Film & Quality Exploitation Cinema | "Mad Max: Fury Road" (2015)

Fig. 1 "Mad Max: Fury Road" Poster

Nowadays many films make usage of exploitation to attract a larger target audience and therefore gain as much money as possible. In general there are many exploitable subjects in the movie making industry such as violence, sex, monsters, natural disasters and horror. Not only genre based exploits exist, but also nationality based ones such as Ozploitation which has its origin in Australia during the New Wave Movement in the 1970s. One of the most successful Ozploitation movies is the series of Mad Max, especially the recent “Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)” directed by George Miller.

Commonly people assume exploitation movies are low quality films due to their cheap methods of luring in viewers and due to their low production quality. However, in the movie “Mad Max: Fury Road” nothing of this is true.  Already from the start of the film one can notice the workload put into it. The imbalance between CGI and actual real life effects is noticeable through the director’s preference of practical effects over CGI. The audience will notice that the fire spitting guitar, flaming gas pipes of the vehicles and explosions are not CGI but actual real life effects. However, not only the application of real life effects reveal the immense difficulty of creating the film, but also certain cuts in those enthralling action scenes for example the car chase at the start of the movie.

Fig. 2 The Chase

Apart from the exploitation of nice sound and visual effects, cars action and also violence, George Miller also abuses the appeal of women, sex and nudity, but surprisingly it manages to appeal to feminism as well. George Miller’s initial exploitation of Imortan Joe’s wives’ beauty and sex appeal quickly turns into appeal to feminism by showing the bravery, commitment, personal strength and intelligence of the wives. Not only are the wives portrayed that way, but also the Vuvalini, a folk of the former green land where Imperator Furiosa has her origin. During the first encounter with the Vuvalini the audience would instantly assume that the riders appearing in the horizon are males, but instead they are shown as females and the only ones who survived the catastrophe in the green land symbolizing their strength over the males and endurance.

Fig. 3 Final Scene

The movie is called “Mad Max: Fury Road” named after Max Rockatansky who everyone assumes to be the protagonist. However, the protagonist of this movie is Imperator Furiosa who makes the journey to find the green land (utopia) in the desert (dystopia) where Max is only a side character helping her on her journey. Max in contrary to Furiosa does not have a clear goal in mind. This is how the film was able to not only exploit the sex appeal of the female characters, but as well as exploiting the feminist ideals to attract a larger audience.

Overall, “Mad Max: Fury Road” manages to surprise the audience by its several exploitations and the intelligent use of sound and music, excellent CGI and chaotic editing. Instead of being recognized as a B-Movie it manages to become an Oscar winning film which appeals to several groups of people.

Illustration List:
Fig. 1  "Mad Max: Fury Road" Poster At: https://img1.etsystatic.com/068/0/10888623/il_570xN.788163855_n90n.jpg (Accessed on 09/11/2017)
Fig. 2 The Chase At: http://www.trbimg.com/img-56a7ffb3/turbine/la-en-craft-mad-max-20160128 (Accessed on 09/11/2017)
Fig. 3 Final Scene (Screenshot taken from the actual film) (Accessed on 09/11/2017)