Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior

We wait. In the last episode that we did, we talked about Mad Max and I was under the impress that Mad Max one was going to be this movie, which it wasn't. Everyone thinks Mad Max is going to be this movie. Everyone thinks Mad Max only exists in the post apocalyp Well, what's funny is I mean the way that this film sells itself and the narrative device that it uses to exist is so bizarre to me. But you kind of alluded to it last episode we did, where it's like, oh, these are all essentially being told in a you know, passing along of information folk story style about mad Max, and it's like, you know, we saw him one day and he helped us, and then we never saw him again.

And I don't. I guess what's weird is I guess the world fell apart really quickly. Is that what happened? Yeah, I mean I believe it's a nuclear situation that during Mad Max, everything is breaking down and we may even be at war. Everyone might be at war.

It takes place in Australia, obviously, but it's a world war situation at that point, and maybe Australia isn't in it, but certainly. Soon after Max leaves the police force and his wife and child have been murdered, the world goes nuclear and uh, there are a few survivors, but what there are left? All dress like the local kink shop xport boy. Ain't that the truth? Baby?

And Vernon Wells. You know, I feel like he is comfortable with that. I mean he's used to wearing together, right, ass less chaps? Man? By the way, aren't all chaps are?

Yeah? Aren't all chaps assless? Which is weird, isn't it? Yeah? But what do we just like saying assless chaps just because it conjures the image where your mind should focus.

Is that what that is? Yeah? We're the little cutout window for your butt. Yeah you go, oh yeah, yeah, but you wear jeans. Would be framed perfectly, there, wouldn't it.

Yes, assless chaps, but you wear jeans? Yeah, you don't just wear chap I mean I don't know, lord, yeah right, lord, Hilmongus. Might we wear chaps though? Yeah? Well he doesn't need to wear or anything really except that tiny little thing with the body he's got.

Yeah. So if you don't know what we're talking about. On this episode of the Culture Cast, I'm still your host, Chris Dasher, and I'm joined by my good friend all the way from Midnight view Ing and Dark Destinations. Fought him alone, just walk away. All the divide ins with it, just walk away, giving Mike White a run for his money.

He's a little idea. Wait, Mike White, he doesn't have this. I was go to say there is a little Swedish tinge to it the way he marked with Mike. Yeah, Mine's just angry, dude. And on this episode of the Culture Cast, we're continuing our look at Mad Max with a look at Mad Max two from nineteen eighty one.

The Road Warrior. Time Magazine calls it apocalypse pound exhilarating entertainment. The New York Times calls it an extravagant film fantasy that's action patent, and Playboy Magazine says it has a final pursuit sequence as breathtaking as the Big Chase and Raiders of the Lost Art The Road Warrior see it now on once Again. It's directed by George Miller, written by Terry Hayes, George Miller and Brian Hannant, and it stars Mel Gibson once again. If you want to know our thoughts on mel Gibson check out the first episode of the show, because we're not gonna be talking about mel Gibson that way anymore.

It also stars Bruce Spence, Mike Preston, cal Nilsen who plays Lord Himungus, and Vernon Wells who plays once again a villain Cladden Leather. Just like in Commando. It also starts at Virginia Hay as Warrior Woman. Fans of Farsca Paou soto Zan is in this movie as a survivor. She's one of the good guys, one of the one of the survivors in White here manning the flame thrower, which is which is crazy because uh well, we'll get to when we get to it.

There's a lot of stuff that happens at the end of the movie that happens with zero fanfair. Let's just put it that way, Father Maloon, I'm gonna kick it to you as always. Thoughts on Mad Max two, give me the rundown on Mad Max two, Uh boy, Mad Max two, or as the Right World Knows that The Road Warrior the Right thinking World. It's one of the most important films of the nineteen eighties. Sort of just full stop.

I guess you should say you really can't overestimate its importance in action film. Once again, whatever Mad Max was doing, this one is doing just a couple of years later, at an incredibly dizzying height of insanity. What looked dangerous in the last film you no doubt is terrifyingly so here it continues the story of a character that and manages to tank a character who was living in one scenario, pull him into almost a completely different genre and it feels totally fine. Boy, this movie, I guess I saw this movie. I saw around the same time as Mad Mack, so it was kind of a double feature on the on the television at the time all the time.

Uh, And this one I watched a lot, certainly a lot more than Mad Max. Uh. This one is much more of a comic book, and I think that's why it's more popular. Ultimately, it's certainly a much more visually appealing than you know, basically just proto futuristic Melbourne or Sydney or something like. The wastelands here and the people populating it are are always fun to watch.

Uh. And what you would would you just said, which I had said, you know that these are little folk Tales. Rewatching it again last night, it really sort of struck home that the narrator of this film is that feral child, that that little kid who's got a boomerang and is not afraid to use it, that he's This is what we're witnessing as a film is an eyewitness account of what happened when Max Rocketanski happened upon this the skid was living in. So this is like the first Gospel of Max. And I like that aspect of the movie because I think it works to the film's favor in this film and then obviously in the next one way.

More so, I feel like in terms of talking about expectation versus reality with folks stories, I mean that kind of plays into the third movies, third, second, and third act. It's interesting because you know, this movie is it's not I'm not gonna say it's not a movie, but it's not really a movie. It's really like two very long action scenes with a little bit of something else in between. And I think that also, I mean, mad Max Fury wrote ends up being what this movie probably would have wanted to be if it could have been, which is a massive chase movie. The entire movie and this movie pretty much is.

I mean, there's very few scenes that are people just standing around talking, and for the most part it's people talking at mel Gibson. He is like fifteen lines in this movie. If that, it gets a shockingly small amount of dialogue for our hero, mind you, But I mean, look, I enjoyed this movie. I enjoyed it more than the last one for a whole host of reasons. And you mentioned kind of the long tale of influence that this film has on film also has a really big influence on video games too, because Borderlands is pretty much just Mad Max by any other name.

Like it's not a dystopia, but like it has the feel that Mad Max does. It has like the weird barbarian psycho characters. There's all kinds of weird stuff going on in kind of this desert planet, and this has that same weird shit going on in Australia host apocalypse. And I mean, that's what I appreciate about this movie is it is so different from the last one that it doesn't even feel like it doesn't even feel like you need to see the last movie. Frankly.

I mean, they do a pretty good job at giving you all you need to know at the beginning of this movie that you could just go, oh, maybe I don't even need to see the last one. Yeah, it's one of those choice is Like they used to do this in the early nineteen eighties when everyone was just getting used to the multitude of sequels, that whatever the first couple sequels are, they would do a recap of the last film. So they do it very cleverly here, Like you are correct, you do not need to have seen Mad Max. They cut scenes from his life into the opening crawl. In fact, I while watching the opening montage here, it made me realize that as a kid, I thought I had watched Mad Max more than I had, because they recap it here at the beginning.

Anyways, they what's clever about it is they not only give you the personal history of Max, but they weave it into how the world fell apart and where we are now and Max's placed in it. So it's great and what would feel like an info dump, or if it was in George Lucas's hands it would be a slow crawl of text is done so economically here well, and it's done so well that it it knows that it has a pretty steep hill to climb, because again, this movie is so different from the last one that it not only has to catch people up who haven't seen the last one, but it also has to kind of catch up the people who did see the last one to the world that Mad Max occupies now because it is so drastically different.

There was now whatever the hell they're called gazoline. There was no gasoline shortage in the last movie, and that going was It just wasn't such a major plotform, right right, I mean again, like yeah, to your point, like they they didn't make it the fucking point of the movie, I guess, is what I'm getting at. And in this movie and somewhat in the next one, it's kind of a big part of the movie is the fight for resources whatever they are, you know. And I find that to be interesting because I understand why people who saw the first one would like this one and I and again not to jump ahead to the next movie, but I can also see why people who like this one and the last one would look at the third one and go, what the fuck is this?

But here's the thing for me, Mad Max has made it very clear as a franchise that it can pivot so why do you expect it's not going to pivot again. And it's not like it doesn't have any car chases. There is a rather extended car chase in the third movie, but the first and second movie are pretty much the second movie for sure. The first one has a fair amount too, just like constant car chases, constant better extended. It's like two seconds either, It's pretty extended amount of time.

Yeah, you know, well, we'll get to the third one. I don't need to defend it here. But plenty of plenty of action in that one too, plenty of crazy action in that one too. You're not gonna have to defend the third one to me. Let's put it that way, all all right?

Yeah, I continue with the Road Warrior Mad Max too. Yeah. What I and that's what I was trying to get at, is like, I understand if you get to the third movie and you like these last two, why you're gonna get there Because this movie and the last movie are very similar in what they're trying to do. This this, honestly, in a lot of ways, is just a big budget version of the last movie, and not but not the way Evil Dead and Evil Dead two that's literally the same Plotator Terminator too. But that's the weird thing though.

In Evil Dead they recap the last movie at the beginning of the second movie, just like this movie does, so you don't even have to watch. It kind of goes out of its way to say, you don't want to watch the first movie, Fine, here's all you need to know. I mean, really, all we need to know about Max from the first movie is he is a man without a country. Effectively, he has no wife, he has no kid, his best friend is dead. Like, that's all you really need to know.

He's a broken man out in the wasteland and he's got a dingo. Yeah yeah, And he became this way he wasn't always this way, which is the other I guess. But does that even matter to the narrow right it does. He doesn't even matter to the story, I think. Is the thing that I mean It not that Mad Max doesn't matter, but like he is just us as the audience.

Really he, I mean, Mad Max as a character is a cipher more in this movie that he was in the last one, Like is so much more because he really doesn't say or do anything in this movie for the audience's benefit. No, this movie establishes that. I mean, they front load the information, but each of these films just can begin with him wandering into the scenario, right and off we go, and that proves over and over again, and that you know, it certainly worked in Fury Road, Like what were we given of his backstory there? And nothing? Just him pissing and then let's go.

Well, That's the thing that I like about what George Miller is doing with these movies is what you kind of alluded to with Gulliver's Travels. It's just a guy wandering the wasteland getting into these little adventures. Like why does it need It doesn't need to be anything more than that at all. I mean, there's plenty of Yahoo's in the wasteland for Mad Max to interact with. We're going to see that when the new one comes out, Like you said, sought in Fury Road, because Fury Road's on a prequel.

Fury Road takes chronologically after the second and third Mad Max movie, right, I mean, that's that's a that's yeah, like, yeah, this is he's not telling a story out of order necessarily, No, same guys say the thing could be right, But at the same time, my point it could be the final story. Maybe he dies in that scenario and Emil Minty as the feral kid is telling lies. I don't know. Well that's fair because I mean, to your point, that is part of the movie. That the thing that I really enjoyed about this movie is the unreliable narrator because yeah, it's like, well it was me the whole time.

It's like, okay, that makes sense. And that's also why it had like a rather like up the ending. You know, it would be cool if in a if in a future Mad Max movie it's actually narrated by Max himself. I was honestly kind of surprised that. I mean, I guess maybe Furiosa could be that would kind of interesting if he was narrating her story.

Yeah, but I yeah, to your point, well, well, to your point, like Mad Max now it feels like is not even important enough to be the headliner of his own film, which is fine. She has taken that over Furiosa has as a character, which I'm perfectly fine with Mad Max. I mean, Mad Max is the man with no name, he really is. I mean, if people just need the Chase movie, there's Road Warrior, Like if people have problems with any of the other Mad Max movies, including the original movie. It's because they just want the remake of The Road Warrior over and over again.

And if you just want that Chase movie, then fine, let Furiosa have it, Like, make make a dozen of those Furiosa movies and just make it Fast and the Furious in the Wastelands and let those people have those movies. And whatever Max's next fucking outing happens to be, like, let it be as weird as possible, Like, if he wants to go to space, I'm gonna go to space with Max right well, and again, that's kind of the thing that I appreciate about this series so far is that it doesn't seem to be beholden to anybody in terms of the stories they're telling. George Miller wants to tell the kind of story that he wants to tell, and this is very much his story has his fingerprints all over it, from the weird characters to the dial I mean, lord humongous is I mean it's not that he doesn't have a lot of screen time, but every time he's on screen draws your attention, that's for sure.

It's something else, But so is. So is Vernon Wells. I mean, so is Bruce Spence. For that matter, most everybody in this movie knows why they're here and they're doing the thing perfectly. I love Bruce Spence, man, I know he's so good in this movie.

I'm sure most Americans, young Americans know him, if they know him at all, is from The Matrix. The Matrix sequel. He's the guy in the train station or in the Attack of the Clones or is that the Revenge of the Sith? Which one was it? He was Attack of the Clones.

He was that like long thin alien, you know what. Look, he's been around in Australia forever, Like he did a bunch of like early sex comedies in the nineteen secon Sure of Alphie, and those are great and he's great in all of those. But for those of you who have those Lord of the Rings discs with the deleted scenes, or maybe you can just look it up on YouTube, there's a sequel in Return of the King, when our heroes have gathered at the Gates of Mordor and out comes the mouth of Saorum and it's this, Karen, It's Bruce Spence. So they've digitally made his mouth bigger. You can't see any of his eyes or anything.

It's just a crown that comes down to his mouth and then under it the mouth. They've made the entire size of his face and it's one of the scariest things I've ever seen. So anyway, Bruce Spence, I love him there, I love him here. I love this character in particular, this gyro pilot. I was gonna say, I know Bruce Spence.

The thing I know him from is ace Ventura when nature calls? Who plays one of the poachers in that movie, which is so bizarre to me, because for all intents and purposes, I should remember him from the Matrix. I guess yeah, you know, it's it's one of the only things he's sort of I guess more people would know him from the ace Ventura movie. I just I'm not as familiar with those movies. You mean ace Ventura as Ventura Truth Too, and then ace Ventura June Year.

I somehow missed that trilogy. A Center of two is actually it is not. It's different and weird. But he plays a poacher in that movie, which I mean again like perfect, you know, character actor type role for him. He's great here I mean, look, what's funny is obviously we're gonna be talking about him a lot in the next episode too, And I you know, I find this character to be interesting because it was such a well thought out character.

They just brought him back in the next movie essentially, but with a kid this time, right, But that's a different guy, a completely different guy. They were like, well, we need a gyrocopter type, why don't we. Oh, response, we'll just have him come in again. Like wait, what, wait, what's the idea? I love the idea that Max keeps running into these and honestly, we'll talk about it when we get to the next movie.

But I hope that is this guy. It's not, you know, it can't be, because that guy goes on the guy here, ends up become spoilers, ends up like leading this tribe, right like that. And that's the other thing that's pretty wild about this movie. And that's the thing that I really appreciate about the narrative contained within is Max really isn't the point of these stories. He shows, I mean, he's the point of the story, but like these people continue on without him.

He is just there for a moment. It feels so much like The Incredible Hull and all those other things where he just wanders into town, you know, does whatever and leaves I mean fistful of dollars. Was like that same, I mean, same thing. I mean they call him the Man with No Name in the next movie. Literally, it's it's super on the nose.

But if anything reminds me of these movies, it's wet. I mean, these are westerns. These are just Australian dystopian westerns. That's what they feel like. I mean, it operates by such Western conventions for the most part.

One percent. This movie is definitely a Western. It's it's so remarkably a Western. It's a lawless frontier, like bands of outlaws and settlements of you know, farmers. In this case, gas farmers needs need help and incomes a wandering gun slinger.

Yeah. His gun, of course, being the last of the V eight interceptis right. Well, that's the other thing. He doesn't even use gun. Mad Max is like that's part of the gag.

Is like he doesn't even have any AMMO for his guns because amos so scarce always misfires. Yeah, I know, and I like that. I like that the world has broken down and they recognize that pretty much everything is going to break down, right, Yeah, that's the I mean, you know, speaking of another you know style of dystopian cinema, like zombie movies. That's always been my issue with zombie movies, like the bullets run out at some point, Yeah, what are you gonna do? And this movie addresses that.

It's like there's nothing you can do. Those bullets become like gold, because a gun without any bullets is effectively a fucking paper weight, by the way, I mean literally a paper weight. You know. I was pretty much with the movie Zombie Land until they turned on all the rides at the park and I was like, where are they getting that power? It seems like everything is pretty much I'm dead at this point.

Well, I mean, you could make the excuse that they're they're running on nuclear but I don't think so. No. And that's what I appreciate about Mad Max the series is George Miller thinks of everything, right, I mean in a lot of ways, like and and for me, as someone who appreciates a director who is putting everything of themselves on screen and thinking of everything, George Miller strikes me as the kind of director and screenwriter who thinks these things out and through completely and there isn't any real look. I mean, the tone of this movie is so different from the last one, but it makes sense. It like this, this logically tracks.

Is it kind of a complete one pint eighty? Sure, but that's okay. Like I'll tell you, if this was coming out now, people would be up in arms, What the fuck are you doing to my franchise? Like this is a hard This is the hardest kind of pivot, right, Like this is a pretty hard pivot. Yeah.

Effectively, the last movie was just Fast and the Furious, like I mean, barely any sort of future anything. I mean, the gasoline They barely even talk about it in the last movie. But now everything is like not futuristic, but this, I don't know what you would call it, like apocalypse futuristic like it. This is such a distinct look to it that Mad Max kind of conjures this look into existence and everybody else more or less cops from it. I mean, even something like Borderlands, I mean it looks very much like this.

Lots of weird, unique looking characters. Well you know you said about it, like the fans of the franchise freaking out when they should have changed the genrep a little bit like we saw that happen. Like thank God when he did Fury Road, he ended up giving the people what they want, which was a giant chase movie because we saw with say Phantom Menace that God forbid if you show how a civilization collapses and include a scene at the Galactic Senate, that people will be making fun of it as the most boring thing they've ever seen. I do. I've been saying this recently, and I think it probably bears repeating.

Now, boy, those prequels have aged a lot better in light of how bad the sequels were. Oh well, that's that's It's true though cold comfort maybe. But but you know what, I've always said that those prequels, like like them or not, all have some pretty fucking fantastic set pieces. And they are not those first three Star Wars movies. No, they feel like they're part of the story, and they feel separate and distinct than those than those first three, whereas the fucking the three sequels we just got, we're just like y huh, nostalgia right.

Well, And and that's the thing that I find interesting about Matt Max as a franchise. Is Fury Road. What nostalgia bating does that film do? What nostalgia bating does this film do for the last movie? Nothing, It's not like they were like here, they mentioned the Interceptor once, and in the last movie they don't even make a big deal out of it because we see four five of them.

It's not just one. I mean, there are a bunch in the previous movie. Now it's made clear to us that that is not the case anymore. What's funny is yeah, I mean, because that line is in the movie, the last of the V eight Interceptors. Like that line just sort of kind of echoed out into the fan community because we've all made way too much of Mad Max's car.

He barely uses that car. He uses it a little bit at the beginning, just to get to where he's going. He doesn't really use as soon as he's free. That car is effectively destroyed. We don't see it at all in the next movie, and in the start of the one after they wreck it almost instantly.

Again, it's for such a legendary car, it's sure gets fucked up a lot. Well, it's legendary from the last movie, I guess, right. But there are things from this movie that I think are much more iconic to this movie. I mean, all the cars at the end of the movie are so distinct and unique to look at, and I think for me, that's like one of the biggest successes of this movie. And I think all the Mad Max is is to go back to George Miller's style, being so it reminds me of George Lucas, Like there's something about it.

It feels lived in, like when Dan O'Bannon wrote Alien. I mean, part of that script is to make it a real, lived in science fiction world, and Mad Max feels lived in. It's not shiny, it's not polished. It's literally the desert. These people are covered in dirt and grime and whatever the fuck else, and people's lives are taken with like zero just nobody cares.

There's zero like anything. Mercy is not a thing here for anybody. Everybody is just shot and murdered at will for the most part because the resources are so scarce. And I like that about this movie. I mean, to your point about the prequels, how dare you try to actually build a world?

Because look, the original Star Wars movies weren't necessarily interested in doing that. But when given the opportunity to put some world building into a movie, I don't think it's a bad thing. And this movie has a little bit of it. Again, it uses it expository crutch, but I think the payoff being we're watching one of the characters who is the narrator in the entire time. I think it works in the movie's favor, but there's plenty of movies where this narrative device could sink the entire movie.

You know, it does feel a lot like sort of early George Lucas as far as the handmade quality and the ingenuity of it and the lived in quality. But it's also you know, hiring artisans around him to make these things possible. Like obviously he's hiring people who are fucking welding masters and are down in Australia creating work of works of art and saying, hey, could you do this for this car? And could you do it using technology that would just be laying around because that's all that's left. That's that you know, the desert is so sparse in these movies, and the the technology that we see is pretty spare as well, So it's not like something like Brazil where we can see all of the and like recycled technology like on full display.

But here the recycled technology moves and is part of the action. It's it's quite incredible to behold well. And to your point, it's it's so distinctive and unique. I mean, I mean even now it still feels distinctive. Obviously, like I've alluded to, this has really been copped from and copied so many times at this point by so many different kinds of movies.

You remember the movie Doomsday, Oh yes, yeah, like this man, what else is it? Is it? That movie? Like that movie was an Escape from New York remake with a with a road warrior aesthetic. Yeah, which is weird right like the But that's the thing for me that works with the what the road warrior aesthetic is, you can do a lot with and you can tell it, you can tell different kinds of stories because that's you know, this movie, I think in terms of the story it's telling is distinct enough from the last movie.

I mean again, we have a little bit more of a rundown society, we have a little bit more violence, we have higher stakes because he's helping this community as opposed to just himself trying to prevent his wife and son from being murdered. So it's interesting that it's interesting that people didn't have a problem with this movie kind of slowing down for a little bit and having this kind of societal you know, back and forth between Popagaio and friends. This is like what nineteen eighty one, right, So the velocity on displaying here is unlike anything we've seen. Yeah, so you know, audience is the time, and audience is discovering this movie on videotape. We're used to American action movies, which you know are fine, but they're certainly not batshit crazy.

So like the pauses in this movie are very brief, by the way, very brief. It's not like we spend a lot of time getting to know everybody. It's what's kind of ingenious about the movie. The alchemy is that we meet these people and he's cast them so well that we don't really need to know anything but a few lines of dialogue and just looking at them you go, yeah, okay, I got it. Like when Bruce Spence comes up out of the ground where he's been laying in wait for somebody to try and steal his gyrocopter, like just the way he's dressed and his mannerisms, like you know, that fucking guy has gone crazy out there in the desert by himself and his pet snake.

Right, yeah, no, you're You're totally right. And that's I mean again, I think we take it for granted now that this, you know, this kind of wasteland has been repurposed so many times for so many other things. But to your point, like this, this was really it in terms of these kinds of movies for a while. I mean this, this movie is very popular because it's kind of the first time we see this kind of setting, this punk future, like punk apocalyptic future, any apocalyptic film before. For this, it was a slow like trod through the through the wasteland, like you know, it was all very oh my god, what have we done?

This movie is like it happened, baby, and here we go. Which is what I appreciate about you know, this movie, in the last movie, for sure, is that it just it just goes and in it going, I mean, I think it shows the prowess of someone like George Miller to keep a chase the third act of your movie again and he pulls it off again. It's impressive, isn't it. And he'll do it again and again. He just just it ever feel cheated.

It's like, Okay, here we go with the chase sa. It's never like oh another chase sing. It's like, oh boy, I know the chase scene well. And the other thing about the chase scene is, I mean it is similarly to the last film with our our hero and the villain, like they don't they don't really get to fight one another. They don't really get to like there's not in these movies.

There's not a lot of physical combat, which I'm really impressed by. Also because it's a lot of in the Cat's almost everything in the car other than the couple times they're at the compound. But Vernon Wells's character dies while on the car. Lord Humongus dies in his car. Hugh keys Burn died on his motorcycle last movie.

Like I really appreciate that about these movies is that you know, they are committed to making the car stuff work, and they're committed to having the car stuff be the focus of an entire act in movie. To your point, this is not a thing in eighty one anymore than it was in seventy nine. It's a chase scene and a shootout. The shootouts is the cars, right, they don't have it, Like, there's not really guns in this in this universe, Like Max has a gun and barely uses it. And to your point, Max, you know, always functions as you know, a piston in the greater machinery of the story to the point where, yeah, he does not other than beyond Thunderdown, where he has intimate sort of interactions with the villain.

In each of these films, he doesn't even me. He doesn't have an interaction once with Lord Humongous, Lord Umungus is just a thing out there, right, Yeah, no, that's and that's my point, Like I love that about these movies is just that the I think him and Lord Morton or I Morton Joe, they're like they maybe share a look, right and they're passing each other in a car like. But but that's what I like is that again, like the villains are there, but they're dealt with the way they need to be dealt with in a movie that's about car chases. They just die in their car. I mean, really, Lord Himungus gets it.

He gets it in this movie. At the end. I mean that that practical effect of his car hitting the trucker there the tanker is just holy shit, it's a thing of beauty. It is, and this and and and the fact that you have Vernon Wells hanging on the front of the of the tanker on top of everything else. Two birds with one stone.

Yeah again, Like that's the beauty of George Miller is He's able to take something as you know, again taken for granted, for as a car chase, and turns it into a thing of beauty, a genuine thing of beauty. And a lot of that success goes to him, really does. You can't give that credit to a whole lot of other people because he's the writer, director pretty much all these movies. You know we talked about we're talking about Mad Max as far as anti heroes go. Like, I don't think in the first film Mad Max is an anti hero.

He's a hero, right, he's a Yeah. This movie is the movie where Max is an anti hero because Max actually does not give a shit about anything. No, and it if you watch it again, which like I said, did last night, Like he just wants his car back, and he wants fuel and that's all and that's what he does. He only agrees to this crazy plan at the end as a form of revenge, it seems, or as another scenario where Max has been pushed so far that he's just like, fuck it, I'll just do this thing. And it's not for anybody really but himself.

Right right now, You're totally right. And what's interesting is, I mean, again, any kind of shows up in the next movie just as much as in this movie. But I think that into the narrative structure of the movie. I think that works to the movie's favor, that he can just be like detached from everything, because again, like these kinds of characters don't work very well when they're rooted in one place. That's that's kind of the last thing you want is for Mad Max to be, you know, stuck in Bartertown in the next movie, or somewhere where he can't drive around and do things.

I mean, part of these, part of the appeal of these kinds of films is that there is very little in way of the film stopping for a moment to give you a breath. And if we had to see Mad Max leaving, you know, leading a pedestrian suburban lifestyle, I wouldn't you wouldn't want to watch that. But George Miller knows what he's doing, getting these movies, you know, kind of into the right position for their third act to just to bring the house down. Really, I mean, the third and the third act in this movie is wild. Oh yeah, it goes and it goes like it's the simplest plot in the world.

These people have gasoline. These crazies want that gasoline. They need get away. Somehow Max will do that for them. And as soon as all those pieces are in place, it just never stops.

It's like I think that I think the chasing at the end of the movie is like twenty minutes long, Like it's just it. It goes. Yeah, yeah, you know you could. You can tell that because the plan for Fury Road was started in like ninety four or something like that, right like that's when they started writing that movie for the first time. And I believe the idea was, what if we made the last chase in The Road Warrior as an entire movie.

Can we do that? Can we get away with that? And it just so happens that that's all the fans have been screaming about the all time. So right, that's all they've wanted. Yeah, and I think that that, you know, I was thinking about this when I was in the shower yesterday.

I was thinking about this. This franchise has a as the problem that The Sopranos had. This franchise I don't think is necessarily I'm not sure George Miller is completely involved and invested in making a full on chase movie, given the other things I've seen him make, you know what I mean, Like, I'm not sure that that's his intent. And it reminds me a lot of in The Sopranos, when the people were watching that show, they're like, there's not enough people being killed. It's like that's not really the sole intent of the show.

And I would say the same thing about Mad Max. I mean, to your point, Fury Road is non stop. I mean there's like one scene where they stop at night to I think, if memory serves me right, like literally there's one scene. But at the same time, like Mad Max, I think, for me is so much more than just a car chase movie, Like it's the whole world that all of this is taking place with it, and it's setting it up to get to that point. They set up enough that the payoff really really works.

Like I've always thought of and continue to think of this movie as sort of non stop. But you know, there are moments where Max it stops to show this feral child little tiny music box that he found earlier in the wasteland, and then and then gives it to him. So there's little human moments here and there, Like the Bruce Spence character the auto gyropilot life immediately forms this weird little romance with one of those one of the residents. She's gonna run away with him and stuff like, just I mean, it doesn't it sounds likely it should take a long time, but this movie, because it's such a clip that even those are fasts. But at least it slows down to give us them, you know, Like you get to see all these people really cottonto Max, particularly the gyro pilot who is like calling him buddy and friend partner by the end, like he really wants to be partners with Max by the end, which is really endearing.

Max travels alone other than with his dog. Oh that fourth thing, huh dog gets shot in this movie, man, geez, you know the stakes are really eyes when a dog dies. They kill this dog it's not cool. Yeah, I'm thinking, I'm back, that's what. But that's the thing.

Mad Max isn't John Wick. Mad Max Like, it's not that Mad Max is inept. It's just he's, like you said, he's not the sole cog making the machine go. He's like a second or third cog, but he's not the first one. Max degradation.

He knows failure in this world, right, and that keeps getting hammered over and over again, particularly here. Here's the ultimate thing in this movie is that these people need to get their gasoline outs, so they hire Max to get a rig to haul a gasoline tankler and then he doesn't want to take it on their crazy suicide mission out he's forced to do that and gets away basically like almost you know, But as it turns out, they fucked him over and it's filled with sand. Like he's not even hauling gasoline. He's just a decoy and he didn't know I know, which I that was a clever twist. I thought that was very clever.

At the end of the can you imagine the end of a Sylvester Stallone movie in nineteen eighty five where his character gets completely duped and then abandoned at the end. Can you imagine a world in which that movie would exist or a Schwarzenegger action movie. Oh and not only that, but it's satisfying. Yeah, I And that's the thing I mean to your point. I think this the pay off at the end of the movie works because again, like you have to do what you have to do to survive in the wasteland is what it feels like, and it's made very clear that that's the case, and you can screw over as many people as you want and get away with it, like, and that's what happens.

Like you said, Max is the decoy. They don't even tell him, They don't even make him aware of that, because if not, if he wasn't able to sell it, it wouldn't matter. Another facet of bath scene that I find will play out in each of the movies that comes around. When people were talking about Fury Road, the end of Fury Road, I kept hearing about this alternate ending, this original ending, which is at the end Furiosa goes up on that elevator to open the floodgates with the water and everything. The alternate ending, though crazy, alternate ending, was that Max goes up on the elevator with them, and I remember the reaction to that being what I just said, which is like uh huh.

And but that's monumental because Max, at the end of each of these, unless he's abandoned, which he kind of isn't the next one here, he's given the choice to go with them and doesn't, and he has nothing. So Max by choice is a wanderer in this wasteland. Like he recognizes his own role in this world, which is I'll come and help out when I can, but then I'm back out there. Right. What's his goal?

What is your what is your mission? Max? Yeah? I don't I don't know what it is to exist, to just travel the wasteland? Like what is what is he doing?

Why? Why is he mad? Max? At this point? Like what what about him?

I don't know? That's I'm trying to drive. It's a fascinating puzzle if there is a drive at all. Like in a lot of ways, like that's why I said, it reminds me of, you know a lot of what Clineswood did with the man with no name, Like what's his drive? Money?

I guess I guess their their drive would be. See, that's the thing the man with no name. If he robbed a bank and got enough money, he could just assimilate into regular society and leave the lawlessness behind. There's no chance for that here except for these little enclaves that Mac keeps running into and that he then rejects. Right, And you said that in that way, he's letting them all die because he's the most capable person in this world.

In any group would be like hugely benefited by his presence. Well, and that's what's interesting, is like you said, like he's such a good wheelman that in a world where everybody drives cars, that's who you need really is like an ace wheelman to keep your keep your settlement safe. But that's the thing. It seems like none of these settlements are really that safe. They're in the middle of the open, you know, out in the open, with just some like steel walls protecting them from tons of marauders.

It's it's kind of shocking that that's all it takes to keep them away. Well, that flamethrowers, Right, And that's the thing, Like, not only is Max capable out on the roads, for you, like there's a moment where that the gate is open and the people the populace can't even defend themselves, and Max is the one who gets that gate closed and flame throwers a whole bunch of people. Yeah, well, I think there's had a whole bunch of people. Don't come at me because he didn't actually lay a whole bunch of people on fire out But to what end? Right, Like, I don't know what Max is doing this for, just because just because you know, because I guess, I guess you got to stay busy in the apocalypse somehow.

It's got nothing to lose but nothing to live for. But he keeps living, which is what I don't understand. Like, the character of Max is so strange. He's almost not a character. He says very little in this movie compared to the last one.

Oh my god. Yeah, I mean this is pretty much mute in this movie. I like it though. I mean, look, it's very Clint Eastwood. It works, It really works.

It makes your character seem very badass, very intimidating. Oh he doesn't talk by choice? Ooh yeah, I guess he's just so good at driving cars. That's what he's known for. Because it's not these like crazy feats of anything like what they did in this movie is not that crazy, is it?

Like? No? But you know he he gets the job done right, which is the important thing about Mad Max is similarly to so many other of those kinds of eighties heroes. They don't necessarily need to be the most technically adept. They can kind of fumble their way through things, and Max really does.

He really fuck through it. Sometimes well, he gets fucked up on his own time here, like when he set out to get the rig. He gets that rig. When he says, I'm gonna get this tanker out of here and you get you guys safe to the north, he does that too. In the next movie.

He does what he has to do, except when he chooses not to well. In this movie he also flips his car over and it explodes and then they kill his dog boy. They got Chekhov's Chekhov's gasoline bomb in this movie. They pay it off a few times. Let me show you here it is, and then we're gonna show you take it off the car.

We're gonna show you put it back on the car. Guess what's gonna happen? Yeah, what a guess. I felt bad for that one guy who gets all of his fingers cut off when he tries to reach for the for the for the metal boomerang, metal boomerang. It's obviously a razor flying through the air and you shouldn't put out your bare fingers.

But it just seems so sad to me him laying there without his fingers, and I've one cackling at him. And then he's one of the two guys who kills the dog, and I'm like, kill this motherfucker, this fingerless shit piece a shit I I you know, I find all of the villains in this movie to be very charming. Again, we mentioned Vernon Wells a little bit. He's uh, he's out and he's proud. Yeah, he's unfucking hinged in this movie.

He's great and you you already mentioned it. But my god, some of this movie looks so dangerous. The third act of this movie is just like, God, I hope you got insurance. So hope somebody's got insurance. Before we get into the craziness stunts and everything, I was sauntched with my girlfriend and she pointed out something that I had never actually really noticed before.

This movie is such a comic book and those costumes are so crazy and but everything looks so well lived in that I never really noticed how clean everyone was. I mean, with Lord Humongous, you kind of we're gonna give him a pass because he seems all supernatural, but everyone else is really really clean. And the only one who sort of should get the actual pass is Vernon Wells because there's a scene of him cleaning him self up at one point, But everyone else seems like they just took a shower and then put on their dusty gear on their way to Burning Man. By the way, would you not say that there's there's a sequence where they've warned the people that they if they send anybody out that they're going to torture and kill them.

So there's this jamboree torture kill sequence with them on the hill, and it's just the crazy music is going and used the Lord humongouses. You can see shouting and shouting and shouting. The entire montage there just seemed to me like the trailer for Burning Man, like that's people just watched that sequence over and over again it said we need to go do that. Well, yeah, well, so let's let's talk a little bit about the production design and the look of everything. It is very it's so unique and distinct, but it does kind of have this like weird tribal quality to it, Like it's not it's not tribal in the way that I don't know, it's weird, like I don't know how to describe it, but it's like leather and it's all fetish where yea auto parts.

Yeah, I mean, you know another thing like Fallout, the game and the show also cops from this too. Oh yeah, Well, you kind of can't do an apocalyptic wasteland and not have it echo Mad Max in some way, just because they got there first and they did it so well. Like as far as a wasteland goes, like if we were get into like cities and stuff, we never really do that in Mad Max. I mean it's a little bit in the next one, but it's all models and stuff. But as far as if we're going to be out there in the in the in the wastes, then you automatically owe them a debt, right right, and not only a debt, but like a massive debt of gratitude to making this this well the first time too, because this is so well done.

That's why it's copied so frequently, is because it is so well thought out and so well executed. And look, the car chase at the end of the movie is like maybe seven or eight cars deep, that's it. But it's so well done that you forget that there are only seven or eight cars and it's not forty cars or whatever Fury Road ends up doing. And that's what they wanted to make this whole time. I get it.

Fury Road is what they've always wanted to make. I know that, you know that. I mean, it's the same way people remember the Godzilla movies, Like Godzilla wasn't as present in his original movies as the new movies make him out to be. Like, you can only do so much with what you were given with Mad Max. Look, George Miller did a lot more than most people were doing.

But you couldn't do Fury Road in nineteen eight eighty one. You couldn't do Fury Road when Thunderdome came out either. You had to do it when you could do that kind of scale realistically. Well, you know, it's funny. My memories of Road Warrior are that there were that many cars, right, But I know that there were hundreds of cars chasing that tanker truck and the action was even crazier than I remembered.

And then of course watch Fury Road and then watch this one, and you know the scene, the just walk away scene. To me, in my mind, there are, like I said, hundreds of cars spread out as far as the eye can see. You watch it now and like it's maybe fifteen twenty cars. Yeah, it's still horrifically threatening given the scale of everything else, but like it's it now makes me wonder if the Fury Road people like will even like Road Warrior if they go back and watch it. Well, and that's what I was gonna ask you, Like, you know, we talked a little bit about it on the last episode about watching Mad Max and if you're a fan of Fury Road, would it even be something worth checking out?

I feel like if people watch this movie, they might find it not pedantic, but they might look at it and go, why am I watching this when I can watch Fury Road. Yeah, there are no people on poles vaulting from vehicle toweling guitars. Yeah this they have no flaming guitar doofs Like this is just a couple of guys on a truck and you know some other cars, but oh my god, your dad, you'd be doing yourself at the service because it's crazy. The action here is totally insane, and more often than not you can just see that it's vernon wells, like jumping and running and leaping from vehicle to vehicle, and you're like, Jesus Christ, that's commitment, man, you know. Yeah, I was gonna say, like you you mentioned it not looking safe, like boy, not that it didn't look safe.

I'm sure it was being conducted the safest way possible, but it looks dangerous. It looks very genuinely dangerous. And look, you got cars being lit on fire, going off of rams, hitting into other cars, and you've got real actors hanging on too said cars at the same time, like it's it's fucking nuts. Like if anything like even if you watch this movie and go, eh, I like, you know, I like the or Fury Road more. This is a technically impressive film.

Yeah, man, I mean what everyone crowd about Fury Road was there's no cg. It's all practical, which was of course a lie in this film. It's all practical. You couldn't do it. Like.

The big special effect here is on occasion he cranks the camera to make it look like it's going a little faster, right, right, But that's really, for the most part, just in a lot of close ups of the actors to make it look more dangerous than it actually is, because they're I'm assuming for the most part, when they have shots of the actors, they're doing that so that it can look better than it is, right, because again they're trying to keep the actors safe by not going seventy miles per hour actually in the cars. I don't know, man, it's George Miller. Yeah, I think really the only protecting mel. I think if you weren't if you weren't named Max in this movie, you were pretty much fair game for the stunt work.

That's fair. Yeah. I mean again, a lot of the actors are present in the final set piece of the movie, which takes place on top of an oil tanker, and none of them are stuntman. I know that much fun was all Vernon Wells was not a stunt man. But I mean that's the thing, like it shows in the movie, like the quality of it's in a lot of ways, it reminds me of Raiders of the Lost Arc in terms of that you know, the chase towards the end of that movie.

Again we have a bigger truck, smaller cars chasing after it. And I think that they're both fantastic representations of these kinds of chases done right. The way that they're executed, I think adds not only to the scene itself, but the movie overall. I mean that that chasing and Raiders of the Lost Arc is widely considered to be one of the greatest set pieces stunt you know of stunt work all time, and I would think that this has got to be mentioned in a similar conversation if not, you know one A, one B. Really Yeah, they've both came out the same year actually, and I think there you go.

There's the best best Hollywood chase scene you're possibly going to get the big studio movie doing down and dirty chase. The pinnacle is the truck chase at the end of Raiders of the Lost Arc. But just looking across the ocean, this is how you actually do it, chase. It's this insane, it's this dangerous. These characters are going to die casually.

We're not going to linger no, which is the yeah no fanfare given to like almost all of the characters we've been following the entire movie. Other than Max. They they all, for the most part, all die. This is one of the only film franchises where the phrase life is cheap is actually on display. Yeah, yeah, well they treat Max's life that way too.

I mean, Bruce Spence and all of them just leaving him with a tanker full of dirt. I mean like that, I think for the horses. You know, no blame for Bruce Spence here, Bruce Spence is a good friend. He comes and gets him when he's fucked up. And then you know, he was like, you should come with us in the final scene, like Max, you have nothing, come with us.

He but he doesn't want to because how else is he going to go? That's the thing, Like to your point, like what is Max living for anymore? Just because Max just an emo kid, you know, like come on Max, Like no, I don't know again, like I don't know what his motivation is in these movies, Like and I don't know what the man with no names motivation is either, Like he's just he's just trying to live and exist I guess without being hassled or bothered by other people. Then other people make his life, their business. Since he lost the only person he loved, no other human can be a substitute.

I am interested to see. And I know we're eventually gonna talk about Fury Road sort of in detail, but they hint at these ghosts that Max tends to see. And I would love to see a movie where Max constantly fails. Yeah, me too. I want to see him lose again and again and again.

Is that terrible that I want to watch Max go through that? No? I think for the most part, the only thing we've seen him go through is the end of the first movie This. Yeah, he's I mean he loses a triumphant. He's triumphant in each of these movies, and he's triumphant.

Part of it is because he doesn't allow himself to get attached to anybody, right right, So I would I would not mind seeing the movie where Max gets reattached here in the in the Wasteland. I mean, we get a little bit of each of the movies. He softens a little bit in each of the movies, but he never commits. And it's not that I don't get it. I think I think it works because again, what what George Miller is clearly inspired by a fistful of dollars.

Didn't have love interests, right, Like that wasn't the point of the movie. The Bat and Ugly didn't have love interests either, Like, well, I'm not saying it needs to be a love interest now, No, I don't know. I don't think it. I think to your point, like it, it kind of stands alone as its own thing, like Mad Max stands alone. And that's for me, that's the benefit of this kind of narrative because you can take it anywhere.

The moment he becomes attached to somebody is the moment he can't just fucking up out and leave. But apparently he has gotten the test to some people because they haunt him in Spectral Farm now at the most inopportune moments in Fury Road. I don't remember that at all. It's it's pretty much only in the opening scene when he's being chased by the by the war Boys. They keep cutting to his point of view with these ghosts running at him.

They're like yelling, like Max, you have to say of us, huh, Yeah, I don't remember Fury wrote at all that. I guess I'm super excited to rewatch it because I don't remember that. Why? Why does the character of Max doesn't need any new ones? Like and at But every little fucking breadcrumb they drop, I'm just like, Oh, what's that about?

What's going on with Max? There? But that's what That's what makes it so interesting as a character, is him having that life before. I think I think it works because we've seen that side of Max. We don't need to see it again, do we.

I mean, we do what we do, but we don't. Like I see where you're coming from, Like, it would be nice to see that, But I don't think the way the narratives are being written now about this character, he's even the focus of the story anymore. I know. That's what I'm saying. I'd like to have at least one that he is.

Here's here's an impossible question for you better anti hero Max Rakatanski or Snake Pliskin. So I've never seen Escape from La. I just want to proud. I just want to preface my answer. I mean, some people care.

I'm sure you see that clip of John Carpenter telling that kind of fuck himself when he said, what happened with Escape from La? Fuck you? What the fuck? Oh? Yeah, this clip online.

Check it out. What is Carpenter's deal? Man? No, man, he needs to show out like he does like video games. We get it.

Man, Can you hate Rob Zombie with a passion? We get Oh, you know, and I understand that, But like Cinemata, I don't. He said, hey, Rob, do your own thing, and then he did and he didn't like it. What do you expect what the man was gonna do? For fuck's sake?

Uh? Is there a better anti hero or who's better m I would say mad Max snake Bliskin still feels a little bit able to get attached to stuff. Max has seemingly like mastered the art of not being attached to people. Huh, like Pliskin. I mean Pliskin kind of gets attached to the President.

He kind of gets attached to Andrey and Barbo like a little more than Max ever does to any of these people. I don't think. I don't think snake Bliskin gets attached to those people, But I think he, like Max, feels their deaths deeply and given an opportunity, will avenge those deaths, which is what he does at the end of Escape from New York, like destroying that tape basically fucks the president harder than if he had just left him in the prison. So I think they're pretty even as far as that goes. But I think Kliskin is actually much more of an AMORL pragmatist, Like I don't think Max would have shut the world down given the opportunity.

And oh, you haven't seen Escape from La. He does that? An Escape from La. What does he do? He shuts the world down?

But look, it is it is not a good movie. Nobody can convince me it is. But the one amazing thing in the movie is that they're trying to get this key, like this electronic key to a satellite that can controls a network of satellite that basically kind of electronic like electromagnetic pulse the entire world and send us all back to the dark Ages. So he's trying to get that back for the President and at the end they they're convinced that he has given it to them, but he has not. He has it in his own head.

And you can you can target countries. This is I don't know why are we talking about this? That you can use you can use these electromagnet impulses as a weapon and target a country and wipe out that country, and then you're the dominant force and they're back in the Dark Ages. But plis Can enters the All World Code and sends the world back to the Dark Ages. It's a fucking ballsy, awesome cool thing in an otherwise terrible remake of Escape from New York.

But my point is, given that opportunity, I don't think Max would would shut the world down. He would just prevent anybody from continuing to shut other people down. You know, So you think Snake's more of an anti hero then for that choice alone, If if we're going on pure anti heroism, I think snakeplis Can takes it. Because ultimately Max is a softy who misses people. He just can't find a way to get attached to people is the problem.

Max has very little access to psychiatric care, and he clearly needs some because he's got a lot of issues abandonment issues being grief that he has not worked out at all. That dog is not a soiler goin right, Yeah, I uh yeah, I guess based on that decision, I would I would agree with you. I mean, the thing that's nice about mad Max is again he's in the vein and in the mold of so many other anti heroes that have worked, it's like a layup. They don't really have to try very hard. I mean, he really is a further down the road depiction of the man with no name from fistful of dollars and good, the bad, and the ugly, Like it's that's that's the kind of character this is.

It's just a further kind of evolution of it. And that character works because we don't, like you said, the less we know about him the better, and any bit of information that we get about him, because we get so little feels massive, like any little thing feels massive because there's there is nothing. And for mad Max, we got an entire movie about his backstory. But now he's just doing whatever the hell he wants, Like he's seemingly a va his wife and son at the end of the last movie, I would assume maybe he thinks he did. But in this movie he's just doing whatever because whatever, just because.

And in the next movie he's inconvenienced by someone and that's why he starts doing something. This is really the only movie where it's like it just kind of happens. I mean, even in fury Road. Correct me if I'm wrong, But like he's interjected more into what's going on than in this movie. Like this movie is just like wanders into this town, this little community essentially, and they just happened to be a refinery that happens to be threatened by humongous These are all happenstance.

The next movie, he inserts himself into things because he kind of has to. But I like that about this movie. It really is just like he shows up, meets some fucking weird people, helps him out, and then he fucks right back off to what else he has been doing before. I made a crazy literary comparison in the last film to Gulliver. I'm going to do it again here.

Mad Max is not unlike a Raymond Chandler hero in that Chandler's detectives tend to just stumble into a case or the case stumbles into them, whereas Nashal Hammett's characters are like out there trying to hunt down some work. So, you know, it feels a bit Lebowski the entire Mad Max storyline. It's just you know, he shows up and something happens to him, or he happens onto something and in a way we go and I like that, and I like that at the end of the movie, you know, we get the kind of revealed that the narrator has been a little child throughout the movie, and he goes, did we ever see the Road Warrior again? No, we didn't. And I like that because that puts a nice little button on this movie and says, this is all.

This is all it was. There is nothing else, And if another movie comes out, it'll probably be similar framing device there too. Of this is the story of another encounter with the famed you know, road Warrior, because that's the other thing, Like I don't even want to call him Mad Max anymore. He's the Road Warrior. Like that's that's where the reputation is seating him, is being known as the road Warrior.

Clearly, I love that. It's a throwaway line. And then because they didn't think enough Americans had seen Mad Max, that calling it Mad Max two was folly. No one would go see a sequel to a movie they hadn't seen that, Let's call it the Road Where. But it's pulled from a line of dialogue which I always liked, you know, Yeah, No, And again I think that's you know, success given to George Miller and crew for really understanding what to do with the character that at the end of the last movie you did.

There's not even an expectation of a sequel at the end of the last movie, Like you can end the last movie and walk away from this franchise and it tells a story unto itself, and this movie does as well. Like, I think it's almost unfair to compare Mad Max Wanted Mad Max two because they're doing such different things. Intentionally, it's just the character of mad Max, but everything else is so different. I mean, even he is different. Even he as a character is very different from the character that was at the end of the last movie.

But each previous movie informs the character, which is one rifle. Yeah, it's so well done and well written. Frankly, it's shocking. It's not like they give us much of his characterization in each of these movies. But it definitely feels like there's a progress, an evolution of this guy from who he became and who he will become.

Yeah. Yeah, No, Like I said, I enjoyed this movie fair amount, and I enjoyed the action scenes that the action's great, The practical effects are fantastic. Everything about this movie just helms right along. If you haven't seen What's Wrong with You, it's a classic. I would say this is the classic over the last one.

Yes, I think this is a better movie than the last one. If we're talking like where I would point someone, because Ryan and I are going to do a film foundations on this at some point, I would find it hard to point them at the first movie. I feel like this has to be kind of the answer, because it really is where the franchise is trying to go. Unfortunately unfortunately, however, Oh yeah, I don't think there's any judgment on it. It's where the movies go when they go there.

It just so happens that the most latest Mad Max film was an extended chase. But it's fucking next a genius extended chase. Right. If that's your only interaction with Max, and you and they want to see some of his earlier incarnations, you've only got one shot, right, Don't send them to Mad Max, don't send them to Thunderdome, send them to the Road Warrior. They will decide if they like the other two based on whether or not they liked this one, because this is the one that you're going to remember if he had not made Fury Road, if George Miller had died, this is the movie they would all have pointed to, right.

And that's the other thing that's very important when having a discussion about this movie, is you know, we really have lived only in the time post Fury Road half as long as the time in between Fury Road and this this movie, or even the next movie. I mean, the next movie comes on eighty five. This movie comes on eighty one, so we're talking forty years and the like. It was like, how long was it in between eighty five and twenty fifteen, like ten, fifteen, twenty years, Like there was twenty years where there was no Mad Max anything. They were talking about it.

But George Miller was also making Babe and Babe two and Happy Feet and Happy Feet too. All those movies were made in between Mad Max three and Fury Road. Oh listen, man. On all of the Starlog magazine in the back they would have this like this rundown of movies in production, and I got to tell you, for it seems like decades, and it turns out it was decades. You would read about the progress of mad Max.

Then there's a new mad Max movie. George Miller's no, Now he's going to do it as a television series. Oh, okay, these can make a TV series out of it. Okay, cool. Oh, nobody's go back to making a movie.

Oh it's been put on hold again. Now he's doing fucking dancing penguins. Okay, George, let me know when there's a new mad Max movie. I never thought we were going to get one thirty years. By the way Mad Max three to Fury Road thirty years.

It's like David Lynch really like with twin Peaks, like you're gonna do something else? Oh you did? Okay? Cool. Finally, at least there was no time.

At least he didn't say at the end of Beyond Thunderdome in thirty years, will check peck in with Mad Max? Made at the right time, right right movie, right time for the effects, right cast, like it was. And I would say the same thing about this movie. I think that this elevates the last movie so much more than the last movie could have done on its own. And I think it pushes the franchise in the direction that it is supposed to go in, which is leaning into the apocalypse and the dystopia of it, and not the pre anything like firmly rooted in the civilization, you know, breaking down and there is huge swaths of road that you have to travel and you might encounter the road Warrior on those roads.

That's what's interesting about this franchise is that it's not like Luke Skywalker, like you don't feel there's some sort of fate behind this character. There's no universe bearing down on him, like he just exists in the universe. You know, if they had rebooted this series in America without George Miller, that would have been the very first thing they came up with. What is Max trying to achieve? Like what's the goal?

What is the thing? What is the who is the person? It would be at that by the end of every episode, you know, then it would be even closer to what you made the comparison earlier that it feels like a TV show, like you know, at the overall episodic nature, like The Incredible Hulk, but you know, the Hulk and David Benner a back on down the road trying to figure out a way to reverse the Curse of the Hulk, Like you would get this at the end of each Mad Max. Oh, he's a little closer to his goal, but just out of each right, we want to know his goal is his goal is existing, Yeah, which is more than enough. And that's what I mean.

That's again, like I said, with George Miller, like his sensibilities when it comes to writing franchise films, I think is so bizarre because I mean, look, you want to kind of boil it down something like Babe and then Babe two. Pig in the City is a fucking insane movie, a genuine insanity film. Babe Pig in the City is so far from the original one is rooted in reality. It's nominated for Academy Awards because it's such a heartwarming tale with James Cromwell. And then Babe Pig in the City is exactly what it sounds like, a pig staying in a hotel in the city with a bunch of other animals that also talk, and it's just animal testing facilities in that movie.

It's crazy, scary children. Because George Miller decided he was gonna direct one. Yeah, that's and that's what's crazy is for me, like George Miller's been doing this with all the things he's done, which is he just does whatever he wants and he makes it whatever he wants and it just seems to work. Just like a Peter Jackson, Like his style informs so much of what he does, but his style is seemingly something that not just himself is resonating with, like he gets a lot of people to resonate with it. Clearly with Mad Max because like you said, I mean, I remember there was a copy of Entertainment Weekly I had in late nineties, early two thousands.

That was the Development Hell episodic issue of the magazine, and this was one of the movies that was in there, Mad Max four, Like when's it gonna happen? Same with I would love to have a copy of it now because Indiana Jones four was in there, Mad Max four was in there, another alien movie was in there. I've got to think that somebody just had that magazine at their desk was like, well, let's make this happen, Let's make it right. Mentioned Watchmen. I remember they mentioned Watchmen in there, and it's just like so many of those things that were stuck in development Hell for twenty thirty years.

I don't get it because now you can't stop them mad. Max five is coming out eight no, nine years after the last nine compared to thirty. Everyone complains like, oh, they're only doing IP, but like they've clearly been trying for a long long time to do it. It's just that it just so happens that studios are obsessed with IP right now, so they're all finally getting made. Which is crazy that we waited, you know, thirty years to re embrace something that people in the eighties clearly loved.

Like it's it's odd, but you know what, I'm glad we got around to it finally with some of these things. Some of these things, I'm not glad they got around to it. You know, take the good with the bad. I will say that in the case of Fury Road I mentioned earlier, like I'm glad it got made when it did. And part of that is it took so long to get made that they had to recast Max.

Right, yep. Because I'm totally comfortable with the trilogy of Max films we receive with Mel Gibson. I can enjoy them without any of the ickiness superseding it. I think if he had made Fury Road, though, yea, no, man, I'd be like, yeah, it's great, but like there's a problem at the center. Yeah, Mike, all of the movies that Mad Max was mel Gibson came out before the world knew who mel Gibson truly was, which is fine, we shouldn't ended up it.

No, Well, well, I mean, look, that's the reality of Mad Max is similar to mel Gibson as a human being, Like the character has been able to weather a lot and even a real I mean we mentioned it last time in the last episode, like very few main ip characters get recast and it works out not just well, but somehow better than what came before it. I'm not saying Tom Hardy's better, but I think Fury Road might be the best of all of these movies as of right now, just given what it is. But Mad Max two Road Warrior without that, Fury Road doesn't exist. So in a lot of ways, like this is the Mad Max movie, Fury Road is just a derivation of this. It's just taking this idea and running further with it.

But none of what comes afterwards exists without Mad Max two making a hard pivot into something that the first movie was clearly trying to get at but couldn't get all the way over the finish line the way that George Miller clearly wanted to. Well, you said earlier that you know, Road Warrior two, or rather Mad Max to Road Warrior is not the same as like Evil Dead to Evil Dead too. However, Road Warrior to Fury Road kind of is. Yeah, pretty much like It's just they took the idea from this movie and said, what happened if there was no stops for the most part. Yeah, I mean it's this movie.

Yeah, it's the last part of this movie is you know, spun out. So yeah, anyway, this was a great movie, you know, I agree, and I think it's even more impressive than Fury Road in a lot of ways because this is all done practically. There is no there is no CGI. Not that I'm complaining about CGI, but CGI allows you to do things that can't be done for real. That's all it should be used for.

Not because we can do it, we should. It should be filling in the gaps of practical shortcomings, I know, failings even like I don't know how you want to put it, but practicality sometimes meets a wall, and CGI gets you up over that wall. But you shouldn't just use CGI just because because then you get movies like The Hobbit. Let's not forget that this is just two years with all the same people two years later that made Mad Max. They're just given more money.

Like it's not like they got safer, no more dangerous. Frankly, like, this movie is infinitely more dangerous feeling than the last one, so much so. I mean, like they have some stunts that go wronging in Mad Max. On screening, there's a you know, a guy who gets hit with his own motorcycle. It's doesn't look pleasant at all, but like, like it's kind of nothing compared to what's going on here at the end with these people on these second cars.

Man, it's just so insane. Yeah, And again, I think that's why the Mad Max fans were clamoring so much for more of this, because this, I mean, this is so iconic, so well done. Why wouldn't you want more of this? Because what they will get and what we'll be talking about on the next episode is something that I think they found to be very far afield of Mad Max two. And I think you and I may have some words for that sentiment the next time we come back, because I don't think it's that far afield if it's for a field at all.

So yeah, father Malone, until you and I come back to talk about mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome. Where can people find you in your assorted body of works? Go over to Weirdingwaymedia dot com. Well that's where you are right now. Oh my god.

Well guess what. There are more shows over there, like Dark Destinations, it's a radio drama I write and produce. Or Midnight Viewing. That's the show I co host with Chris and Mike White every other week, and then every other week from that Midnight Viewing Anthologies Attack is hosted by me and Antonio Lapoor, where we take a look at the anthology movies and comic books and TV shows and Night mister Walters. My god, I got too many things going on.

Check out Night, mister Walters. That's hp show about Taxi. I'm a co host on that one, and we're trying to pick a fight with Tony Danzel right now. So come over there, listen to that episode and help us, help us get the word to Tony the mister Danza. Mister Danza, what did Tony Danza do?

To you. Jeez, I don't know. I just like, I'm just spoiling for a fight. I guess. Yeah, well, you picked an interesting person to fight with, Tony Danza, of all people, someone's got it.

That's fair, that's fair. I'm not picking fights with Tony Danza, but I did pick a fight with Mike Doherty once. You can find me on Twitter, but I don't use Twitter. So go to weirdingwaymedia dot com and just check out all the stuff I work on, but check out the stuff that I don't work on more because that stuff, I think is you know, just as entertaining, if not more so. Like Father Malone mentioned, Dark Destinations, Midnight Viewing, Twisted and Uncorked, the Projection Booth, Eighties tv Ladies, the award winning eighties TV Ladies, And there's plenty of stuff on the network to check out.

And yeah, like Father Malone mentioned, this is a bonus episode that we're doing, So we got two more and then we'll be doing Furiosa. But yeah, in the next episode, when you hear us again, we're talking about mad Max Beyond Thunderdomes until then, hit you on the next episode,