So says Charlize Theron. And, yes, she’s serious
(UK Guardian) The actor Charlize Theron, who takes a leading role in the new Mad Max movie as a one-armed warrior driving five sex slaves to safety, has expressed her fears that a bleak future awaits the planet unless global warming is addressed.
The film is set 45 years in the future, in a post-apocalyptic world desperately short of water and fuel and ruled by a barbaric dictator who enslaves men and imprisons women for breeding and breast-milk.
“It felt very grounded in real events,†said Theron at a press conference for the film, which opens worldwide this week, following its gala premiere at Cannes on Thursday. “The idea of globalisation and global warming and drought and the value of water, and leadership becoming completely out of hand.â€
Say, I wonder how much energy and fossil fuels were used during the filming of the movie? How many plastic bottles of water were consumed and discarded? The use of hair dryers and ice makers, air conditioning and non-locally grown food? How did all the folks involved in the movie, including Ms. Theron, get Namibia, where a goodly chunk of the movie was filmed? How much energy and fossil fuels will be used to not only distribute the film for viewing, but be used to move viewers to the theaters? How much food will be wasted at the theaters? How did Ms. Theron travel to the premiere of the movie? Unfortunately, the Guardian failed to ask Ms. Theron (a fantastic actress) those questions.
Theron said that when she first watched a scene in the film depicting a terrifying thunder-and-sandstorm she wondered if it was a little far-fetched. “But there are images on Google right now of Sahara desert sand being blown, in that state, all through Africa. And that’s frightening. The hair lifted up on the back of my neck. What makes [the film] even scarier is that it is something that is not far off if we don’t pull it together.â€
BTW, the original Mad Max was about the end result of a nuclear conflict.
My life fades. The vision dims. All that remains are memories. I remember a time of chaos… ruined dreams… this wasted land. But most of all, I remember The Road Warrior. The man we called “Max.” To understand who he was, you have to go back to another time… when the world was powered by the black fuel… and the desert sprouted great cities of pipe and steel. Gone now… swept away. For reasons long forgotten, two mighty warrior tribes went to war, and touched off a blaze which engulfed them all. Without fuel they were nothing.
Hence the reason no one was living in cities.
Charlize may be right to have a fear of a future where “women for breeding and breast-milk” are enslaved by another group. The cause of the fear won’t be some idiotic leap of faith where she imagines a very slightly warmer atmosphere will make people mad with violence and lust. Today the most rational cause of such fears are a rise of fundamentalist islam.
Ah, the author falls for the trap set by the Director of the Mad Max films not in the first, but the third film. In the first two films, the crisis was not nuclear. In fact, in “The Road Warrior” it was shown clearly that the conflict was conventional. It was only in “Beyond Thunderdome” when the director, a conventional lefty, suddenly discovered that it was an atomic war (when fear that Reagan would cause Armageddon was all the rage.) Now, when the popular meme is that big, dumb men need to be protected by waifish supermodels (see Knightly, Keira), Mad Max has to become a vessel for feminine empowerment. I for one eagerly await the all-trans Mad Max sequel.