The Character Nux as a Microcosm of Mad Max: Fury Road

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Later on, in the segment, in a medium shot (Bordwell and Thompson 190), Nux exclaims, “I am the man who gets the sun, riding to Valhalla, (using a shot/ reverse shot, addressing Max) Witness me blood bag, witness! I live I die, I live again!” The plot of the segment, gives us a deeper understanding of the underlying story of how Immortan Joe made himself an army of war boys to perpetuate his stay in power. It looks like Immortan Joe created his own following borrowing from different religions and belief systems like the Vikings (Valhalla: the heaven of warriors who die in battle) and Hindus (Cycle of death and rebirth: reincarnation), thoroughly brainwashing the foot soldier Nux. Drawing from parallels in history, this brainwashing has been particularly effective especially among the warriors of any nation state as we can see from WWII Germany (leading the soldiers to believe in the superior Aryan Race and their duty to the Fatherland) and ultra-right wing Japan (twisting the Bushido code of the samurai to produce fanatical soldiers ready to die in battle for an ideology, the likes of which notably include the notorious Kamikaze pilots).

In conclusion, the segment shows us the 1st failure of Nux to stop the war rig because of the intervention of Max (mainly to save his own skin) but this segment in particular provides a good background for the viewer to understand the character of Nux and the world of this film as a whole. The way the character is presented in light of the mise-en-scene and narration leads us to a deeper understanding of his psyche and the world he lives in.

Works Cited

Bordwell, David and Kristin Thompson. Film Art: An Introduction. 10th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2013. Print.

Buckmaster, Luke. (3 June 2015). Mad Max: Fury Road: meet the Aussies behind the wheel of Furiosa's War Rig. The Guardian. 3 June 2015. Web. 25 March 2017.

Cook, Pam, ed. The Cinema Book. 3rd ed. London: British Film Institute, 2007. Print.

Davis, Glyn et al. Film Studies: A Global Introduction. New York: Routledge, 2015. Print.

Dix, Andrew. Beginning Film Studies. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2008. Print.

Hill, John, and Pamela Church Gibson, comp. and ed. The Oxford Guide to Film Studies. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998. Print.

Miller, George. Mad Max: Fury Road. Per. Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult and Hugh Keays-Byrne. Roadshow Films and Warner Bros. Pictures, 2015. Film.

Nelmes, Jill. An Introduction to Film Studies. 3rd ed. London: Routledge, 1996. Print.