Given something worthwhile to live for and die for, the war boy Nox showed how who he was and what he was willing to do could be used for good, to protect and preserve and sacrifice for others, even Max. The kindness and beauty (holistically, an asthetic vision of goodness and purity and life) of the wives inspired him, helped him see a better idea of being than he knew or had. And he was willing to give himself up for it.

Furiosa and Max were both characters who used their strength and ruthlessness to survive. They pursued their own survival and their own good, forgetting others. But they were both haunted by their choices and their failures and had failed to find peace or satisfaction in mere survival. Their strength wasn’t serving life or hope, it was only furthering their own pain and the pain of others, in many ways.

Immortan Joe was an awful villain because he aligned everyone and everything around him as his possessions and exploited them purely for his own gain. Nothing was of value except insofar as it gave value to him. The mothers, the wives, the warboys, the rabble. Even Nox’s failed attempt to repeatedly give his life for Joe only merited a dismissive “Mediocre” from Joe. He made himself god. The whole universe was just there was his personal pleasure and gain. And he violated the fundamental rule of virtuous masculinity. That strength isn’t for yourself, it is for others. He used his strength for himself, and used the strength of others for himself. He made the whole world a nightmare by subverting the purpose and true power of strength.

In their own ways, Max and Furiosa, in a similarly harsh world, made a similar choice. Being very strong, they used their strength for themselves (though they didn’t seek to devour and use the strength of others too). But then they had a change of heart and both sought redemption. They decided to use their strength to help and protect and serve others. And suddenly the world started working again, and their souls started to come back to life again. They started to understand what their strength was for. Not for devouring, like Joe, not for mere survival, like in their past lives, but for the help and protection and betterment of others.

Immortan Joe’s world was a terrible one because it reduced all humanity to mere property. Men, women, children, everything. Everything was property to him. He never gave anything, only took. Even his giving was a way to take, to enslave, as he did with the water and the rabble. Even his blessing on the deaths of the war boys was a way to take from them, a way to make them die for his uncaring pleasure and benefit. His giving of luxuries and safety, food and water, to his wives was a way to take from them. In all these cases, he trapped people by offering them things they needed, not as a gift, not as generosity, not at his own expense, but purely for himself, purely as a way to control them and make them depend on him without admitting any need or debt of his own. He never had to give up anything of himself. And that’s a terrible perversion of human relationships.

And it can’t be solved simply by evening the scales and saying no one will give, everyone will be a taker. Everyone will be like Joe: close-fisted, never risking anything, never giving up anything, all of us equally independent little gods. Even if it could work, somehow, all these competing independent citadels, it would not make us safe, or good, or happy. We don’t need to all become Joe, mutual exploiters.

What changed things was when people were willing to give. That’s what perverts possession, not being willing to also be possessed, to also give yourself completely. You cannot possess someone by force without subverting your own nature and the nature and dignity of humanity. But we can give ourselves willing to and for one another. Love cannot be safe, it cannot only be about taking or receiving. It isn’t love unless you are giving. And sometimes a little giving can start to change someone, as it did with Nox. Just a little love, a little kindness, a little mercy, a little risk, a little understanding, and he saw the vision, and he was ready to give his everything for it.

There are many ways you could understand Fury Road. The triumph of the weak over the strong. The triumph of the mothers and women over the men and boys. The triumph of civilization over barbarism. But all of these are somehow inadequate or wrong. Deep consideration reveals the truth to be more complex, less reductive. I think if I had to sum it up to characterize the movie, it is the triumph of love over selfishness.

The wives didn’t win simply by becoming killers themselves. Max and Furiosa still used their strength to achieve victory. Nox still used his devotion to a vision to empower his strength for sacrifice at the end as much as at the beginning. The bad men were defeated, but not all the men were evil. The examples of Max and Nox show that even some very dangerous ones could become heroes. Good strength overcame bad strength. Love overcame selfishness. Courage overcame fear. Cruelty and callousness became care and protection. The world needed Max and Furiosa to be dangerous, but dangerous to evil, not merely dispassionate or dangerous to whatever got in their own way.

In their unwillingness to kill for no reason and their desire to see a better world realized, the wives were in many ways the most dangerous of all. They represented a vision for a different kind of world, a different kind of relationship. One that wasn’t based on ruthlessness and selfishness and exploitation and cruelty and callousness and ugliness. Furiosa was willing to risk everything for that vision, then Max too, then Nox.

The wives didn’t merely defeat or destroy their enemies, they turned them into a different kind of person, brought them into their world. Yes, because of what the world was, they still needed dangerous people like Furiosa and Max and Nox. But they didn’t become like them, they changed them. They saved the dangerous people as much as the dangerous people saved them. They made them wish to be good.