Lesson 3: Women Are People
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This is a lesson that all too many films have profound difficulty in grasping. Fury Road has been touted as a “feminist” action movie, but what that really means is that the female characters are treated as whole human beings and not plot devices. The film passes the Bechdel Test by the first introduction of the Wives; the trajectory of the plot is more concerned with Furiosa’s redemption than with Max’s; the antidote to Joe’s patriarchal warrior construct are women working together to bring life back to the earth.
Capable women are at the center of the narrative – and they are women of all ages and all types. While the film adheres to certain broad tropes, it takes those tropes and turns each character into actual human beings.