max has been rigged up to as Nux's blood bag, because a lot of the war boys are dying from radiation basic functions of their body by Immortan Joe et al. Right, exactly. So Nux, wanting to participate in this chase to catch Furiosa,

he takes Max along with him in this pursuit. Then we get the first big chase of the movie where furiosa manages to lose a morton joe and his war party in a sandstorm but afterward max finds her and the other women the wives who are splendid and hurried played by Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. Okay, Transformers. Oh. That's the only other thing I know she was in. Got it. Yep. Capable played by Riley Keough, who I've seen this movie a bazillion times.

And when I was watching Zola to prep for that episode, did not realize it was the same actor. I mean, the power of a red dye job cannot be understated. I think she's great in this movie too. Agree, yeah. I mean, I think all the wives are very talented. For sure. We've also got Toast the Knowing, played by Zoe Kravitz. We've got...

Great name. Cheeto the Fragile, played by Courtney Eaton. And we've got... Weird name. And we've got The Dag, played by Abby Lee. So when Max comes upon them, he and Furiosa fight. And Max attempts to hijack Furiosa's war rig and leave all of the women to be recaptured by a Morton Joe. But Furiosa has kill switches enabled on the rig,

so Max cannot drive away. And she bargains with him. And then they all set off together with Furiosa driving, but Max holding them all hostage. Then Furiosa drives to this canyon where she has bartered for safe passage through but a Morton Joe has caught back up to them along with the people eater of Gastown and the bullet farmer from you'll never guess this the bullet farm I do appreciate yeah again just with the simplicity of the names it's helpful there's a lot of characters and I just like how he names them by what they do or sort of how you would kind of describe what you think they might do right yep it's helpful it is so wait quick question yeah is it Nicholas Holt that you have a huge crush on I do have an

enormous crush on Nicholas Holt it is true okay I was just checking in about that. Thank you for confirming. You're welcome. And take it away. Happy birthday. Love a little aside where we simply cannot pass the Bechdel test. Look, we're, no one's asking life to pass the vectal test true although it would you know could be it would probably be a generally better experience life yeah but um you know it's a quick detour to be horny about nicholas holt sure okay no further questions i also didn't realize that nux is nicholas holt because i mean it mean, it's a really good performance, but it could be any person in there. A lot of his recognizable features are...

They're all kind of like buff-looking Slenderman Babadook types. The War Boys? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the War Boys are, yeah, just a pack of slender mans and baba dukes yes okay so with these three war parties in hot pursuit everything goes wrong in this like situation where furiosa is trying to barter for safe passage there's another big chase. This one is my favorite one of the movie, by the way. During and after which, Max and Furiosa go from being enemies, where he is holding her hostage, to allies who are working together. Who are slowly realizing that they have not too dissimilar backstory.

Sure. Also during this chase, Angharharad is killed or maybe at this point just fatally wounded which slows down Immortan Joe for a while because she was his favorite and she also had a nearly full-term pregnancy and he is concerned about the baby surviving so this allows Furiosa Max and the rest of the wives to get away and they drive onward toward the green place meanwhile Capable discovers Nux on the rig he's having a crisis the two of them become friends and he switches sides and becomes an ally to Furiosa and friends. I would watch that. I would watch that children's show.

That spinoff. Yes. Meanwhile, Immortan Joe and the war parties are not far behind again. And they're all driving through this like marshy, swampy area. Everyone is getting stuck. Our friends get unstuck with nux's help and they continue onward and eventually they come upon the volvalini this band of women who live in the middle of the desert again it's the clan not a very subtle naming convention i know i was like are they saying volvalini and it's it's volvalini it does

sound like it's vagina pasta that is being described for me yeah for me it sounded like a plate full of vagina pasta yeah i don't disagree they are also known as the many mothers they are the clan that furiosa used to be a part of until she was kidnapped stolen and taken to the citadel they tell furiosa that the green place no longer exists earth had become too sour the water became poison nothing would grow so they had to get out of there not a relatable thing at all there are i mean yeah and each time you watch this movie you're just like oof had you told me that in six years perhaps not the aesthetic but the water wars they're a common baby people and maybe i need to stop doing this or maybe i need to do it more

but anytime someone where's this going anytime someone refers to how things might be in like 20 or 30 years from now i'm like yeah that's plausible assuming we're not all killing each other during the water wars and then they're like oh um uh yep but now it starts to make people a little bit nervous but now people are like oh no do you have information so that is i think a feasible reality i think now more than ever keep plugging the water wars people are gonna love to hear you say I told you so all the time water wars are on and then they'll shoot me in my face and then and then steal my water yeah I mean if if this Australian documentary is to be

believed yes it's very possible. Yeah. Okay. Furiosa learning about the green place no longer existing is absolutely devastating to her, especially because there is now no place that she can kind of find this redemption she was looking for in terms of like bringing these women to safety and just having a place where they can stay and survive. And then Max is like, well, wait a minute. What if we go back to the Citadel and take control while it's undefended? Sorry, I'm going to let that loud motorcycle pass. Is that a Morton Joe?

So they turn around and charge back toward the Citadel. A Morton Joe realizes what they're doing, so he goes after them. Again, there's one last, you know, big Act III climactic chase. There's a lot of ups and downs. We've got Joe trying to abduct the wives. Furiosa gets stabbed.

But then she crawls onto Immortan Joe's vehicle and rips his face off for oh is that a and and speaking of face off if you head over to our matriarch this one there's gonna be some faces coming off look big month for no face this is the right and no face because no face in spirited way this is no face may wild oh god best of luck to future us trying to observe this a second time it's gonna be all to be original horror movies although did you notice they're roku originals i think roku originals i'll put this on wax i think roku originals is trying to is trying to do something because that uh that new weird owl movie starring daniel radcliffe is a roku original

is it yeah i did not realize that i didn't realize they had two nickels to rub together turns out they've got harry potter money wow wild um okay so furiosa pulls a face off parentheses 1997 starring nicholas cage and john travolta she rips and mortonan Joe's face off, but she's also very badly injured. So Max gives her a blood transfusion and he's like, by the way, my name is Max. And then she's able to get right back up on her happy feet. And she's looking like a babe. She's looking like a babe. And she's back in the city. She's back in the city she's back in the city

dell on her happy feet happy in the city dell and another george miller movie wait what is the other one what uh and the witches of eastwick and she's got the wives of eastwick with her oh my word wow is lorenzo's oil a george lorenzo's oil yeah it is yeah what does that mean i don't know i don't need to know it's fine let's never talk about it again okay not my business which is of eastwick though love it check out that episode on our matri on everyone yeah we've actually we're kind of like almost miller completionists wow in a way minus lorenzo's oil okay so max is like my name is max because earlier he refused and we're like we know no shit and then they arrive at the citadel they gain control of it the implication being Furiosa is the new leader they unleash water so the kraken

they unleash the kraken yeah um the people now have access to the water and then Max slinks away because he's a lone ranger or whatever and that is how the movie ends so let's take a quick break and we'll come back to discuss Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was murdered there are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks.

Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Prudente. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions,

like how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed? Or can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job? Girl, yes. Each week, we answer your unfiltered work questions. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in experts who do,

like resume specialist Morgan Saner. The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job and the person who gets the job is usually who applies. Yeah, I think a lot about that quote. What is it, like you miss 100% of the shots you never take? Yeah, rejection is scary, but it's better than you rejecting yourself. Together, we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of your career without sacrificing your sanity or sleep. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I was a lady rebel. Like, what does that even mean? The Boone County rebels will stay the Boone County rebels with the image of... It's right here in black and white in print. They lying. An individual that came to the school saying that God sent him to talk to me about the mascot switch. As a leader, you choose hills that you want to die on. Why would we want to be the losing team? I just take all the other stuff out of it. Segregation academies, when civil rights said that we need to integrate public schools,

these charter schools were exempt from that. Bigger than a flag or mascot. You have to be ready for serious backlash. Listen to Rebel Spirit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts and we're back where would you like to begin uh we i know we both have a truly absurd amount of uh notes and things to go through where where would you like to begin my birthday friend oh thank you so much i would like to start with i don't know if i want to start with what I really appreciate about the movie or what missteps I think the movie makes. Because there are certainly some of those. Yes, there certainly are. And I mean, I guess let's start there because I think that that list, while there's plenty to talk about, is generally shorter. So I found some writing about this,

but one thing that stood out to me the first time I saw this movie and still does now is because this is such broad storytelling and I find it frustrating because it's like George Miller finds so many ways to subvert a lot of common action tropes and stock character assumptions in this movie. But I do think he uses atypical bodies to indicate evil or lack of morality quite a lot in this movie. And it's a complicated discussion because disability is treated differently or atypical bodies are treated differently based on the character. Yes. Because there is a lot of disability visibility in this movie, but it is used in different ways.

So on one hand hand you have Furiosa the protagonist of the movie she has a physical disability her I think left arm has been amputated below the elbow she uses a mechanical arm and attention is drawn to this but not in a way that's ever like she's disabled and she's so bitter about it the way that disabled characters are often treated in media yeah it's just a part of her character she's presented in the movie as being extremely physically competent she's a strong fighter she's a skilled marks person yeah and her disability is never shown as impeding her skills in any way right and we also see her with and without the mechanical arm yeah right and it's never like it's never commented on or drawn attention to positive or negative like

it's just neutral this is just an aspect of her character. We are given no information about it other than just seeing it visually. We don't know any kind of backstory regarding this, but yeah, it's just presented as one of the many aspects of her character in a way that to me felt like it had a normalizing effect, which I think is one of the goals when it comes to representing disability in movies. But then you have a character like Immortan Joe. Who is covered in tumors. Presumably having radiation poisoning. He also uses breathing apparatus and his disability is used to make him

seem like a more formidable opponent especially like in the way that the mask that he uses just like aesthetically makes him seem scarier yeah i mean and it's as with a lot of these issues in the movie i feel it very much has to do with framing and music and like how these atypical qualities are introduced to you because it's very i mean it's like there couldn't be a more villain intro than showing a morton joe's body at the at the opening of the movie. It's very, very clear how you're supposed to feel about him. It's like movie shorthand for like,

look how grotesque he is. Obviously he's the villain. Look at this breathing apparatus he uses. And I guess maybe you could make the argument that like, of course this type of tyrannical dictator would wear something to make him seem more intimidating because his mask is this sort of grotesque exaggerated thing with like huge teeth it looks like an animal skull but because there's such a long history of this specific thing in media of disability being used to make a villain seem more intimidating or scarier or more unattractive.

This choice just feels extremely pointed and completely unnecessary. Yeah. And like beneath what the movie generally tends to be as well right and then like i remember talking about this on our casino royale episode where our guest kanice mobley brought up that villains are often given asthma or some other type of like breathing i remember this discussion and i was like of course darth vader um and i was born in it isn't that another tom hardy character bane yeah bane god i never i i don't know bane's name i just go i was born in it and people know what i'm talking about tom hardy is so uh just exhausting to hear about any anecdote with him you're just like i am annoyed and asleep but boy you can't take that line read from him can you you can't take uh you can't take the

bane line and you can't take my favorite tom hardy moment and then i mean i know we are going to discuss him but i just not i mean whatever i method not necessary okay which we'll get to because charlie's there on had uh just a great uh moment for like uh stop making my life difficult um but i do i do really like his line read of like suggesting we go back the way we came like that's you know he was born in it baby there's one thing i know about tom hardy he was born in it i will say not only do i not mind him i would even go so far as to say i like tom hardy i may regret saying this at a later date but for now i'm cool with tom hardy generally he's fine I just have a general general dislike of uh method actors and the uh stories you tend to hear he's definitely not the

worst of the method actors but it does sound like he has made the lives of his co-stars very unpleasant at different times yeah in his career um and of course, when we say Tom Hardy was born into it, we mean that he was born into a wealthy arts family. He was born in it. And that's why he gets to be a professional actor. He was born in it. I didn't realize that. Yeah.

His dad's name is Chips Hardy? Chips? Awesome name. Plural? Yeah, like the ones in the bags. Chips? Wow name. Plural? Yeah, like the ones in the bags. Chips? Wow. Hardy.

Okay. Anyways. Back to this discussion. Okay, so there's another layer of this where a Morton Joe and one of his sons, Rictus erectus aka his large adult son who also uses an oxygen tank to help him breathe both of their breathing apparatuses are used to either kill or injure those characters in some way where furiosa rips joe's mask off and also his face off starring nich Cage and John Travolta in 1997. Ever heard of it? And Max uses Rictus Erectus' oxygen tank to beat him in the face.

Yes. So it's just another layer of like not only are disabilities being used to further villainize these villains, but then also the apparatus they use because of their disability is then used against them violently which feels especially pointed yeah so there's that um there are other characters like the people eater you know has severe inflammation in his feet. I think that and his obesity are traits that are intended to make him seem grotesque and more villainous. Then you see a lot of disability in the people who live in the Citadel. Some are citizens who I think you can assume survived nuclear war. Some are probably just dealing with malnutrition it mostly feels

like these characters are just used as a part of the world building which because we know nothing about them and they're just sort of scenery it feels like pointed set dressing and right yeah yeah sort of similar is the character of corpus colossus played by quentin kenahan who is one of a morton joe's sons we do not learn anything about that character no and just in general none of these disabled characters or characters with atypical bodies are given any focus in the story all of the major characters with the exception of Furiosa and you could argue Nux who is also affected by radiation poisoning all the rest of the main characters that we are rooting for are able-bodied they are very attractive by Western beauty standards. And even, I would argue, Furiosa and Nux are kind of able to pass as able-bodied,

especially compared to the characters like Immortan Joe and the People Eater, where, again, their disabilities are used to further villainize them, or it's characters who we learn nothing about which i do also feel has to do at least in part with how the characters are framed where furiosa like furiosa has a mechanical arm but it's not brought to your attention explicitly all the time in the way that when a villain has a disability, your eye is constantly being very, very intentionally drawn to it. Right. Yeah. And of course, of these main characters like Furiosa, Nux, Immortan Joe and the People Eater, they are played by actors who are not disabled. So that's something that we come upon again and again all the time yeah yeah not great not great at all simply not great sort of related to the discussion

of bodies one of the things that I it took me a while for this to click for me and i'm honestly embarrassed about how uh long it took but so the women the quote-unquote wives that furiosa is trying to bring to safety are all very traditionally attractive by western beauty standards that didn't take that's not the thing that took me a while to figure out that i obviously noticed no it's actually quite obvious yes it's very very obvious zoe kravitz is there zoe kravitz like several professional models are among yeah the people cast in those roles the thing that i was like wait a minute so we see a group of women at the citadel who are again used for the very kind of like basic function of like bodily function yeah they're they're hooked up to breast pumps. They're basically treated like milk cows.

And they are all fat women who I think Western beauty standards would consider not attractive. And again, with the way that the camera is framing and drawing your eye, it seems like the movie is not pushing against that in any way. Right. Yeah. So the thing that I was like, what what the fuck furiosa doesn't try to save them like for unknown reasons what the hell like were they not hot enough to save were they not considered what's the deal with that why were they not among the women that god i mean because they're you know i always want to give furiosa the benefit of the doubt she

makes it seem she makes it seem as if she's done stuff like this before perhaps that is a separate trip we're also told that the wives explicitly asked her to help them do this she didn't take them they begged her to go says miss giddy yeah But yeah, I also picked up on that as well, where it's again, most of the characters or many of the characters who are not, you know, classically Western beauty standard, the slim and, and look a very particular way.

Like they are treated as set dressing. Yeah. And that is very much. Yeah. How, how those characters are presented. Yeah. I would have liked a version of this story where even if it was the wives, there's got to be a better name for them.

But even if it was their idea for Furiosa to take them away from the Citadel, couldn't Furiosa be like, hey, hey, you guys in like the milking room, I'm going on a trip. I'm saving some people. Wanna come? Come on. Yeah. At very least, I guess that they, they along with the rest of the Citadel

are liberated at the end of the flim. Yeah, we do see another shot of them at the end. Yes, they are are they are freed but i i think yeah the larger point here is that there are no fat characters who are heroes who we are rooting for exactly which is just kind of another way in which this very broad movie does not push back on very well-worn movie media stereotypes right in a way that would have been so simple not to like that true like there's no reason that one of the i don't know what else one of the his wives but they are being sex trafficked i mean what one of the what should we let's let's come up with something right now one of the women in beige

the women the women in gauze yeah one of the i mean one of there there's no reason one of the gauzy gauzy women um couldn't couldn't have been a fat woman there's just there's just simply no reason yeah yeah there's it's it's interesting because yeah this movie is less than 10 years old but already you're like oh i mean based on how we are needing to discuss it a second time you can already you you can still pick up on things that were dated right at that time that probably were not commented on extensively at the time but it does there's been so much written about this movie when it came out but also just over the years it's interesting to kind of watch how people's views on how bodies are treated in this movie right i wanted to quickly go back to the tom hardy thing because there is have you read

about the confrontation between him and charlie's theron not extensively so please feel free to fill me in okay so this is not i mean i didn't know very much about the production of this movie it sounded like an absolutely hellacious shoot that went on for like nine months yeah in the desert riley keogh got hypothermia. Yeah. George Miller says there was a, there's two oral history pieces I read about this movie. One came out in 2020. One came out earlier this year. New York times.

And I think vanity fair respectively, but yeah, in the New York times one. Yeah. The actors, it is kind of interesting. I feel like you, I'm trying to think of other,

I mean, I guess that you could use a Titanic parable here too too because literally hypothermia uh or I guess in Kate Winslet's case pneumonia but you know a movie that was extremely difficult to shoot that sounds like it was absolute torture for the actors at different points yeah that later on because the movie was a huge success and was a classic they're kind of like yeah that wasn't great but I, because the movie was a huge success and was a classic, they're kind of like, yeah, that wasn't great, but I'm glad the movie was a hit. But it sounded like this was a shoot where everyone slowly lost their grip on reality, cast and crew. There were several cases of actors getting sick. Like I just said, Riley Keough got hypothermia because it was so cold shooting in the desert at night.

The actors are shooting in the middle of the desert and they're not, because of their costumes, they're literally in gauze for a lot of it. And so there's not a lot of protection from the elements. A lot of stories like that. And then there was also some onset tension between Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy, which is expanded a little more in the Vanity Fair article. So I guess that Charlize Theron had recently had a baby when she was shooting this movie. And so she's,

I get, she has like a reputation for being very professional, shows up on time, expects to be released at the correct time, as is her right. That's union shit. Tom Hardy is known to be a method guy, known to never show up on time,

known to be a little bit combative at times. And he and Charlize, well, they simply did not like each other. And there is a story in which Charlize Th there on was there on time sitting in the war rig waiting for magical michael to show up magical maxwell yeah so he he's not showing up this was day five trillion of shooting in the war rig at this point the women in gauze had openly talked shit about tom hardy in front of them everyone was sick of them yeah then he gets there late charlie's there on yells at him in front of everybody she says and i quote find the fucking cunt a hundred thousand dollars

for every minute he's held up this crew how disrespectful you are love that for her and then tom hardy physically charges at her and uh you know says what did you say to me and like live like physically charges at her she uh felt the need to request a producer for protection for the remainder of the shoot because things got so tense between the two of them it sounds like they have since reconciled but i guess make of that story what you will but i don't think tom hardy comes off particularly well in it certainly not and i take back what i said about him method actors truly i mean i just i i don't know my crush will polter said it best when he said something like i don't like it yeah what it was a good quote we should should look it up. Wait, let's find it. Because I love quoting men. As you know, I'm always happy to Google Will Poulter. It's easy for me to do.

Oh, he said it's, quote, an excuse for inappropriate behavior, unquote. Yeah. So that's that. Should we take a quick break and then come back and talk some more? Yeah, let's take a quick break. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks.

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Rebel Spirit, where I head back to my hometown in Kentucky and try to convince my high school to change their racist mascot, the Rebels, into something everyone in the South loves, the biscuits. I was a lady rebel. Like, what does that even mean? The Boone County Rebels will stay the Boone County Rebels with the image of the biscuits. It's right here in black and white in the prints. A lion. An individual that came to the school saying that God sent him to talk to me about the mascot switch.

As a leader, you choose hills that you want to die on. Why would we want to be the losing team? I'd just take all the other stuff out of it. On the segregation academies, when civil rights said that we need to integrate public schools, these charter schools were exempt from that. Bigger than a flag or mascot. You have to be ready for serious backlash. Listen to Rebel Spirit on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. We are back. Where would you like to go from here caitlin oh my goodness i would like to talk about how the movie handles race let's do which is another thing that is not particularly good yeah this has been discussed before we're not really pointing out anything new but for the sake of a complete episode exactly the movie largely centers white people which has been pointed out as being especially strange in this context of like the world that this movie exists within, I want to pull a quote from and then also shout out a book, which is a series of four different essays, all written by scholars.

Oh, have I heard of them the book is entitled furious feminism's alternate routes on mad max fury road there is a quote i will pull from the essay entitled just a warrior at the end of the world by barbara ger this writer put it better than I think I could. So, quote, Max's story, like so many in dystopian fiction, begs the question, why do only white people survive the apocalypse? The absence of indigenous bodies,

indeed of people of color generally throughout all four films, meaning all four of the Mad Max films, reflect the white supremacist arc of settler colonialism in Australia, the presumed geography of the film, and elsewhere, and furthers a narrative that seemingly relies on gender but is always already raced, as only certain bodies are visible, only certain bodies are active, only certain bodies are worthy of survival after the end of the world, end quote. This is not to say that there are no people of color in the movie and in the main cast, because of course you have Zoe Kravitz, you also have the character of Cheeto the Fragile, who is played by Courtney Eaton, who is Maori and Cook Islander.

Also, shout out to the Ali Nadi test because this character passes the Ali Nadi test. This test examines representation of Indigenous women in media. In order to pass, a character must be an Indigenous or Aboriginal woman who is a main character. She must not fall in love with a white man, and she is the only one of the wives who was not assaulted by a Morton Joe or anyone else. characters history and story and that kind of collaborative process we'll we'll get there but but yes i i am i'm happy to hear that that cheeto passes the ali nadi test i do wish that characters that passed the ali nadi test were more prominent in the story she certainly has important moments in the story but she's you know i think kind of one of the less prominent of the of the women in gauze and when you are just sort of like isolating screen time and just kind of like narrative significance definitely Max and Furiosa are the two most prominent characters they for

sure you know share a dual protagonist situation all this to say that the majority most prominent characters. They share a dual protagonist situation. All this to say that the majority of the characters that we are rooting for are white characters. Yeah, I mean, the two lead characters. Or I know that, God, I've read so much of like, actually, Max is a deuterogamist. And I'm just like, like okay with all due respect shut the fuck up um i don't want to hear it but yes there are two are two leading characters who were supposed to i mean the two people on the fucking poster are cis white movie stars yes

and thank you thank you for sharing that quote. Cause now we've covered several, I think Australian movies where, where this issue has been brought up. Yeah. Yeah. What shall we address next? So I wanted to just, this is another production note,

but since it came up via learning a little bit about Courtney Eaton's um character backstory something I thought was uh quite interesting was and again just like an interesting showing of growth in a director over time is that George Miller brought in a consultant to help. It seems like primarily Charlize Theron and the women in Gauze developed their characters. I don't know if the, what is it? Volvolini? I was going to say Volvioni, so there you go.

So like a damn mario character uh okay yeah i i i don't know about um the women in that area of the story but george so george miller brought in uh eve ensler who most famously wrote the vagina monologues which is very dated in many ways uh you know we're not we're not caping for the vagina monologues but she's she's's been a feminist activist for a very long time. And he specifically requested that she be available to the actors who are playing women who are being sex trafficked. And it experienced quite a bit of trauma because Eve Ensler has a lot of experience working with survivors of sex trafficking. And I guess that that is like what she was doing when George Miller originally reached out. And so what they did in a way that I think seems to have, again, this is like we cannot speak from personal experience here, but it seems to generally elevate those characters and I feel

like those characters are generally treated with respect and you see you know I even through the five women in gauze you see a bunch of different reactions to like they're all distinct characters in a way that I think if the movie was made 20 years before probably wouldn't have been true right um not only do they have different skills and and strengths where and I I'm not going to get the names right so Zoe Kravitz for example can handle a gun like she knows her shit in that department Riley Keough really strongly wants to go back for Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. They have different opinions on what they should do with Knox. Like there's constantly disagreement. And even though many of them have experienced similar kinds of abuse, they are all interpreting it very, very differently, which I thought was effective and done kind of seamlessly with

the story. But I wanted to share a quote from Eve Ensler in that New York Times oral history just to give some insight on how they did it. So she says, quote, It was really surprising for me. George would send me pieces of the script for feedback and we began to get into a dialogue about the women who were going to play these sex slaves and how they would know what that lived experience was eventually he invited me to namibia which is where the movie was shot to spend time with them in workshops

and my contribution was really to help those actresses become confident in that world I think it was a really radical thing that he asked me to do that unquote um I'm generally inclined to agree and it seems like the actors got a lot out of it uh they were asked to write their own backstories essentially write letters in character to their abusers. I mean, it just seemed like a very immersive way of building characters. And I do appreciate when a male auteur such as George Miller knows when he's out of his depth and brings someone in who is not out of their depth. And I'm sure that those actors are more comfortable talking to Eve Ensler than they would be talking to George Miller about this topic so I just thought that was a good creative choice

whereas Riley Keough being left vulnerable enough to get hypothermia was perhaps not as good yeah yeah the the shoot of this movie just sounded absolutely fucking wild and you can tell by watching it because so many of them so many i mean they're on location it's 90 practical effects in a desert in winter yeah sand blowing in everyone's faces and being exposed to the elements and i mean i don't even mean to like be too hard on george miller specifically with that i mean the buck stocks with him because he's the director but yeah but like nine months in the fucking desert with a gigantic crew and you're all doing practical effects of some of the wildest shit i've ever seen in my life it's a miracle that

everyone lived um which is also what one of the things that steven soderbergh said he's like how did a hundred people not die in the movie right so so not to uh you know getting hypothermia on at work is horrible but given the scale of the movie shocking that everyone survived yeah i read that a stuntman suffered a broken leg oh on this movie on this movie hopefully he got workman's comp i know i hope he got that workman's comp million baby i hope he's i hope he's doing well that is yeah god stunt work is uh so terrifying yes okay so i did yeah i wanted to just kind of shout out the rare uh male filmmaker knowing when he's out of his depth yay it shouldn't be impressive but it is but it kind of is to the

point where even eve ensler was like i was also shocked he uh wanted to do to do that and i like i think we talked about this in the babe episode, perhaps. I don't remember. But a woman edited this movie. George Miller's partner, Margaret Sixel, edited this movie. I think we've brought up on the show a couple different times that women editing a movie of this scale is, again, quite a big deal. And she won an Oscar. I was going to say, the editing is absolutely incredible. Yeah. It's absolutely.

I also didn't that reading about the production of this movie was so like it i i did get really excited and like into it because you're just like holy shit any epic you're just like this is how how uh where they like didn't have the budget to shoot the scenes at the citadel and so she edited most of the movie with nothing at the beginning or end. I'm like, that sounds so awful. Like that sounds for her, like that's so stressful. Yeah, I think they had to go back

and do reshoots. And yeah, the production went way over budget. And, you know, all the things that you would expect when you watch the movie. The movie didn't technically make money after like all the stuff incurred.

Yeah. Okay, so I had one last behind-the-scenes thing I wanted to draw attention to. Please share. That I think will hopefully transition into a bigger discussion question mark. Let's see. And that is the costume design of this movie. It was spearheaded by Jenny Beavan,

who also spoke in this oral history. And it sounds like what I thought was really interesting about it is that it sounds as if the character designs and the costume designs since this movie went you know was first conceptualized in 1987 yeah like before zoe kravitz existed on this physical plane what furiosa's character was going to look like it changed quite a bit and again was like collaborative with the actors so uh jenny beaven quote, I am not into fashion. Wild thing for a costume designer to say. Love it. Right. I also had that thought as I read that quote. I am not into fashion and I don't particularly care what people look like. The clothes have to come out of the stories they tell. Since she travels long distances, Furiosa needed very practical clothing.

And when I met with Charlize, that was one of the things we talked about that and what on earth should she would she do with her hair so because it was charlie's their own idea to be the baldest woman in charge yes uh which is the episode where we started talking about that i believe it is true yeah that's uh one of the things we we did lose r.i.p uh by removing that episode from the feed is the origin of the baldest woman in charge but hey we're bringing it back we weren't completely you know useless in 2016 we were just mostly useless yeah um but but yeah I thought that the talking about the costume design is an interesting discussion because I feel like I'm interested in your opinion because I think Furiosa that's a pretty straightforward discussion like she is I think dressed pretty

appropriately for the work that she's doing and she's you know she's protected it seems like generally like that makes sense and then with the with the women in gauze they're definitely like their bodies are there's more attention drawn to their bodies and it so it was tricky because i remember the first time we had this discussion i think that maybe we kind of oversimplified it where it was like oh these hot models and they're wearing hot outfits yes however 2022 me is more inclined to say like well in story that does technically make sense given who was dressing them and where they were coming from meaning like a morton joe would have yeah selected like the most trophiest wives to be his trophy wives and yes would have put them in these outfits and then we also see them in chastity belts that we see them

the first thing they do when they get any amount of liberation is use bolt cutters to take them off the take off the chastity belts yeah so i didn't really have and then when you meet the can you say it again the volvolini volvolini oh okay volvolini okay i think i've got it now they i think for the most part i mean they're basically a biker gang and they're dressed like a leather gang and they're doing biker gang shit biker gang yes so that generally makes sense i think the only character you see the character who is known as the valkyrie she is nude when you first see her question mark or she's like mostly unclothed and she put i don't know it didn't particularly bother me i don't know the only thing that really bothers me about any of the

costume design or like just kind of general character design is how do the women in gauze never get dirtier than they are at the very beginning considering they're like you know tumbling through sand and marshes and yes but they stay like perfectly coiffed and not without like smudges on their face and that is yeah i think we talked about that in the first time and and yeah i i agree with you you would think that it would i continuity wise, that sounds like someone's worst nightmare. But I think in story, that would have been more appropriate. Right. Which I guess kind of does bring me around to there has been some criticism of this movie on gender essentialism. So we've discussed this on the show many, many times,

but it is a tricky discussion as it pertains to this movie because in a Morton Joe's hyper patriarchal capitalist society, the way he views women are as baby making machines when the reality is that not all women have uteruses, have wombs, can have babies. Like the, the definition of womanhood that Immortan Joe's society casts them as is

extremely, it's just false. And we know that everything Immortan Joe does is deeply wrong. Where it gets confusing for me is I, It's just false. And we know that everything a Morton Joe does is deeply wrong. Where it gets confusing for me is it's at for the journey are these Western beauty standard attractive people. And then everyone else is either a villain or just gets left out of the narrative and is only there as like world building set dressing. Yeah. like world building-y set dressing yeah but then but then there's a lot of cool stuff that the movie is doing that subverts a lot of existing archetypes and tropes so i've i've i've read arguments on both sides of this that so i've i've read some stuff that argues that the script

overly essentializes and defines uh you know is like baby making equals only way to be woman, which we know very well is false. But then I've also read counter arguments to that argument that are a little more recent, interestingly. And this is, yeah, I guess for our listeners, I'm like kind of synthesizing this in real time. But that argue that the movie actually does push against that essentialism in text through the women of the Volvolini? And I will say that Volvolini does not help that argument at all.

Especially because their like other name is the many mothers. Right. But also you don't see any of them as mothers. Like they don't or it's not clear. They're kind of like this utopian. Like it just seems like they just yeah, they function as a family. But there doesn't i don't know but then the keeper of the seed that like it it's i don't know where i land in this argument however uh the

counter argument just to present it sure is that the women of the volvolini uh many of whom i think most of whom are older are not of childbearing age, if they ever were able to bear children. We don't know, right? Who gives a shit? Leave people alone. But I think because they are older, in the eyes of a Morton Joe, that makes them not useful, productive members of his society.

In the world of the movie, and to the women in gauze to mad maximilian to furiosa they are very valuable because they are valued for wisdom they are just as capable if not more capable warriors and it is very clear in text that they are extremely important to the mission being a success. Right. So. It's certainly complicated. There are certainly ways to interpret what is presented to us differently. I see both sides, although I tend to be of the mind.

Not us being centrist. And maybe it's just because I love this movie so much that I'm going to go to bat for it pretty hard. But do I love this movie so much? Because I think it's doing a lot of good things. That is part of it. So I want to just sort of talk about, sort of just like generally speaking here, this movie presents a world in which, you know,

this extremely toxic, tyrannical leader of a Morton Joe. He's obsessed with war. He's obsessed with controlling people. He owns all of the wealth he is patriarchy the guy the man he manipulates people he sees women as property and yeah like you said baby making machines he sees his son i mean i think it's also interesting how he everyone is a means to an end the gendered nature of how he views women is pointed and particularly brutal but i but i i never like really i don't know i hadn't watched

this movie with bechtel castlin like goggles on in a long time but you see really early on that like you know mad max is a fucking blood bag like he's yeah used for what Immortan Joe thinks is valuable about strictly viewing him as an object as well right yes and all of these things are shown by the movie as being wrong and toxic and worth fighting against and of course sometimes it gets a little on the nose it's not very subtle but I I, you know, the intentions are clear. Yes. What the film is trying to say and do. And just to have an action movie that is a critique of toxic masculinity and like hegemonic masculinity is pretty remarkable, since most action movies celebrate toxic masculinity yeah so that's kind of step one of what we're dealing with here absolutely um because i even though so many action movies

celebrate toxic masculinity i love the genre yeah but i especially love action movies with substance and interesting world building and that have something to say. So that's why I've really latched on to this one. Now, Furiosa, there are different interpretations of the kind of like Max and Furiosa dynamic from a character function point of view. I consider them to be dual protagonists and they share protagonist functions actually actually um one of them is a deuteragon i would actually call max a deuteragonist um and in this essay i'll talk about why that's screwed up because it's his name in a movie um sorry continue i i agree with you so uh just to come at this from a screenwriting point of view

um not that i would ever you know mention a master's degree that i have in screenwriting from boston university certainly not on your birthday no less certainly not on my birthday but they share protagonist functions in the sense that furiosa has the stronger motivation the more distinct goal which is the thing that drives the narrative and the higher stakes whereas Max has the more significant character arc you know he goes from being this like borderline animal survival boy to someone with like human empathy both characters are equally active and the story is told from their point of view in pretty equal distribution so that's why i contend that they are dual protagonists um which means we have one of the protagonists in the movie being a woman, which is pretty rare for an action movie. Sure.

Furiosa, especially, of course, because she is one of two leading characters, is participating in the action and fighting. And again, that makes sense because this is an action movie, just as much as Max. More so even in the first act, because Max is restrained and chained to a car. So he can't do anything for a while. There are moments where she gets to take the lead because she has more skills than him. There's that scene where she shoots the guys on the motorcycle that are coming

after them because she has like better marksmanship and also she's done this before and he hasn't like that's established really early on we're like she this is like not quite a day at the office for her but like you know i don't she's she's more experienced and like he's like a cop so he he in theory has like experience shooting a gun but like oh no i didn't mean like shit but i i meant like in terms of knowing the war rig knowing the oh okay sure shit like that like she yeah like has more knowledge like i feel like it's presented very early on that she has more relevant information and skills than he does for the situation they're in but they're both very skilled right right okay yes yes um

right and she just like has power over him in knowing the like code the da vinci code that unlocks the kill switches or whatever do you remember that famous scene where furiosa leans over to mad max and she says apple and then he goes oh my name's max i admitted she's like he has to tell her she's like here's how to disable the kill switches it's aL-E. And then he goes, wow, I can't believe I read 600 pages to get to this. Oh, God. So, yeah, and it's just, I mean, just the fact that she is driving the war rig for a large chunk of the movie. I hate that that is such a big deal, but it's a big deal. It is a big deal, but it's a big deal. It is a big deal. One of the best hand-to-hand combat fight scenes in an action movie that I've ever seen

is that early one between Furiosa and Max. We have a man and a woman fighting, which, as we've discussed on the show, does not happen often. Nope. We've discussed how in a lot of action movies where like the rare cases where a woman is allowed to participate in the action she is often fighting other women so to see this like very equally balanced fight between a man and a woman where they are both extremely capable is yeah again shouldn't be groundbreaking but i'm like oh my gosh it is

so cool to see it's wild and uh something else i i liked about this fight that felt a little unusual watching it this time around was i feel like you rarely see a male action protagonist fight because they're very obviously scared like max is really scared in that scene and like i like he's behaving brutally yeah but it's i i feel like you know a slight tip of that whatever to tom hardy like you can tell that it's like he's not doing the like hyper masculine action star thing he's like afraid right and that is why he's fighting and i feel like you don't that's just not something you get from a male action hero very often true i'm about to go into a bunch of ways in which the female characters in this movie subvert a lot of action movie tropes but there's a lot of stuff also that's subverted about max's character

yeah like yeah he's like what you said he's got ptsd that really strongly affects him and i mean i guess that that's not unheard of in this genre but to have it presented as something as scary and debilitating as it is to him i feel like is unusual i don't i think so i think also that again him being kind of like incapacitated for the first act of the movie and not being allowed or able to participate in the fighting and action is a subversion i think that his arc being that he learns empathy it is a very interesting arc for a male action hero i don't know just like a lot of fascinating things to me but not as interesting as furiosa baby not as interesting as Furiosa, baby. Not as interesting as Furiosa. So back to that hand-to-hand combat fight between Max and Furiosa. Also during that fight, the women in Gauze, though not trained warriors at all,

they are still participating in the action. For example, one of them tosses a weapon to Furiosa for her to use against Max. At different points, they kind of rally together to either pull Max or Nux away from Furiosa. There are other moments throughout the rest of the story where they are- Zoe Kravitz does know how to shoot a gun for- Yes, you know, like someone does.

Yeah. Yeah, she knows how to like load, reload a weapon. She knows how to like, she knows. And this doesn't like seem that impressive, but also like if someone's like, here's a pile of a bunch of different bullets, here's a pile of a bunch of different guns, match the guns to the bullets. I can't do, I wouldn't know where to begin. Yeah.

No fucking clue there. It's like, it's it's like it's cool like they're and i i forget how we view this view this the first time around but watching it back you're like oh this is like having the women in gauze i feel like in a less capable team's hands could either have gone super mary sue or completely sidelined those characters in the action. But I feel like the action you get from them is significant, it's narratively impactful, and it's not ridiculous, like they're a fucking SWAT team,

because that wouldn't make sense with their lived experience. Right, it tracks with their background. They are able to do things like use bolt cutters they create diversions to help them escape dangerous situations you know it's just like they are given opportunities to be able to do things that impact the story in ways that other action movies don't afford those opportunities to women usually and then like we've mentioned they team up with the vovalini the the many mothers and you know what it's reminding me of it's reminding me of the volturi from fucking twilight oh my gosh the italian vampire team i was like was like, it sounds like vagina pasta,

but it also sounds like something else. It sounds like the Volturi led by, I believe, Dakota Fanning. That sounds right. If memory serves. Anyways, sorry. That was, that was bugging me. Now I, now I remember. I'm glad we, I'm glad we worked through that. Yeah. So they meet up with the Vovalini and like the number of female characters doubles or maybe even more than doubles. And then it's like they're all trained warriors in a way that makes total sense. Right. Woohoo. There's a lot of cool stuff happening there.

And then more specifically, so I would recommend a video essay series from innuendo studios that was written and narrated by ian danskin who is a cis man but he does make a lot of points that i he does agree with and and and brings a lot of insights he does say deuteragamous quite a bit though he does and i will forgive him for that yeah it's a good series the video essay series is called bringing back what's stolen fury road and the avenging feminine so this video series has a lot of insight about how female characters in fury road compare to female characters in other action movies or he keeps calling them violent movies because he also introduces some examples from like horror slasher movies. So if you're just kind of like using the

umbrella of violent movies, a lot of tropes and archetypes have emerged over the years that Fury Road tends to avoid. So I'll just kind of quickly go through this. I recommend watching the whole series, but it pointed out a lot of things that I wasn't really able to articulate very clearly. Yeah, it's very, very streamlined. It's really good. So one of the archetypes of female characters in action slash violent movies is the innocent. Basically, when a woman is captured, damseled, brutalized to provide stakes for the male hero. We talk about this all the time.

It often takes the form of a woman being captured and damseled and needing to be saved by a man obviously furiosa doesn't fall into this archetype and neither do the wives uh because even though furiosa is taking them away from a morton joe to safety as we've discussed they're not helpless they are participating in the action yeah and it was also like i i thought it was a smart subtle choice that it was their idea right for it to happen in the first place like they weren't just like doy i want like they they were highly motivated to get out of their situation and they sought out someone who could help them like that's yeah huge like literally graffitiing on their walls the reason saying like our babies will not be warlords we are not things that whole i mean and that's i there's some i think that some of the issues we've discussed as it pertains to like

gender i feel like part of it is because there is that really strong like seizing the means of production energy to this movie like where for the majority of like the characters in this movie the means of production is like reclaiming your own body which is like you know by liberating themselves from a morton joe and refusing to have his children like that is their means of production same thing goes for like max like the difference between max being used as a blood bag for nicholas holt and max giving his blood to furiosa at the end is like he sees the means of his own production it's the same thing but the context is oh yeah anyways wow the next archetype that this video series identifies is, they call it the Vasquez, named after the character Vasquez in Aliens.

Listen to that episode for our discussion on that character specifically. There's a lot going on. But it's the female action movie archetype where the woman is one of the guys and ends up embodying traits of toxic masculinity which is again subverted in this movie because Fury Road explores a more nuanced and less binary spectrum of gender yeah of masculinity and femininity that what i mean that was wild in that particular video section with that super cut of all the different women protagonists that have said suck my dick in different you're like oh yeah i guess that that is a uh that is a thing that happens quite a bit uh in a certain era of but also like still kind of now anyway sometimes yeah

one of these archetypes has been dubbed the dominatrix uh this is the highly violent and also highly sexualized female character she is often the villain or anti-hero old school cat woman stuff exactly like leans into the hyper-sexualization of women's bodies. I maintain that even though we see, especially the women in Gauze, they are arguably kind of scantily clad. They're not sexualized in an exploitative way. I would agree with that. could you could make an argument

against that and i and i would listen and probably agree with some of it but i think that there is an art there's definitely an argument for it but it just it's hard to describe it doesn't feel like the movie is trying to titillate with shots of their right body I always think of the shot of pregnant Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and the hose, where you're like, a still of that? I could see the argument. But presented in context, I didn't feel like it was supposed to be a titillating shot. Right, right.

The video essay points out that most other action movie directors would frame that scene in question, which is the one where Max comes upon the war rig for the first time. When it's like cartoon wolf, a wuga eyes, a wuga. And then it would, cause they're like hosing each other down.

They're like cleaning off after this first big chase, they are drinking water, you know, all this stuff. That's why they say so fresh face throughout the movie they uh occasionally rinse off they're taking baths yeah that's true um the video essay points out that like most other directors and i'm especially thinking of like how michael bay would shoot this but they would like shoot that scene like a wet t-shirt contest yeah but this scene is mostly like the women at a far distance

or like tight shots of their face in a way that we're not seeing like disembodied you know like breasts and asses and stuff like that yeah so uh that's another subversion um the next action movie archetype is the mama bear which is typically a pretty feminine woman who will become violent in order to protect her children think like ripley and aliens think gina davis's character in the long kiss good night i can't i haven't seen it oh okay then don't think about it okay i won't the video essay goes into detail about how fury road subverts this in that even though there is the idea of like motherhood presented in that like the women it's more rooted in our refusal to uh like right yeah it's it's more rooted in i mean and full disclosure we are uh

we're recording this in a big week for bodily autonomy talk uh-huh but it is like the most uh one of the most dystopian examples of trying to regain your bodily autonomy by refusing to have a child that you don't want that was a product of assault like right period yeah yes bad week bad week it's a really bad week yeah the next archetype um being the final girl this is already a familiar thing most common in horror slash slasher movies this video essay examines how kind of the idea of specialness and being quote not like the other girls is the thing that enables the final girl to survive where in this movie fury road subverts this by not presenting anyone as like more deserving or more special than anyone else although see my point again about the trophy wives being rescued but not the women who are being milked yeah I don't think that that's universally true but of the characters we know we are exactly

generally true yeah and i also thought it was like a just a choice that made sense in the genre that i mean none of the none of the we don't lose the women in gauze but there are a few of the volturi uh who the vampires yes the ital. The Italian vampires that do die in battle. And there's also plenty of war boys who die in battle. I don't think that... I mean, we haven't really brought up Nux too much. There's not too much to talk about there. But I do think that it's interesting that he ties into this theme of redemption

that the movie has that um it would be it would have been very very easy for them to just kill him and they consider it like they Furiosa has a knife to his throat at one point yeah but but after the women in gauze sort of talk it out a little bit and, and Furiosa weighs in, they, I think it's Rosie Huntington Whiteley who, who ultimately says like, basically this is a kid who's been indoctrinated into this fucking horrible

place and sort of suggests that killing him is not the way to go, which ends up serving the story. it i i like that this movie is you know there's like the whatever restorative justice is at play for a lot of it because even though nux still dies he like is redeemed by and and in a way that isn't like an annoying movie redemption it's not like adam driver star wars redemption you know it's it's like it's efficient you know that he has been indoctrinated he makes an emotional connection with one of the women in gauze the riley keogh character you know who i mean it just sounds like he's basically shown mercy and like empathy as opposed to gaslighting and a fucking spray can to the face

for the first time in his life you could argue that having only women display those qualities is pointed but i i thought it worked in the movie but that's also an interesting arc for him to have too where like i agree he starts out as being you know this product of his environment of being like extremely radicalized in this very toxic warmongering way and then as soon as one person shows him any amount of empathy and patience riley keough literally says like oh that sucks and he's like it blows his mind he's like wait someone isn't yelling at me right and calling me mediocre don't call nicholas holt mediocre but yeah like his arc revolving around similar to Max's, like being responsive to empathy. Yeah.

Or like having a healthier relationship with empathy is both of what the main male characters arcs revolve around, which is, I think, really interesting and cool. I agree. arcs revolve around which is i think really interesting and cool um i agree the final archetype as discussed in this video essay is the rape revenger which again deals more commonly with like rape revenge horror movies but based on the context of and like backstory of the women in gauze it's applicable here where the the general trope slash archetype presents women in a usually very exploitative way that kind of revels in the physical and or sexual violence that happens toward the women in these stories and revels in their suffering whereas fury road opts not to show any of this exploitative violence and suffering we understood that it has happened to them but any of the violence toward women in the movie is just the women actively engaging in

battle as warriors and not that kind of like exploitative violence towards women. And the video ends with a proposal of like a new and like a new future archetype that Furiosa falls into, which is called the avenging feminine in which, uhging feminine in which a woman takes back what is hers. She fights because it's her right to fight against men who tell her it's not her right, among other traits.

I found the whole thing really insightful. I don't necessarily jive with every single moment, but I found it generally really cool really cool yeah we'll link it um if anyone wants to check it out but it helped me because like it identified action movie tropes that are ascribed to female characters that i just like didn't have like the vocabulary for and stuff so yeah i just i found it really helpful and i agree with most of the analysis of how fury road subverts those archetypes so it's true that's my little piece about that and i think all of it is very cool and again largely why i love this movie so much it's perfect i'm i'm rictus erectus just hearing it and that's my little contribution thank you what a wonderful birthday gift

happy birthday yeah i mean furiosa is just like a fucking awesome character for all the reasons you describe. And also, I mean, just a very I feel like it's fun to see a character of any gender kind of arrive fully formed. Like when you meet Furiosa, she's highly motivated. She's one of the only characters that we meet who already has a vested interest in people who are not just herself. It's kind of her and the women in gauze who care about each other um and that that isn't because i feel like sometimes empathy and this isn't like the worst trope in the entire world but it is a trope where empathy and emotional intelligence is more often attributed to women characters sure it's not a trope that comes from nowhere i would say uh agree but but it is a common trope. And I think sometimes in movies, it's applied rather sloppily where it's like women's intuition and shit like that. Sure. But with Furiosa, I mean, you get explicit context as to why she has a collective mindset and because that's how she was raised. She was raised in a feminist utopia that prioritized the collective so the fact that she retains those values as an adult makes total sense

and but also there are moments where she does not display empathy like the part where she's about to kill nux uh there's there's the part where she's like, Rosie rolled off the war rig. We got to keep going, baby. We got to keep going. Right. Which is like, that's just pragmatic shit, unfortunately, for Rosie. Glad she made it.

Exactly. But it's something. So I've talked about this on the show before, but something that drives me absolutely wild about horror movies, especially especially and it's usually like the final girl but you see this in some action movies too and other genres but like whoever the most important female character of the movie is she has so much empathy that she's put in a position where she has the opportunity to badly maim and or kill the person who is trying

to kill her but because she has so much empathy she's like i can't do it i can't i mean which which i think in in certain you know that i feel like that's super case to case but can be super sloppy and tropey if it just seems like it's because it's because girl girl is nice girl has feeling right right and that and that's some women are fucking heartless and you should remember that but um often when i see it it's it's very infuriating in furious because of the way it's presented um and in this case we see Furiosa killing people all the time because they are actively trying to kill her so right but she kind of but but I also appreciate that she doesn't I don't know no one I I guess this is like part of why they're the hero like

no one is killing for fun they're killing for survival where like Immortum Joe is killing for you see his name again Jamie a Morton Roe Ellen McGregor uh Vol-Vol-Lor-ini what if I just passed out I just got a nosebleed on the zoom call i think you called knox knox at one point as well knox la the place i write for um yeah look look they're difficult names there's too many characters there are a lot of characters and they all have pretty unfamiliar names they have very genre name okay i've called out on your birthday can't believe it um uh i truly forget what i was talking about i but i'm sure i was in the middle of i'm sure i mean

good job jamie you made a good point uh oh something i wanted to bring up really quick i mean i guess it just like hits home again. It's just a scene that I had forgotten about. I hadn't seen this movie in maybe two years. And I was like, oh boy. The dead baby. The dead baby. There is a dead baby.

I don't really, I don't have a Bechdel cast galaxy brain point to make about it. But I do. I mean, I guess that that just, that like hit some super hard, not subtly at all. How little life is valued when it doesn't have, when it doesn't specifically benefit the upper class. And because no one gives a shit if Rosie Huntingie huntington whiteley is okay it's like is the product because they view children as products and a future war boy you know and so

i just forgot about that scene and i uh find it disturbing every single time again another reminder of what is happening in this country right now yeah there's a lot about this movie that the more time that passes you're just like i mean even just like yeah a radicalized force of young men you're like oh oh, no. Yikes. Anyways. Anyway. You know, it's still fiction for now. So that's good. Yeah.

Did you have anything else you wanted to talk about? Not really. I just want to give a shout out to Miss Giddy. I wish we just knew more about her character. Amazing line reads. Great. i love her tattoos yep there was a scene that was shot but deleted from the movie in which engherd's body and miss giddy were left to die and be eaten by crows which i think would have been just like a very unnecessarily violent scene toward Miss Giddy specifically. Yeah.

That was removed. Honestly, weird that it was even considered to be included in the movie, but yeah, I did not know that. That's very gross. Yes. So that was no good.

But Miss Giddy is just, she seems like a prime candidate for a, a limited series. That's a character i would watch a whole series about the the marvelous miss kitty i like that that's where you took it you're like and she does do stand-up and she's a stand-up comic at the citadel yeah she did the comedy citadel she headlines the comedy citadel and yeah i'm running my type five at the citadel tonight i want to come just like a goofy like it's real hard being a woman in comedy right and she just said the fucking citadel uh god uh anyway wish i knew more about wish we knew

more about her character i think we just built out some pretty let's let's uh let's run that past eve ensler but i think that she's gonna love it i agree yeah yeah i think that is all i had did you have anything else no that's uh that's that's about all i had as well um i really enjoyed this movie and i really enjoyed uh talking about it i'm so glad to hear that but here's my question caitlin what does it pass the battle huh it does a lot yes uh furiosa talks to the various women and gauze they talk to each other they all talk to different members yes um i don't have a handle on what most of their names are. Yes.

But I think they are given names like in the script and in the credits. They're all pretty like, I mean, I would say that they count as names because male characters are also given like weird titles as names, the bullet farmer i would consider it to be a character's name sure yeah in the same way that yeah the people eater the doof warrior which you gotta love the doof warrior um i didn't love the doof warrior the first time around but this time i loved the doof where the doof is cool speaking Speaking of media tests, I wanted to call attention really quick to the Furiosa test. Oh, yeah. I forgot about this.

This is a funny one. So obviously, so this movie provides the origin for this test. The test was proposed by Twitter user Sean M. Puckett in June 2015. God, what a sentence. Who said, proposed the Furiosa test. Your movie slash game slash book slash play passes if it incites men's rights dipshits to boycott. Because what happened when this movie was released. Oh, yeah. A bunch of MRAs were like, what?

What is this? Alfred Molina. What's that? What's that then? Alfred Molina, who famously denounces men's rights activism. King. King of the world. And you heard it here first on our show.

It's true. People don't talk about that enough. I think. They don't talk about it nearly enough. They don't really talk about it. Maybe it doesn't really come up. It's sort of only just us who brings it up. fit as they often do when they realized what this movie was about they deemed it feminist propaganda they you know demanded people boycott the movie they still do this but i feel like the mid-2010s was when this like this particular brand of like and like masculine anger was like, they were really in their bag because like Ghostbusters came out. This came out. It ruined my childhood.

Like you're just like, oh my, I feel like everyone had like one man in their life that was like, oh, I didn't realize that you're the, the pettiest kind of person that exists. Yes. Fascinating.

Anyways. What about our nipple scale though zero to five nipples based on how the movie fares when examining it through an intersectional feminist lens oh me oh my um hi okay i think i've got i've got a number in mind go go go off birthday hi thank you miss birthday birthdays first yes birthday first always i am leaning somewhere between a three and a half and a four i might split the diff and go 3.75 i think the way the movie treats disability and atypical bodies is unforgivable. I think that the way the movie centers whiteness and centers people who adhere to Western beauty standards as being those most worthy of being rescued and escaping to safety and survival is dated and unfortunate and there was so much that the movie subverts, tropes it avoids, and things that it actually does,

actively do, to push the needle forward in terms of how women especially are treated and the role that they play in an action movie yeah because of that i'm going to go with yeah i think a 3.75 i'll give one to furiosa one to the women in gauze. And I'll give my three quarters nipple to the Volturi, a.k.a. the Volvalini. A.k.a. the ravioli. You know, we could keep going. We could keep going.

The tortellini. The tortellini. Oh, my God. My favorite moment in all of history is, do you remember? No, I guess. No, every time I, you didn't watch SpongeBob. No, just kidding. There's a great moment where I forget what the context of it is, but someone spells Squidward's

name wrong and he goes, Squidward tortellini. And it's so funny because his name's squidward tentacles oh sort of like the character tentacles in the legend of titanic my favorite animated film of all time the blueprint yeah good oh god i love squidward okay um i'm gonna give the movie uh i'm gonna i'll be generous because i feel uh residual guilt for how uh irrationally hard i was on this movie the in our first uh run at this episode look six years ago we're all works in progress six years ago to be fair yes i was i was 12 years old. I'm 18 now. So I think I know a thing or two. Okay, good. I am.

I'm Gen Z. What can I say? Well, since it's my birthday today, so I have actually aged into being a boomer. Wow. That's how that works. There comes a day where we all become boomers, unfortunately. I'm Benjamin Botning. I'm Gen Z. but i'll go for i totally agree with

um the the way that uh this movie treats disabled bodies and atypical bodies in general this movie's views on fatness in particular are um all extremely dated uh for a movie that came out less than 10 years ago, which speaks to how underdeveloped those discussions are. And also, you know, a positive spin, how far conversations around that have come. And I would be interested because there is supposed to be a prequel with Anya Taylor Joy as young Furiosa coming out in 2024. I would be curious, because George Miller has a somewhat good record on course-correcting past mistakes, I wonder if that will be something that is course-corrected in another installment of this franchise.

We will see. Curious to see. Curiosa. That's me. Curiosa, honey. um curiosa i'm a little curiosa honey uh but yes the the treatment of disability and race in particular are were not good at the time and did not age well um and yeah should always be criticized and to this movie's credit I do think that this movie's good reception this movie being embraced by action fans is like a huge I would I mean it's still kind of early to tell obviously the movie came out

seven years ago years ago yeah but even in that time I feel like you can trace that it's made a difference in the genre and it's made a difference to fans of action movies of like what an action hero looks and behaves and like what they're capable of i feel like furiosa is like a huge kind of game changer for this genre and it is a difficult genre to game change because of all the loaded masculinity that it's known for there's a lot of baggage yeah so for its fault of which there are many and we've discussed them i do think that it was a huge step forward for the genre in many ways um i generally like how the the women in the movie who we get to know, which is the women we get to know versus the women we don't,

as we discussed, is very intentional and pointed. The women we do get to know, I feel like, are all given effective story arcs. I thought it was really cool that George Miller empowered his actors to develop their own characters, was to feedback brought in a consultant like shit you just don't hear about male hunters of this kind of magnitude doing not giving him a fucking crown or anything but i think it just just another good example setting thing to have done. I think this movie is awesome. I really enjoy watching it.

And thank you, Caitlin, for, first of all, choosing it for your birthday episode and for bearing with me as I grew as a person and grew to appreciate it. So, for Nippies. I knew it would happen. I knew that you would undergo a significant character arc

much like max does no not max i don't like max um he's my least favorite character in the no that there's a lot of worse characters but anyways i'm gonna give my nipples i'm gonna have one to furiosa i'm gonna give one to zoe kravitz in the bullet bag. I'm going to give one to the Keeper of the Seeds and I'm going to give one to Mrs. Oh, what's her name? Mrs. Miss Giddy?

Miss Giddy. Miss Giddy. And that's the episode, folks. It certainly is. You can, you know, do all the stuff. Hey, you know what? Since it's my birthday, yeah, I'm gonna not only suggest but maybe even demand that you Oh, wow. Oh, shit. This is me being absolutely fucked up as promised. I'm so scared right now.

Would you give me a little follow on Twitter and Instagram at Caitlin Durante? Because the more followers I have on social media platforms, the more validated I feel as a human being. And that is the sad state of the world. I think that that's super healthy. And I feel the exact same way. Everyone follow Caitlin on every platform available. You tiktok too i do have tiktok and i um i have not really posted much except for a couple titanic related tiktoks although i started doing this new thing on my instagram stories in which i recap a movie speaking as quickly as i can and including as much detail as I can in 15 seconds

or less so I might add those to my TikTok to really you know because it's all about generating new content you know um wow she says she's a boomer but she's sounding like a teenager so definitely you know whatever I don't care about tiktok right now but i mean ask me again in a year and i'll be like follow me on tiktok um but certainly follow me on instagram and and twitter also follow jamie on those on those platforms hey why don't you do that for once in your life um yeah and then also listen to ghost church that's my new show that's coming out right now it's about uh it's about my my uh week in casadega florida and the history of american spiritualism aka ghost church as i like to call

it i'm having a lot of fun making it it's's also produced by producer at the Bechdel cast, Sophie Lichterman. And why don't you head on over and give that a listen? We just love creating content so much. We just love it. Follow me on Instagram and Twitter. Elon Musk's Twitter, as I like to call it now. Jamie Loftus help on Twitter. Jamie C's Twitter as I like to call it now. Jamie Loftus

help on Twitter. Jamie Cray superstar on Instagram and then follow the Bechtel cast while you're on those two cursed websites. Okay? Yeah. At Bechtel cast. And a nice little birthday gift for me would be if you give the podcast

a little rate and review. Go for it. Preferably a favorable one like a you know a five nipple if you dare if you if you hated this episode actually please skip it oh i'm still i'm still traumatized from the zootopia blowback of oh my god they're like oh it's just oh well rabbits can't even be cops anymore according to these broads i'm like oh my goodness gracious take a seat folks no one's listening to the episode at this point they're like the episode ended 10 minutes ago it's been over two hours and uh we simply can't stop talking typical women right always blabbing blabbing

blabbing pee pee poo poo uh two things women love to do uh and then follow our patreon aka matriod if you want more of that hilarious s tier banter that's patreon.com slash bechtel cast you want an episode on babe? Yeah, truly. That's where you'll find it. That's where you're going to fucking find it. And we are,

we're, we're doing some of Caitlin's picks on the matriarch this month. We were doing face slash off and we are doing, what's the other one we're doing? Top gun. Not because I vouch for the mood for either of these movies. It was honestly just like okay the new Top Gun movie's coming out what better time I guess than to cover the original

Top Gun and then also I was like what's another like big loud action goofy action movie that we can fold into the mix and I was like face off I think would be a lot of fun for us to be like what the fuck is this movie love it so that's the plan folks and that's the plan and if you don't like it go to hell to quote um kate winslet in titanic well let's get out of here. Or follow me eternal on the highways of Valhalla. See you in Valhalla, everyone. Go to Valhalla. I can't deal with Valhalla. We both saw The Northman.

I've had enough of Valhalla. Goodbye. Episode over. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearths the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption

that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Tried to assassinate the president of the United States. One was the protege of Charles Manson. 26-year-old Lynette Fromm, nickname Squeaky. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI.

Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange and violent summer. This season on the new podcast, Rip Current. Hear episodes of Rip Current early and completely ad-free and receive exclusive bonus content by subscribing to iHeartTrue Crime Plus only on Apple Podcasts. What happens when a professional football player's career ends and the applause fades and the screaming fans move on? I am going to share my journey of how I went from Christianity to now a Hebrew Israelite. For some former NFL players, a new faith provides answers.

You mix homesteading with guns and church. Voila! You got straightway. He tried to save everybody. Listen to Spiraled on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.