mad max

raidintombs ,

odysseius:

#right before i went to see this  #i watched the video where someone re-saturates a selective group of frames from man of steel  #simply to show how much colour the studio deliberately drained out of every shot; how narrow and dull the palette is  #which is pretty emblematic of a lot of contemporary sci-fi; esp. after the dark knight  #and i get it. as a visual shorthand it’s nothing if not efficient  #no better way to show that the world’s gone to hell than to drain all the colour out of it #no better way to announce your ‘dark and gritty’ hellscape where everything and everyone’s compromised and corrupted  #shades of grey as the dominant aesthetic and ethical stance  #it’s neat. yeah.  #i’ve seen mad max criticised for being too ‘simple’ and its morals too ‘easy’  #because god forbid we have a narrative that points at the sexual subjugation of women and says ‘this is wrong’ #and keeps saying ‘this is wrong’  #doesn’t muddy those waters doesn’t offer any kind of qualifier  #‘this is wrong this should be opposed with all our strength’ #and at the same time says ‘you can come back’  #however low you’ve fallen however weird and hurt and broken and voiceless you are  #all you need is someone to look you in the eyes and see a person who can be saved  #and it says this visually too: look how beautiful the world is; even when it’s dying and cruel #look at the deranged and terrible and gorgeous ways humans adorn their survival  #there’s something haunting and lovely even in the most awful and barren of places; the lands of only salt and ashes  #who wants to live for a world with no colour in it just a dull grey kind of half-life  #the world in mad max is horrifying it’s bloody and feral and apocalyptic  #but you believe it’s worth living for  #because there’s hope and weird screaming optimism in every frame #pessimism’s easy  #it’s much harder to hope at the end of the world (x)