The echoes of the past that we hear in the opening minutes of Furiosa, which tell us why human society is but a memory, feel unsettlingly familiar. Pandemic. Runaway climate disaster and ecocide caused by human carbon emissions. Political instability and oppression. Gas wars. Water wars. Societal collapse. The first few minutes of the movie feel more like documentary than action spectacle. Here in the real world, our planet is dying and we’re literally running out of water; it feels like we’re all waiting for the proverbial dam to break.
What a fun and exciting topic for an escapist action blockbuster, right?
Turns out, in George Miller’s capable hands, that is right.
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As I was watching it, I couldn’t help but notice the similarity in names between Prince Amleth, the hero of The Northman, and a certain other famous prince in world literature, namely Hamlet. As the story began to unfold in the new film from director Robert Eggers, who brought us the deeply researched and meticulously crafted films The Witch and The Lighthouse, I saw other similarities. There is a king who is betrayed and slain by his own brother. The young prince, his mother taken as a spoil of victory by the new king, vows revenge on his treacherous uncle.
I thought that Eggers and his cowriter, the Icelandic poet, novelist, and lyricist who goes by Sjón, might have taken inspiration from the Bard for their tale of Nordic kings and Viking berserkers. Turns out – as I’m sure more than a few of you already knew – that I had it backwards. It was Shakespeare who took inspiration from young Amleth for his own Prince of Denmark. As I should have suspected after seeing his first two films, Eggers took inspiration for his movie from and adapted the 13th century version of the Nordic legend of Amleth as memorialized by Saxo Grammaticus, in his Gesta Danorum.
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Even in the climax of his superhero movie trilogy, which took him nearly two decades to complete, M. Night Shyamalan had to add one last twist. The director, who is divisive among critics and audiences alike, has made shock revelations in the final minutes of his movies his signature ever since his 1999 breakout hit The Sixth Sense. Shyamalan and surprise endings are like peanut butter and jelly or Oreos and milk. The twists tend to fall into three general categories. There are the effective ones that also have the benefit of being bolstered by characters and a story that make repeated viewings a rewarding experience. The best example of that is the revelation at the end of Sixth Sense. Then there are the ones that just sort of sputter out, like the climax of Signs. Finally, there are the ones that not only disappoint after the initial viewing but collapse completely when you apply any scrutiny at all. The ludicrous ending to The Village fits here.
Having only seen Glass once, I’ll classify its surprise ending as a mix of the first and last categories, although it will probably hold up fairly well on repeat viewings.
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