Watching Fury Road was my own fault. I wanted to understand how a movie about monster trucks traveling there and back again on a dirt road managed to transfix cultural consciousness. Curious about the reviews that heralded the film as a cinematographic masterpiece with a token nod to feminism, I had not expected a creatively deranged two-hour visual onslaught. Afterward, in an attempt to lower my adrenaline levels to the point where I could sleep through the night again, I read Michael O’Brien’s Voyage to Alpha Centauri, a post-apocalyptic sci-fi saga chronicling passengers’ interactions on a lengthy tour to a remote, earth-like planet as they combat a totalitarian government. Reading O’Brien in the wake of Fury Road prompted questions about where a world wracked by fear of a dozen apocalyptic scenarios believe we will find justice and ultimately, salvation.
Both works paint a futureless world devolved into violence, though the violence in Voyage seems tame compared with the frenetic pace of slaughter in Fury Road. Both worlds are run by a deceptive, manipulating government. In Fury Road, the spectacularly repulsive ruler hoards water, keeping the throats of the poor parched. The plot centers on the barbaric ruler’s rage as he seeks to recapture his six prized ‘breeders’—beautiful young women kept as slaves for the purpose of creating heirs to the throne. In Voyage, the government (under the innocuous name of Department of Social Interaction or DSI) controls resources, living quarters, and the communication of hundreds of passengers on board the spaceship. In addition to monopolizing natural resources, the government overreaches to control human life as well. The control of life in Voyage is more subtle, but equally sadistic—carrying a pregnancy to term is a capital offense, the DSI offers incentives for passengers to sterilize themselves, and doctors quietly terminate any accidental pregnancies for those who remain fertile, twisting it as a ‘recycling’ of organic tissue mass. These portraits paint a bleak picture of institutions governed by greed and a society that commodities human life.
In response to the gross injustice of the two fictional worlds, two protagonists arise to oppose the totalitarian whims of the governing order. In Fury Road, Mad Max, a rogue policemen turned desperate survivalist breaks from jail and leads the mad smash ‘em up along the road. In Voyage, Dr. Hoyos, a two time winning Nobel scientist with a contrarian streak, opposes the DSI along with a small but loyal contingent of passengers intent on protecting human dignity. Max and Hoyos are both plagued by a nagging conscience—some lingering sense of justice in a world gone mad. They are also haunted by the loss of children they could not shield from the violence of the regime. Dr. Hoyos lost two siblings to the tyranny of a government imposition of only one child allowed per family. Max frequently flashes back to specters of his two children. These vestiges of conscience mingle with a desire for justice and an element of trauma that provides the moral compass for the two characters. These protagonists typify the pervasive myth of the rugged, isolated maverick with a savior complex.
As a member of a happenstance alliance, but primarily a lone ranger, Max’s quest for retributive justice is largely successful. The incessant skull smashings, stabbings, crushings, and other abrupt forms of violence obtain the intended goal of restoring some semblance of order to the parched landscape. The voracious ruler dies a gruesome death, and the deprived poor bathe in a gushing waterfall as the first flash of green seedlings peeks over the rim of the imposing cliffs—implying a rash path of retributive justice as a viable means to a flourishing world. The Washington Post notes that this suggests that culture tends to believe that active subversion of institutions at the initiative of defiant individuals will usher in a world of salvation. The message from Fury Road is clear—there is no future, no salvation to be found in any existing institutions of the day, instead the film looks to the acts of individuals, the improbable underdogs who actively seek their own brand of renegade justice.
O’Brien remains thoroughly unconvinced of this subtly self-aggrandizing route to justice.
In stark contrast to the triumph of Mad Max, individual efforts of retributive justice universally meet with failure in Voyage to Alpha Centauri. In their decades long journey, the improbable band of contrarians each attempts to divert an impending disaster. The protagonist, Hoyos, prefers his own brand of renegade justice that ultimately backfires, jeopardizing his life, the lives of his friends, and the lives of hundreds of passengers. During the voyage, other contrarians single-handedly pursue justice: attempting to divert nuclear explosions, rewire computers to limit surveillance, or thwart a murder. Without exception, these solitary mavericks are unsuccessful. In O’Brien’s troubling apocalyptic world, retributive justice is not only an inadequate solution, but also a destructive force for individuals and those surrounding. However, here O’Brien offers us an alternative: retributive justice through an unlikely community.
With O’Brien’s unapologetically Catholic lens, the sacraments—a hidden Eucharist, a concealed marriage, last rites aboard an free floating spaceship—bind together the community of renegade believers in the hope of divine justice. In the crux of the novel, O’Brien reimagines the classic sci-fi moment when earth is saved from impending doom and destruction as a communal effort, dependent on the participation of the faithful. Furthermore, his end picture offers a Catholic lens as a societal structure to cultivate new life. This structure channels the same individual fire for retributive justice towards a communal good.
While Fury Road offers a sexy, quick fix approach to injustice, the hope of a flourishing community seems tenuous at best (though, admittedly, next to no one watches Fury Road for an exemplar of a thriving society). The subconscious snare of the film is that it perpetuates the myth of the solitary, impatient maverick as the route to justice. O’Brien’s communal model offers a counter-cultural route to justice—one that acknowledges the dependence of humanity on each other and furthermore, points unapologetically towards communal expressions of faith. In our current culture driven by fear of half a dozen impending apocalypses, I find the latter route to justice a more vibrant, joyous, and frankly, realistic one.
