Furiosa’s Redemptive Instinct to Live

Mad Max: Fury Road invites its audience onto a journey of restoration. Both ‘Mad’ Max and Furiosa are haunted by their pasts and seek redemption for their actions. Two immanent realities represent the ‘death of the world’ in Fury Road: the vast desert landscape and the profound depravity of the film’s villains. Death suffocates those in the center of Mad Max’s story, but they refuse to give up the air in their lungs. Though Furiosa and Max both seek redemption, Furiosa distinctly pursues life over mere survival. This narrative trajectory culminates in what can be best seen as a Passion, resurrection, and ascension. Fury Road’s pseudo-triduum cements Furiosa’s position as a Christ figure, ‘someone who comes into a society from the outside and through suffering love redeems other[s]’.¹ Through her suffering, death, return to life, and rule over the Citadel, Furiosa becomes the center of her world’s redemption and its restoration.

Furiosa’s redemption is necessitated by her role in the world’s death. Early on in Fury Road, the question of ‘who killed the world’ is asked of the audience and of the movie’s characters. Given that there is a montage in the beginning of the movie that implies a kind of nuclear war, we are inclined to blame warmongers from generations past. However, the first time we see the question, it is written for Immortan Joe by one of his wives before she attempts to kill him, declaring that he ‘cannot own a human’. This establishes that the world’s death is a present reality, not one restricted to the past. Though the world is a wasteland, its dying is furthered by those who would dehumanize and exploit others for the sake of power. Immortan Joe is shown to be a world-killer through his despotic rule, use of the War Boys as cannon fodder in his conquests, and exploitation of women for their bodies, both for breastmilk and carrying children.² Furiosa is an Imperator in Immortan Joe’s army, so her excellence in obeying and executing Joe’s will is established, even though the audience does not see what garnered her status. Furiosa participated in the world’s death by expanding the rule and power of Immortan Joe.

Immortan Joe physically embodies the death of the world. Through an uninterrupted shot of Joe’s preparations for public presentation, the audience sees that he is physically sickly. His skin is covered in boils, and he is unable to breathe without the assistance of a machine.³ The scene continues by showing that Joe covers up his decaying flesh with a clear breastplate shaped like a Roman Centurion’s muscular armor and his breathing apparatus is formed like the bottom mandible of a large skull with enormous teeth. Something is clear from the juxtaposed shots of Joe’s body and his costume: he is a charlatan. Amidst Joe’s dressing but before his speech, the audience sees women being exploited for their breastmilk and treated as chattel. All of this precedes Immortan Joe’s appearance where he proclaims himself to be the people’s redeemer, while giving just enough ‘aqua cola’, or water, to the people without getting them ‘addicted’ to it. What kind of redeemer treats his people like cattle and frames his abuses as gifts? One for whom redemption is most closely associated with commercial exchange and transactions, not sacrifice and rescue. This critical introductory scene shows that Joe is an imposter, a weakened and selfish warlord masquerading as a charitable leader.

Furiosa intends to redeem herself by liberating Immortan Joe’s wives and taking them to ‘the Green Place’. After Max forces his way into Furiosa’s journey toward the Green Place, she explains the purpose of her pilgrimage: “redemption”. Though she seemed to be taking her rig on a typical supply run, Furiosa rescued Joe’s wives and began a journey toward the Green Place. This location is the antithesis of Joe’s Citadel. The audience learns from Furiosa that The Green Place is an Edenic and lush locale. On top of being a literal oasis from the desert surrounding it, it is also a cultural paradise. The Vuvalini, an insular all-female group of gardeners and farmers, govern the Green Place collectively and benevolently. Antithetical to Immortan Joe’s tyrannical and exploitative rule, the Green Place represents a kingdom of growth, dignity, and life. More than a mere chance to escape a villainous ruler, Furiosa’s journey to the Green Place offers new life for her and Joe’s wives.

Much like death’s defeat is brought about by Christ, so is Immortan Joe’s defeat brought about by Furiosa. As a consequence of his pursuit, Joe’s ‘favorite wife’, Angharad, and unborn son, with whom she is pregnant, die when his caravan attacks Furiosa’s rig. Even in his pursuit of life, albeit life only as the extension of his personal legacy, Joe creates death. Later, Joe’s air-supplying and life-supporting mask is torn from his face after Furiosa wedges its delivery line into his car’s wheelbase, killing him. Joe both embodies and actualizes the destruction of life as a result of his very being, which terminates in the very thing that gives him life, his skull-like mask, causing his destruction. This narrative move parallels the end of death in Christian theology, as Christ’s death and resurrection entailed the removal of death’s ‘sting’ (1 Corinthians 15:55-56). In dying, Christ killed death. While dying from a wound in her side, Furiosa killed Joe. Though death’s defeat begins in Christ’s passion, it is sealed in his resurrection. Immortan Joe’s death begins what will be the ‘swallowing up of death’ (Isaiah 25:8, ESV) in Mad Max: Fury Road, as death’s defeat is only one step on the pathway to life’s rule.

Furiosa’s resurrection parallels Christ’s by demonstrating life’s power over death. Lloyd Baugh, discussing Christ-figures in film, notes that ‘the Christ-figure is neither Jesus nor the Christ, but rather a shadow, a faint glimmer, or a reflection of him’.⁴ This does not undercut, but rather emphasizes the significance of the Christ-figure, as ‘the reference to Christ clarifies the situation of the Christ-figure and adds depth to the significance of his (or her) actions’.⁵ Within Bough’s framework, the meaningfulness of Furiosa’s journey can be illuminated through comparison with Jesus of Nazareth. To demonstrate, compare the responses to the resurrection’s defeat of death in the Gospels and Fury Road. Christ’s appearances post-resurrection in the Gospels take different shapes, but a critical dimension of those responding is their reverence and hope. Evident in the Marys’ worship at Christ’s appearance in Matthew 28:9-10 and the Disciples’ jubilation as Christ appeared to them in Luke 24:36-40, the marvelous nature of Christ’s resurrection gives hope to those who witnessed his death. While Furiosa, Max, and the Vuvalini are heading back to the Citadel after defeating Immortan Joe, Furiosa begins to succumb to her wound. Max quickly pierces his arm to donate blood to her and prevent her death, apparently without success. When Furiosa awakes her return revitalizes the hope for a renewed Citadel. Christ and Furiosa’s resurrections assert that life is the governing authority over death, whether it be physical death in Christ or Immortan Joe’s reign for Furiosa, and that hope for a new world is not misplaced.

Using the lens of sacrifice, Furiosa’s presentation of Immortan Joe at the Citadel mirrors Christ’s self-presentation to God on man’s behalf. Hebrews 7 establishes Christ’s priestly superiority over the Levites in that he was able to offer a ‘once for all’ sacrifice: himself (v. 27). In presenting himself before God as the sacrificial offering, Christ establishes a ‘much more excellent’ covenant than was previously enacted (Hebrews 8:6). Though Furiosa presents Immortan Joe on an appropriate industrial-apocalyptic altar, the hood of a heavily modified car, she is simultaneously presenting herself. She is life’s representative both in having died and come to life and in having destroyed death incarnate, Immortan Joe. In this self-presentation, Furiosa becomes a representative, or priest, of life for the Citadel. Instead of being a Redeemer who starves his people of water, Furiosa brings flowing water to the Citadel’s citizens abundantly.

Considering suffering, Furiosa’s qualification to rule is grounded in her journey through death. Returning to Hebrews and channeling Isaiah, Christ’s ‘perfection’ through his suffering, detailed in Hebrews 2:10 and Isaiah 53:10, is the avenue for Christ’s heavenly elevation, both as priest (Hebrews 5: 8-10) and king (Isaiah 53:12). Christ’s obedient suffering reaches its zenith in death, representing the culmination of Christ’s Passional experience. Furiosa’s rejection of Immortan Joe’s rule and the rescue of his wives brought dire consequences for her, ultimately ending in her ‘death’. However, the greatest suffering was the loss of the Green Place. Though there is no indication that it was wrought by Immortan Joe, this suffering is shown to be the most poignant and significant. The image of Furiosa screaming into the air over a wide-angle shot of the desert is iconic, both in its popular recognition and in its visual similarity to descriptions of Christ in Gethsemane. After mourning the end of the Green Place, Furiosa sets her sights on the renewal of the Citadel, “perfecting” her vision for life and pursuit of redemption. Both Christ and Furiosa are made complete by their experience of suffering, indicating that suffering stands as the qualification for rule and elevation in both Mad Max: Fury Road and in Holy Writ.

Though Christ knew no sin and became sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21), Furiosa is atoning for her own sins in addition to those represented in Immortan Joe’s despotic rule. As mentioned before, Furiosa is an Imperator in Immortan Joe’s army, which means that she was an active participant in his world-killing. Her presentation of Joe before the Citadel has personal stakes; she is not only presenting the end of Joe’s destruction but proclaiming that she has found the redemption she has been seeking. Given that Christ took on real flesh and suffered real pain amidst his real obedience, his qualifications for atonement remain sure. Furiosa, however, uniquely takes on the flesh of the dead world by having been a part of its suffering, which is distinct from Christ’s entrance into the world as a second Adam, one unstained from any atonement-disqualifying effects of sin. Furiosa brings redemption through proof of righteousness demonstrated in her suffering as a sinner; Christ the God-man brings about atonement for all by virtue of his suffering as one sinless.

Mad Max: Fury Road begins with a monologue about the one ruling instinct in the dead world: survival. The movie shows that some who survive do so by exploitation and the exertion of force, like Immortan Joe. Though this power-driven egomania represents one portion of the instinct for life, it is not the only way. Though the Green Place has ceased to be an Edenic garden, the Vuvalini’s instinct to bring about life through collaboration and nurturing remains a legitimate alternative to Joe’s death-centrism. By demonstrating that the instinct to live need not be reduced to competitive survival, Furiosa’s suffering, resurrection, and rule assert that death need not be the end of life. Christ’s death was the beginning of new life for God’s people and the Earth. Furiosa’s leadership of the Citadel marks the beginning of a ‘time to be born’, as the ‘time to die’ concludes in the sonorous silence of Immortan Joe’s remains.