“I am the one who runs from both the living and the dead. Hunted by scavengers. Haunted by those I could not protect.” – Max Rockatansky
Visions of his murdered daughter haunt Max Rockatansky throughout Fury Road. Max is worried he’s gone insane, just like everyone else in the wasteland. In the opening sequence, he hears his daughter’s voice saying, “Hello? Where are you? Where are you, Max?” The hauntings have started again, and his daughter pleads, “Help us, Max.”
And then his wife’s ghost whispers, “you promised to help us.”
Max consoles himself, saying, “I tell myself they cannot touch me. They are long dead.” And he drives away only to be hunted down by a War Boy raiding posse. They hit Max’s car with an explosive javelin, rolling his vehicle in a spectacular crash. As Max crawls out of his wrecked Pursuit Special, he sees a vision of his daughter being run over by Immortan Joe’s war party. So in Max’s vision, Immortan Joe in his Gigahorse killed his daughter.
Max is captured, bound, shaved, and tattooed, but before he can be branded, he overpowers the War Boys and tries to escape the Citadel. Max climbs through a water cistern towards a greenhouse, but when he peeks through the grating, his daughter looks down at him, asking, “Max, is that you?” A War Boy jumps onto Max’s legs and drags him to the bottom of the cistern, where his daughter is waiting for him again under the water.
“Where were you? Help us. Where were you? Where were you, Max?” she asks.
Max again overpowers the War Boys, choking one out with the chains around his wrists, and throwing the War Boy into the others, scattering them like fallen bowling pins. Max makes his escape through the Citadel’s winding tunnels. But his daughter finds him in the hall.
“Stop running, Max!” she commands, her face distorting into a hollow skull as she walks towards him. This is the scariest she ever looks. Max runs away from her, and more ghosts appear, all accusing, “You let us die!”
“You promised to help us!” His daughter yells before the ghosts go silent, and Max opens a door onto a vista showing Immortan Joe’s kingdom. Max leaps into the void and catches his chains on a hanging hook, but the War Boys drag him back, and we see the movie’s title screen.
Max’s daughter scares him more than the War Boys trying to brand him. But Max’s visions of his daughter are not accusatory. The other ghosts are the ones blaming him for their deaths. Max’s daughter is different. She has been waiting for him. Now he has arrived, she wants him to stay and help. But help who? She has already passed on. Who does Max’s dead daughter want him to help, and who do these ghosts want him to protect? Before we get to that, let’s recap what Max has seen in these opening few moments of the film.
Max saw a vision of the future. After all, it is not Max’s child that Immortan Joe killed in the past, as far as we know. It is Joe’s child in the womb of the Splendid Angharad who dies under Joe’s wheels in the future. Joe even crashes Rictus’ monster truck, swerving to avoid Angharad. But Max saw Immortan Joe’s army chasing his daughter, so the women of the Citadel he will later meet are who his daughter wants him to protect. But all of them? Or is there anyone in particular who Max must protect at all costs?
I think the answer to this question appears later in the film. There is a brief sequence where Max sees a vision of someone else’s child.
After killing the Bullet Farmer and his crew, then washing their blood off in mother’s milk, Max and the team drive through the night and see the crows in the wasteland. Later, Max sleeps while Furiosa drives the War Rig. A brief nightmarish vision wakes Max. He sees a child in the womb, women’s hands (both young and old) reaching out onto his face, and then Toe Cutter’s popped-out eyes from the original Mad Max film.
I don’t know what to make of the popped-out eyes, except it is one of the most memorable throwbacks to the original film of Toecutter’s death. Maybe this is a sign that Immortan Joe, played by the same actor as Toecutter, must die, but I can’t be sure. Maybe it is just a haunting image George Miller has the right to use anywhere he wants. George used it when Toecutter sees a truck coming right toward him. What is approaching Max? Let’s address the other two things Max sees.
Max has not met the older women yet. That will happen in the next scene. But we can see that all the women depend on him from their hands holding him for his help. So Max is seeing the future here.
But who is this child in the womb? It is not Angharad’s child. Angharad already died, and the Organic Mechanic could not save her baby boy with an emergency c-section. Rictus’ brother died, the baby boy who was ‘perfect in every way’. So if it is not Angharad’s child, whose is it? The answer is the other pregnant wife, The Dag.
I think Max sees a vision of Immortan Joe’s child with The Dag. And Max’s deceased daughter is helping protect this developing baby. She has guided Max across the wasteland so he will protect The Dag.
Max’s role becomes clear in his next vision of his daughter. Max hears her again when the women ride off into the desert without him. He wants nothing more to do with these women or their attempt to ride across the salt flats. He has helped them enough, and there is no hope to find in the wastelands. Max tells Furiosa, “I’ll make my own way. You know, hope is a mistake. If you can’t fix what’s broken, you’ll go insane.”
As he watches the women disappear into the distance on their motorcycles, taking Nux with them, his daughter again whispers, “Where are you, Max? Where are you? Help us. You promised to help us.”
Then, Max’s ghost daughter appears before him and throws her hand toward his face. Max also sees a vision of a man with a melted bike helmet mask attacking him. This vision of the future and throwing his hand up will save Max’s life in their final run back to the Citadel. Max’s daughter has given him a way to survive the upcoming ordeal by blocking an arrow aimed at his skull. Then she walks away and vanishes, only to reappear on the trail Furiosa’s crew left behind. She beckons him, saying, “Come on Pa! Let’s go!”
Max’s daughter is not chasing him. Max’s daughter is guiding him. And Max goes with her. He couldn’t save his daughter, but now she is asking Max to save Furiosa’s crew by guiding them to the Citadel, and Max will die trying.
The Dag survives the ordeal and even inherits the Keeper’s heirloom seeds to replant and regrow civilization, including knowledge of how to fertilize and care for the crops. The Dag is an interesting character. She is very perceptive and alerts Max and Furiosa of oncoming cars twice, but maybe she is something more than perceptive. Maybe her unborn child has something to do with the film’s events.
So who will The Dag’s child be? It will be the child of Immortan Joe, the inheritor of the Citadel. We do not know if the child will be a boy or girl, but the child will have had three brothers; Corpus Colossus, Rictus, and Angharad’s child. All of them are deceased except Corpus Colossus, who, while very smart, is physically stunted in a toddler-sized body and cannot inherit Immortan Joe’s kingdom.
Will The Dag’s child be a savior of the wasteland? Is that what Max’s deceased daughter wants him to protect? We may never know. But maybe Immortan Joe got a worthy inheritor, after all. An inheritor so important that ghosts of the dead protect them before their birth.
As the Bullet Farmer said in disbelief, watching Immortan Joe scramble the monster truck over a collapsed mountainside to pursue his runaway wives, “All this for a family squabble. Healthy babies. [scoffs in disgust]”
And maybe Immortan Joe was not far off when he said, “I salute my half-life War Boys who will ride with me eternal on the highways of Valhalla. I am your redeemer!” But he may have been a generation too early because it is his child, who is yet to be born, who already rides with the dead.
The ghosts of the past rallied to save this child in the future, and Max Rockatansky is the guardian angel sent to protect it. Or maybe this unborn child is so powerful from the genetic mutations that it can see the future and convince people to protect it before it is born.
Whatever the reason, ghosts guide Max with visions of the future to protect a child he will never meet, creating hope for the future at the Citadel Max may never know.
Daniel N. Blair 