The Citadel opens George Miller’s film as a place of violence and hopelessness, an environment that leaves physical wounds upon the body – Max is brought there and immediately scarred with markings that dehumanizingly list his blood type, while Furiosa is introduced to us through a shot of the symbol Joe has branded on the back of her neck before we’re given the reveal of her mechanical left arm, an enigma to the violence of her past. It’s a frantic, brutal, cyclical journey. We follow their chaotic journey to the Green Place, grieve at their loss of hope, then witness their last-ditch effort to reclaim the once traumatic environment of the Citadel and re-identify it as a home of liberation. We watch as Max is brought there, used as a blood bank for the War Boy Nux, strapped to the front of a fired-up car and sent after Furiosa to bring back Joe’s five Wives. After a short prologue detailing the descent of the world and of humanity, we find ourselves deep within the Citadel, held and run by the tyrannical Immortan Joe.

Geographically, Mad Max: Fury Road ends exactly where it begins.