By: Jimena Inda

George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) exemplifies the post-cinematic regime theorised by Steven Shaviro, William Brown, Scott Bukatman, D.N. Rodowick and Patricia Pisters. Shaped by digital technology, the film shifts from classical narrative coherence to affective modulation, privileging speed, intensity and bodily sensation over representational realism or spatial-temporal logic.

Shaviro’s post-continuity is central: the film’s nonstop chases and hyper-fast cuts prioritise rhythm and spectacle, with the simple pursuit narrative secondary to visceral affect. Characters such as Furiosa and Max react to overwhelming sensations rather than drive coherent meaning, responding to a digital, finance-capitalist regime that modulates feelings directly on the body and mind.

Brown’s conquest of space appears in the Wasteland’s elastic, non-human ontology. Digital effects – colour grading, compositing and CGI enhancements – transform the desert into a programmable, operational environment. Space feels tight, furious and impossibly alive: weightless pursuits and vertiginous scales immerse viewers in computational flows, where space is instrumental and control-like rather than humanistic.

Bukatman’s kaleidoscopic perception captures the sensory overload – explosions, spinning vehicles, fragmented edits and hallucinatory storms reorganise vision through repetition and disorientation. Spectacle trains perception amid technological overload, producing immersive, bodily states that fragment yet pattern coherence, operating at the level of affect over narrative emotion.

Rodowick’s operational realism reframes the film’s non-indexical imagery: hybrid practical-digital effects achieve plausibility through functionality and affective credibility, not indexical truth. The apocalypse models convincing systems and relations, shaping behaviour and perception convincingly.

Pisters’ neuro-image frames the film’s nonlinear time – loops of pursuit, resets and fractured temporality – as brain-like circuits under pressure. Rapid cuts, loud sounds and bright visuals simulate cognition directly, hitting the nervous system before rational thought, evoking pressurised thought in chaos.

Ultimately, Fury Road harnesses post-cinematic tools to both thrill and prepare viewers for modern digital life’s speed and overload, turning spectacle into a form of perceptual training.

This video breakdown of the Mad Max: Fury Road chase scene vividly illustrates Shaviro’s post-continuity through hyper-fast, discontinuous editing that sustains affective intensity and rhythm via “eye trace” and centred framing, guiding the gaze amid sensory overload while prioritising spectacle over classical coherence. It also supports Bukatman’s kaleidoscopic perception, Brown’s operational computational space, Rodowick’s functional realism via affective credibility, and Pisters’ neuro-image by producing immersive, disorienting bodily states and pressurised visual flows that simulate chaotic cognition and train perception under digital conditions.

Bibliography:

Brown, W. (2013) ‘Digital cinema’s conquest of space’, in SuperCinema: film philosophy for the digital age. Oxford: Berghahn.

Bukatman, S. (2003) ‘The ultimate trip: special effects and kaleidoscopic perception’, in Matters of gravity: special effects and supermen in the 20th century. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Pisters, P. (2012) The neuro-image: a Deleuzian film philosophy of digital screen culture. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Rodowick, D.N. (2007) The virtual life of film. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Shaviro, S. (2016) ‘Post-continuity: an introduction’, in Denson, S. and Leyda, J. (eds) Post cinema: theorising 21st century film. Falmer: REFRAME Books, pp. 51–64.