Mad Max: Fury Road hit theaters a week and a half ago!  This film is a pretty big deal for Maxkind, and by the most important rubric, that of how Max-ish it is, it performs quite well!  “My name is Max,” while it may not be as epochal as Sam Keith’s “I am the Maxx.  Answer your phone,” is nevertheless a solid identity claim for the tribe.

The core of the movie is an intense chase scene with powerful feminist moral logic, but I’d like to focus on a smaller-scale, subtle reading of a prominent supporting character: actor Tom Hardy, portrayed struggling with his place in the action cinema universe, and specifically with his role as Batman villain Bane.

To be clear: this is all in good fun, and if you’re taking any piece of this reading seriously, please calm down.  It doesn’t reflect my actual views on Hardy, action movies, Batman, or whatever.  Still, I haven’t been able to get it out of my head since Saturday night, so I share it with you now!

The film begins with Tom Hardy / Mad Max, who, since a brief violent appearance on the mainstream screen…

has wandered in relative peace through the world of underground (and unshaven) theater.

But no one can hide forever.  Tom Hardy’s ambushed and dragged back into the transmillennial action cinema machine…

(Due to a piece of fantastic character work, by the by)

And ends up in a world dominated by plutocrats who peddle artistic solace and comfort to a starved and scared populace, to prop up their own power…

Imprisoned—branded—and used to prop up a caricature wearing an evil mask and riveted-on muscles…

 

Literally being bled for his strength to support the Warboys.  (I’m sorry, I couldn’t find a good screencap for this one.)  Trapped behind the mask, Hardy’s chained at the head of a kyriarchical warband out to perpetuate a horrific status quo.

From which he can only free himself by reaching out, however awkwardly, to a community of resistance.

But, of course, he must learn humility and work together with his fellow actors.

Which is hard!  For a while he decides to try working alone…

But in the end, he can only achieve true liberation from the character of Bane, and all he represents, by joining an ensemble action picture about armed resistance to the kyriarchy.

At the end of which the Evil Mask is torn away for good—and he’s finally able to enter his character enough to say his name on screen.

There’s a lot of other stuff going on in this film, of course, but I really appreciated the sensitivity and generosity of spirit (for a postapocalyptic road rage thriller) Miller brought to supporting character arcs like Hardy’s!