Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome

We're so Father Malone, we're nearing the U. I guess this is the halfway point, right past the halfway point at this point, I guess, well, now we're into the halfway. Yeah, we're now in half way. Yeah, this is the halfway point to halfway as one can be at the end of the Road Warrior. The beginning of this movie is the demarcation point.

Yeah, for a lot of people. But I don't know if it's that way for you and I. But I think it's gonna be interesting to talk about this movie because we've kind of alluded to it in the last couple episodes that we've done that this is a moment in the franchise's history where a lot of people are very upset for I don't Look, I'm not going to say justifiable reasons. I think a lot of people are upset, and I think those are probably the same people that were upset about Michael Keaton being cast as Bruce Wayne. It's just like the exact same people, yeah, that are still complaining about these kinds of things now.

And look, this movie doesn't detract from my ability, your ability, or anybody's ability to appreciate Road Warrior. It doesn't. It doesn't detract at all. Is this what people wanted? I have no idea, clearly, no, obviously, not nearly, not like but George, this is what George Miller wanted, And as far as I'm concerned, that's more important, especially given the U I mean, I think it's I think it's a term worth using on him, the tour that he is, the you know, writer director that he is, which I think, you know, a lot of a tours happen to also be writer directors.

Yeah, I'm very curious because on this episode of the Culture Cast we are at the halfway point for mad Max, because we're gonna be covering Fury Road and Furiosa here in the very near future. But on this episode, I'm still your host, Christasher, and I'm joined once again by Midnight Viewing and Dark Destinations, Own Father Alone and some arist man Chip Pank could be a final one. Good Lord. Yes, if you don't know what we're talking about, but you clicked on the episode. Anyways, We're gonna be covering mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, not mad Max three.

That's not the title of this film. Mel Gibson is mad Max. They will worship him. Who do you think I am? Time she will challenge him.

I say, that's this man the law and this is his greatest adventure. Mel Gibson, Tina Turner, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome once Again, directed by George Miller, Written by Terry Hayes and George Miller, and yes, once again and this is the last time I have to say this. It stars Mel Gibson as Mad Max. What's Max up to this time? Just fucking around, just hanging out, having his shit stolen from him?

And then it's what's funny is it's it's like a It feels more serendipitous as a movie than the last two. Oh, his stuff gets stolen, so then he has to go to Bartertown and then they have something. It's that this movie, if anything, feels very Video Gabe in terms of one thing happens, which leads to a whole host of other things happening. But the main thing that happened is still essentially the goal throughout the movie, which is for mad Max to get the book away from these people once again. He's just minding his own business in the desert, and Bruce Spence, as a different character, steals his shit from him, and that sets into motion the entire lot of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.

So, Father Malon, I'm gonna kick it to you first. What do you think of this film? And why are you a defender? Why do you defend this movie? It's so bad.

It's not Road Warrior. It's so bad. That's sarcasm. Folks. By the way, do you know the date this movie premiered.

It's in July of nineteen eighty five, tenth July tenth, nineteen eighty five. That's when I saw this movie. This was the first time that I could go see on my own a Mad Max film in the theater, and I could not have been more excited at having seen the previews and seeing that Max was off on a different adventure. Very much excited me, and I was in no way lent down. I fucking loved this movie.

Then I rewatched it a bunch leading up to this podcast. I love it now. I think it's I think it's a worthy entry into the Mad Max canon. If you're viewing the Mad Max canon, as we've been talking about in the previous episodes of the of this series, if you're looking at mad Max as individual stories that are connected only tangentially through our lead character, who barely has a place in each of the stories being told. Then there's absolutely nothing untoward with having him rescuing children in a It's it's fucking insane, is what it is.

Peter Pan all of a sudden, it's Peter Pan. Is kind of what it felt like. Halfway through the movie. I was like, all right, Like there wasn't spot down in my head, Chris, and I'm like, wow, this is fucking crazy. So yeah, I guess if you just were expecting another high octane, oiled up muscle men flick, you're gonna be disappointed with this one.

But in the spirit of filmmaking and storytelling, like I thought, this is delightful. This is an epic. Like this feels like an epic. There's more going on here because again, like part of the story is mad Max getting screwed over once again and being you know, essentially having to unwander back from the wasteland with these essentially what are effectively lost boys from Peter Pan. I mean, that's what this is in a lot of ways, and Max is all of a sudden leading them and I don't know if it is it the kids of it all.

Do people hate kids, and that's what it is. That's one of the things. I didn't find the child actors to be much of anything. They were not obnoxious. I think they did just as much as was needed.

But I look, I understand the sentiment of I don't want to watch my franchise have kids injected into it. I felt similarly to The Mummy and the Mummy returns all of a sudden, there's a kid on screen, all of a sudden, kids being a precocious little shit like Okay, I mean, look, that's the filmmaker's choice. And in this movie, I understand why, Like you've alluded to already, if you were watching it for the muscleomongous, this movie doesn't have that. I mean it does, but it doesn't. But it does.

I mean, master Blaster is in this movie. But but George Miller also undercuts the master Blaster payoff intentionally, and I appreciate that because again, he's not just playing the same song in a minor key. He's playing a completely different song just with the same instrument. And that's what this feels like. Look, there is a chase scene.

It is the third act of this film, but it's more like the fourth act of the movie. It's not this This movie is not so easily parsed out as the last two movies. There's so much going on in this movie, and it's it's weird that in a third movie they do more world crafting than they do in the first two movies. But this whole movie is more about really filling in the world and how society has taken to the world that they exist in. Now.

It's answering questions that people clearly didn't ask or have any interest in having answered for them by the filmmaker. I get it, but just because they're not making the movie you want doesn't make it a bad movie. It makes it subjectively not something you're into. But objectively, I think, like you said, it's just as interesting a movie as the second one, if not more so, because more bizarre chances are taken in this movie, and there are objectively stranger things introduced in this movie than in the last one. One of the reasons that I like this movie so much is exactly what you just touched on, which is George Miller out there building the world and filling us in and what else is going on if your conception of this wasteland is just gangs of marauding bikers and miscreants, who gives a shit?

Like, how far do you go with that story? Like it's just all about the gasoline and there's nothing to it other than that they're just getting more gas so they can drive around to get more gas so they can drive around. Like, what else is going on in this world? Well? Here it is Bartertown.

That's what's going on in this world. There's this enclave of kids and some paradise over there. The city still exists. If you look hard and long enough, you can find the Sydney Opera House still there. I like going to all of these places.

I like finding out what else is in the world, and I like finding out Max's place in it that he can interact with people still, that there are still humans that are out there making it happen from the chaos. Thank you, Auntie. Entity Well, and that is the thing about this movie that I'm so not concerned, but I'm curious because it feels like the more I look at the stuff for Furiosa, the more it's going to be like this movie. And I will be shocked if the feelings aren't similar again because of once again the Fury wrote of it all furios. It has a real steep hill to climb with a lot of people who saw Fury Road and think that it is God's gift to Earth in terms of action movies.

I'm not saying it's not. I just don't resonate with the movie like that. I know that there are plenty of people that think it is that they ropes the moon, and I'm not saying it doesn't. It's just you, what do you do after that movie? Where do you go from there?

You're not going to do it again? See well, but my point is you don't do it again. And I think that's exactly what George Miller is doing here. He could have done Mad Max three and it just be the case it could. It could have been Fury Rowed, which was already on his mind right, but you wanted to take aded to it, which I think works for me in terms of and I don't think it works more than Mad Max two.

I think it works just as much as Mad Max two in a different way. It's expectations are different. There are things that mean mel Gibson actually his dialogue in this movie a fair amount of it too, Like he says more in the first fifteen minutes of this movie that he does in the entire hour and a half run of the last movie. Yeah, it's the one where we actually get to know Max a little bit and we get to see him making choices that do not benefit him. Every choice he's made so far has been only to further his own goals, whatever his fucking mysterious goals happened to be.

But in this one we see him making moral decisions with Master Blaster or rather just a blaster at that point, like, not part of the deal, not going to crust this guy, And in that the wonderful thing about a scene like that is that is an accumulation of the character. This is the arc of the character going on, because I don't think the guy at the beginning of the Road Worrior would have hesitated to crush the skull of Master just so he can get his stuff back and get back on the road. No, No, he would not have hesitated in one iota at all. And it's interesting, Like I was reading some of the reviews for this movie, and the reviews for this movie are pretty unfair, but again they're unfair because of the expectations set by the previous movie.

And I understand. I mean again, look, we live in a time and a place right now where if you took I don't know, just James Bond and turned James Bond into something that it is quote not unquote, you'd have a whole lot of people upset. But at the same time, can we literally stop making the same thing over and over again because at some point it will stop working as well? And what do you do then? Then you do something like this, So either make the decision ahead of time to do it and actually lean into it, or you do it after the fact and you have to catch up because you've essentially what can you do with a car chase movie?

We'll make it the whole movie. What do you do after that? That's what I'm saying about Furiosa, Like where do you go from here? We saw what George Miller went to, which is something so bizarre it alienated the original audience or some of the original audience immensely to the point where they wanted another Mad Max movie because this movie wasn't what they thought it was going to be. And I love that about this movie because it's so unmad Max, but at the same time, it is perfectly Mad Max because it's it's having a conversation about society falling apart the same way the first movie did.

It's kind of showing that was what society looked like pre Fallout. This is what a society or community can look like further down the road. We saw it in the last movie with the community, but this is like they're built into this place. Bartertown is a self functioning ecosystem, and that's something we haven't seen yet in these movies, and that's so exciting and weird compared to just again what him interacting with another kind of like oasisy group of people. I mean, we kind of get that in this movie too.

It kind of still checks some of those boxes. It's just that's not the point of the movie, which I understand will make some people who love this franchise very disappointed. Yeah, I mean, I like the opportunity to get to see Max and watch the way he handles himself in the rest of the world, and it hints toward other adventures that he's been having. This is you know, this might be his first time in Bartertown, but he's clearly been to places like this. It's so intriguing.

He loses the V eight interceptor in the last movie. When this movie starts, he's got this giant like truck vehicle that's being pulled by a team of camels and he has a monkey in the back. Where did he just come from? Right? Right?

But to your point, the like the idea of this being folklore, like I love that about these movies is that it's just like, I don't know, it feels like a fairy tale like that, And I kind of feel like George Miller if you asked him, like, what is Mad Max inspired by? Like really, at its base level, it's kind of like a modern day like you said, Gulliver's Travels, which is kind of a fairy tale. You're back, ah okay, but it's kind of a fairy tale or fairy tale adjacent Like it's a it's a tale, it's a tall tale. This is a tall tale. Just it's a tall tale that also gives us a character moment where someone tries to sell him water and he produces a Geiger counter from somewhere within his outfit.

Also, you know, yeah, again it's speaking of the folk tale nature of it. Right, when we last saw Max, he's standing on a road, he's got his buzz cut, he's in his leathers, he's all fucked up looking, but he is mean and tough and whatever. When we meet him here, he has hair down like down his back and he's basically dressed like a Bedouin out in the desert. Like he's a whole new guy, this whole new tale. Like we do we know who's telling this tale.

It might be the kids, right, I guess. So, I mean, that's my assumption is the story is essentially being told by the kids of Planet Earth, the Lost Boys, as it were. Yeah, and if we're to believe that these are chronological in order, as George Miller has said, they are, right, no matter what gaps in between the movies, what tales were not being told of Max. What I like is and what this movie really provides is that I think this is the movie where Max actually figures out his place in this world, right, agreed. The first movie, it's just a free fall into the world and then it's just stay alive and keep going no matter what.

But along the way he inadvertently begins helping people, and I think here is the moment where he realizes that his mission is actually to go from place to place and find the problem or let the problem find him and then solve it. I totally agree, and I love that about these movies, the way that they've been set up. Does How does does Fury Road start like this? I don't remember Where's Fury Rode a lot more like narratively convention, Fury Road begins with him being captured by Joe's boys, So there's no narrative structure that similarly to these last two movies. No, but it is once again Max finding himself in a situation that he his instant reaction is I'll just get out of it and get out of here.

But once he looks around and sees what's going on, he always kind of makes up his mind to do the right thing. Which is what's interesting because in this movie, I feel like he's less of an anti hero than he was in the last movie. This is maybe in a lot of ways. You know, it's so weird to say this, And I was reading some of the criticisms about this movie, this movie has been toned down from the last movie. Well, I'd say he's not an anti hero here, I'd say he's just the hero of this, right right, But what I'm saying is because that's the case, and that he's not the anti hero, the things that he's doing feel a lot less violent and aggressive.

Like I'm not gonna say that this is like for kids, but there's some of this that does kind of feel like it's for kids, and I don't. It's the PG thirteen and the last one was a hard r right, like a hard rye. This he doesn't even feel PG thirteen in places, like in terms of the way the last two movies used violence, this movie doesn't use violence that way, if it uses violence at all, Like like we've alluded to with The Thunderdome, the scene in the Thunderdome is a fuck the audience moment, if it's any thing like George Miller literally takes us up to the brink and then shows us this is not your mad Max from the last two movies. This is someone who is very different, and that difference clearly comes from the time that we don't see him, the in between time, which is, like you said, when his hair grows and then he's got the camels and all that.

Like, clearly he went through more transformative moments which have not been mined. It could be mined just as easily as anything else could in this franchise. You know, what was Max up to between you know, two and three? What were his adventures then? We don't know, But this is just another one in the long line of ones.

This just happens to make a rather large impact on him. Maybe that's the other thing. Maybe by the end of this movie he's doing the same fucking thing he was in the last movie. Literally, Yeah, if if the chronology is to be believed, like you know, he saves these kids, who knows what happens, but he gets right back, He goes and finds himself a new V eight interceptor, doesn't he Yeah again, if this ties directly back into Fury Road. Yeah, but that's what's crazy, is to your point, like this just ends the way it started.

It's very like cyclical, Like we've we've started and ended in the same spot twice now with Max just wandering the wasteland. Here's the thing. Now, in the last movie, his motivation purely seems to fuck these people who killed his dog. Right this one, the motivation really is to get these kids safe. From the people of Barbertown.

And the only way he's able to accomplish that is by basically sacrificing himself or you know, not not mortally, but like eliminating the possibility of escaping with them. Would he have gone with them, would he have stayed with them? I don't think. I don't know. This kind of feels like this is the first group that he might have I think he might have gone with them to where they were going and then said goodbye to them there.

Yes, yeah, no, I completely agree. I think that's probably the furthest he would have gone. But because that's the thing about mad Max, like he's just not motivated by the glory like so many characters, so many heroes are motivated by the glory of it all, and Max is not motivated by that. I mean, he's rather selfless in this movie. I mean, to your point, he makes it so that they can get away, and in them getting away, he's not able to go with them.

Like that is what happens. Like that's part and parcel with the climax of the movie. And his enemy is right on his tail there AUNTI the entity is there for all intents and purposes in his mind. He believes he's about to be killed right, like he sacrificed himself, is what the movie is saying. And then the fact that she grants him mercy at the end is kind of wild, like in and of itself, like a kind of a weird thing for the movie to do.

But I think that also speaks to we haven't talked about her yet. How good Tina Turner is in this movie. Oh my, he's so good, And talk about someone who has a massive presence without being in every single scene like she's. Every time she's on screen, she steals the movie away from Evan. She's it's not hard to steal from Mel Gibson, but he is a very charismatic actor, not so much in this movie.

But she is so good that that's I'm convinced. That's why, like so much of the movie is focused around her and Max interacting, Because when you're like, we have someone as talented and as charismatic as Tina Turner, we have to have her in at least more than one scene, and we have to have her interact with Max directly, which is not something we've seen in any of these movies up until this point. On top of everything else. He shares more screen time with her than he does with Humungous or toe Cutter. This is the most interaction he's going to have with any of the villains.

He's dealing directly with the villain for a portion of the movie. She is not the villain. Actually, she's just the She's a compatriot, like he partners up with her and is doing a job for her, So she becomes the villain of the piece. And what I love about aunt Entity speaking of the world building, because in The Road Warrior, we know that there was a war and things happen, but we don't know what anyone or how they dealt with it. Even with Max we don't get any sense of it.

We, at least with AUNTI Entity, get this idea where she tells a story about how before the war she was nothing at all and look at her now, like she's created this civilization in the in the middle of nothing like what you know? She says, You know, there was thievery and now there's trade like that. She's bringing back the civilization And honestly, I'm on her side. Maybe that's just because it's seining a turner And like you said, you can't take your eyes off Tina Turner in this movie. And that's crazy because there's a lot to look at in this film.

Everything the frames are absolutely packed with all of the ingenuity that we've seen in the earlier movies, but now they're done on a big budget Hollywood scale. But it still feels of a piece with the other one that doesn't feel out of place at all. And I'm going all over the place here I'm supposed to be talking about Turner. Tina Turner is awesome. She know, she's well, and again, like the movie goes all over the place because of how weird her character is and how her interactions with Max go from like you said, him him being a person that she essentially hires to get it her her needs done and in turn she'll give him his stuff back.

But the fact that then she you know, turns around and says, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to exile you. Like all of she is the motivating force behind the entire movie. Effectively, Well, what's crazy is she's okay. She ends up being the villain in that she gives Chase at the end and probably would have done harm to all of those kids maybe, uh maybe maybe yeah, because this movie, you're right, it's George Miller just sort of like zigging and zagging in every direction, like what would we what would we do here?

What's the next thing? Well, let's not do that, Like what's the opposite of that thing? Because let's that instead. And because Auntie Entity, I'm on her side for a good portion of the film when Max is on her side, and then when he he breaks the deal by the way he's supposed to know, yeh, yeah, Okay, he does it for the right reasons, but he did break that deal, and instead of killing him, they he busts the deal, so he faces the wheel, he gets exiled, so they just send him out, right. So that's the end of the Bartertown and Aunti Entity story.

It's because Max inspires these kids to come looking for Bartertown, but things get fucked up again. So it's not like it's not like a Morton Joe who's just out to fucking slaughter everyone in his path, you know. And it's not like humongous he wants that fucking gasoline and he'll fucking murder everyone in his path. This is a person who wanted a job done, didn't get what she wanted, said Okay, now I'm done with you. And then they came and like kicked the hornet's nest, so them going after them at the she would have to do that at the very least to save face and Bartertown she's shown, you know, And that's another thing that goes out of this movie.

Maybe people can't just handle politics or something, but the fact that these we get to see this really rich world of Bartertown. And then, speaking of big budget Hollywood movie, we go down beneath Bartertown where it's all pigs who are being harnessed for methane gas, so we get these disgusting shots of machinery dumping pig shit everywhere. Watching it again last night, I was reminded of that. I'm like, this is this is a big budget Hollywood movie at least by a major studio, and he's loving close ups of shit. And that's what's weird to me about this movie is, like you said, it's a big budget Hollywood movie, like it, it feels so not that because it is so exactly what George Miller wanted it to be.

He clearly didn't compromise a whole lot of he compromised at all, and we talked about it maybe off the air last time, but I think we mentioned, you know, Byron Kennedy, this is the first fail that he is not working with George Miller on and in a lot of ways you can tell, because it feels like George Miller just fucking went for it. And I'm not saying I'm not saying it's a bad thing. I think this movie works a lot better than I have been led to believe it would, not by you, but by other people who have said, well, it is the worst Mad Max movie, and dah dah dah. Like honestly, the worst bad Max movie is probably the first one, because it's not anything like any of them in terms of weird this is going, but it can't be either this movie.

I mean, I feel like this isn't I don't know if this is a high point. I don't know if this is a higher than the last movie. But I think in terms of a success, I think it's as successful doing what it's trying to do as the last movie was successful at doing what it was trying to do. And my point being these two movies are not trying to do the same thing, and comparing them is unfair because the expectations are the next Star Wars movie is gonna be like the last one, right right, I guess. So so what was Mad Max three going to be?

I guess just a longer chase movie. Except it's not like at all, and that clearly pissed people off. But the fans just kind of keep like there's self fulfilling prophecies, you know, they want the same thing, so they get it and then they cheer for a little while, and then they get it again. They go, this is the same thing, right, What if they had made Mad Max three as the same thing as the last movie? Would people be going, well, it's just like the last movie, So why would I watch it?

Yeah? And you know what, and ultimately who cares what their opinion is because George Miller ends, you know, he co directed. I wanted to speak to the Byron Kennedy thing, because you know, each of the previous movies are a Byron Kennedy film, Like, you know, he's obviously this is his partner, and he dies in a helicopter accident scouting locations for this film, and so it is kind of a bit fascle to say that you can see the difference between the movies because Byron Kennedy is gone. But this was the movie they were making, Like Byron Kennedy was on board to get this movie made with his with his partner George Miller, and that was going to happen. And the movie ends up being co directed by George Miller.

And what's the other fellow's name, George Ogilvy or something, Yeah, George Ogilvy. And I don't understand what the delineation is, like who was doing what and where? Obviously one assumes Miller was doing the train chase sequences of the movie, but I, you know, I I don't know which which sequences belong to whom or what I mean. I can assume he took on a code director because of the absence of Byron Kennedy. I'm sure Byron Kennedy functioned as a co director.

You know. They're there for so many years together on sets, doing everything hand at hand, you know. Well, and that is the thing about this movie that I think again is so interesting. It feels so much slower, it feels so much more like thought out in terms of what it's trying to do. And it's engaging the audience in a different way.

I mean, the last movie felt not hands off with the audience, but it wasn't necessarily challenging the audience. It was like, here's a car chase, and here's another car chase, and Max is just kind of incidental to this whole thing. Max is not incidental here in this movie, like he without him, there is so much that does not happen in this movie without his character doing the things that he does and standing up for the things that he believes, and that's we really don't see that in the last movie. It's just kind of Max is there. He's a character in this movie.

I think the problem is nobody wanted to actually flesh out Matt Max. I don't know why. It's you know, more interesting when he doesn't talk. It's more interesting when he doesn't do anything. You know.

It's the video game protagonist of it, all right. People complain about video game protagonists not talking, and then when they talk too much they don't like it. It's like, you know, if Nathan Drake has a pithy one line orvery time he kills someone in the game, people might get sick of that. But if they don't say anything, people are gonna notice that too, So there doesn't seem to be an easy way to kind of split the difference here. So George Miller just goes, Okay, he's going to be more of a character in this movie than he ever has been in the last two And I think that's clearly not something a lot of people wanted, was to have the Max character evolve and continue to change with the stories that he's in.

Well, yeah, I mean, ultimately that's it. They were rejecting this whole cloth. It seems they did not want a softer Max. They want mad Max. He's mad.

He has to be out there the lone gun slinger, doing things only for himself. He's not going to hang out with these children. He's not going to have mercy on this pig killer. He's not gonna have mercy on Master, you know, Like he's he's an amoral scumbag. That's what we want.

No, it's just just a different a different tale. It's a different shade of mister Max. And is he a moral anyways? Like he never strikes me as amorl in the last two movies. That's what I don't get, Like this character in this movie tracks with the last two, like, yeah, he's not out there, you know, joining those gangs, and he could easily take over one of those gangs.

If he were actually an amoral drifter in the wasteland, he would be the king amoral drifter, right, Mike. That's the scary part is what happens when Superman is not the hero anymore. That's what mad Max could have been, Like he could have been Im Morton Joe, just the guy in charge of everybody. But that's not what he's doing as a character, which is interesting, and the world that he gets caught up in is interesting. Like you know, I was saying that the two worlds of Bartertown, what Max wanders into in you know, typical Man with a No Name Spaghetti Western style is a power play between the people are creating the gas that runs the electricity down below and the people were you know, enjoying its benefits above.

You got this, you know, what George Miller ends up doing is sort of defying every expectation, Like not only it's not like the last movie, but this isn't like any movie you mentioned, Like is that act for when the final chance happened? It may be like it doesn't seem to follow any structure. It seems happenstance. But it's not like this one gives Max agency and that he just wants to It's a simple thing. He just wants to get his stuff back.

But it's really him and him driving this plot, like and as crazy as as it is, like the stuff that when he gets to this valley, this sort of paradise situation with all these kids, like the Blue Lagoon and you know, Buckskins and Spears and that this lost tribe, as you said, like the Lost Boys. Basically, like it never would have predicted that we would go there, but like that doesn't make it bad, Like I don't know, we need to stop railing against the people who don't like this movie and and and that's what they've dominated the conversation for so long. I'll tell you something awesome about this movie. And this worked for me as a fucking thirteen year old kid sitting in the movie theater. The opening credits with fucking Tina Turner's song that song, yeah, One of the Living.

If you haven't heard the song, go listen to it right now. You can hear it anywhere. One of the Living Tina Turner if you can hear the movie version, you're gonna hear every Every version you're gonna hear is the album version, which is a great version. But if you can hear the movie version, it's it's much more raw and uh immediate, and it's great. And the other thing that's great, not only that song playing, is that George Miller has chosen to put the credits up of every actor in the movie and give you their character name.

And there's no better series of films for fucking cuckoo character names than the Mad Max films. So actually seeing them on the screen is part and parcelal to what I was saying earlier about the crazy shit he's getting away with in a studio film, Like you know, the company logo comes up, and then you know, here's these characters, screw Loose and pink Killer. Right, yeah, here's some of your major players, Pink Killer. You know, I find it funny you mentioned Tina Turner. I mean, I would think most people my age are well aware that Tina Turner was brought in to do GoldenEye a song from that film, because of what it kind of meant to the franchise, because it was so close to Goldfinger in terms of like the level of the person singing the song and having her here and having her music in this movie, it just gives it such a different vibe and a different like flavor to it.

And you know, you said, you know, you don't want to harp on the people that don't like this movie, but I will say, I think it's just a problem in general of pop culture and in terms of the way people receive things. There's always this I don't know, there's always this diminishment of the things that came before it by something that comes after that I think is so unfair. And it doesn't they don't. They need to stand on their own. And it's something that we still deal with now as fans of things in twenty twenty four.

I mean they're dealing with it in nineteen eighty five. We're dealing with with it now, which is how far do you go to appease the fans versus making what you want to make? And to your point, like, I wouldn't have expected that he would be dealing with small kids in this movie, or that Tina Turner would be in this movie like that, that in and of itself is pretty wild as a thing that this movie has, and I think that that's again why I love George Miller as a director so much, is that he's gonna make what he wants to make, and that's a good thing because what he makes clearly resonates with people. And this movie is this movie has its defenders. It's not like everybody who saw this movie in eighty five hated it.

It's just this wasn't gonna resonate with some of the people, clearly for good reason. But the people that it did resonate with, I think, find the same things to enjoy in it which you and I have, which is it's fairly high concept. The world is fully fleshed out, and again I think mel Gibson is better here than he has been up until this point as Mad Max, because they actually give him something to do. He is here more than he has been in the last two stories. I mean, maybe the first one a little bit as much in this movie, but in the last movie nothing.

We don't know shit about Max, and that's intentional. Here, it's we get all kinds of stuff that I can only assume if you were here for a car chase and you're hearing all this stuff. Gold be rolling your eyes in the theaters. It's like, I'm I'm not here for the car chase. I'm here for Mad Max the character, to see where he's being taken.

Because that's what anyone who watches a Mad Max movie should theoretically be there for, is the character of Mad Max and whatever that means. Not, well, it's Mad Max, so there's got to be a car chase. Like no, not necessarily. Yeah, Like I said, the defying expectations. You know, early in the movie, when we meet Max, he's got really long hair, right, but once he gets to those kids, they come out the hair off.

And I will say, in addition to all the other stuff I like about this movie, very superficially, I'll say that version of Max, the freshly shorn hair, but now he's got the full gull wing, the white on white stripes on either side of his head, and the traditional Mad Max jacket, but now he's got basically like a skirt on hanging over over the pants. That look is the best Mad Max ever looked in any of the movies. There I said, it was superfficient. I agree, though I agree. I Actually I'm glad you mentioned it.

That wig that they gave him at the beginning of this movie is ridiculous. Absolutely, it's it it, I'm not gonna say it. Glad they didn't put a beard on because you know they wanted to. Yeah, because he already laid that wig looked terrible on its own. That wig is a poor choice.

It looks, I mean, and given where he ends up later in the movie, like you can so clearly tell where the wig was and where his hair started and stopped and where it's it's it's one of those things where I was like, man, I'm glad that they're sheer in his head because we do not need to be saddled with this for the entire movie. But again defying expectations, right, Like, we don't get the max we know at all until halfway three quarters of the way through the movie. Greek quarders, what's the max that we know? When he punches a teenage woman in the face. Yeah, that one.

He just punches a cold coxer And I love that he like, I love that he stops himself and then he fucking does it Anyways, he like thinks about it, and he's like, I clearly don't have a choice here, Like this is for the good he makes. The he's constantly making moral choices of this, like I don't want to punch her in the faith. Wait, no, I actually have to got it right. And it's so wild because again, like you mentioned the Max from the last movie, I don't think you would have shot all those kids to death. But he would not be dealing with those kids at all, I don't think like the way he was characterized in the last movie.

Yeah, in order to stop them, he grabs what the kids don't realize is a rifle and they just have as a stick and it's adorned with the bullets they don't realize are live as well. Right, So Max, in order to stop them, loads up that weapon and then shoots at their feet. Road Warrior Max would have shot at out their feet right exactly. And it's crazy because again, like it's not like it for kids. But they're doing something different with the Max character.

They're making him a hero in this movie the way you would expect in a more traditional franchise like a Star Wars or in Indiana Jones, Like he is a goodie two shoes in this movie. Like again, he works for Tina Turner's character, but he doesn't do the one thing that he is supposed to do, and because he doesn't do it, because he has such a problem with killing someone who's you know, on the spectrum, clearly he doesn't want anything to do with it. And I like that about the character because again that's not the character from the last movie. And characters actually showing some growth and some like something more than we've seen from them. I think is really should be applauded.

Taking a character and trying to change, have them change and have an actual multifilm arc It's not easy to do clearly going from this film to the to the next film, because it seems like in Fury Road, it's just like a hard reset, like we're getting back to the road Warrior Max, Right, he's just out on the road with his car again. It can be viewed that way, or you can view it as we view to each of these movies, and you have to figure what catastrophic thing happened between Thunderdome and Fury Road that he effectively went, fuck it all, I'm just gonna get my car and do my thing again. Right. Well, yeah, and let's like I said on the last episode, like there's so many stories that could be told that aren't being told.

And you know, Furiosa, I think is going to clearly be a prequel and a sequel to Fury Road, which is going to be interesting because again, like we have had the story of mad Max told from the opening free all of this, and then we followed him in the last movie, and now we're even further down the road, and then with the next movie, we're even further down the road. But I guess, you know what's interesting is also, like you've just said, like Max in this movie, he's a character in the next movie, he's just kind of there. Back to the way it was, back to the way the last two movies treated it, And that's what people wanted this whole time. I guess I gotta say that when the movie began, that part through me, I thought, oh no, have they just what they did?

He give up like And then my next thought was like, maybe this is not chronological. Maybe this is you know, this took place or a thunderdome, you know what I mean, This is this is what leads him to go get that camel uh trained going right right, and it's it's not I thought the same thing when I saw Fury Road because I was like, is this like a prequel or something. No, it's a sequel, I mean this chronological sequel. Tom Hardy is playing the same character that Mel Gibson is playing. But they don't allude I mean they did.

They even allude to the to this movie. They even allude to anything that's happened. But no, but none of the movies are right, not No, And that's what's also interesting is that they never do Like we don't have Max talking about oh, well, you know, humongous dad or this and that, like none of that. He doesn't even mentioned he had a wife and a son. He never even mentions that to anybody else.

Well, he does tell Auntie anentity that he was cop because she asked what he was doing before the war, but he never says like I had a wife and son and they got murdered, Like we never hear about them. That is to your point. The only thing that they mentioned is that he was a cop. That's it, Like, that's the only kind of piece of the original movie that still exists here is he acknowledges that he was a cop. I would not have a problem with any future Mad Max film having anti entity return same same.

And I know Tina Turner has passed away, but we've recast the fucking lead. We can certainly recast Auntientity because I love aunti Entity. I think she's a great character, and I think she's a worthy adversary. But again, is she an adversary. She could be a fucking super cool ally in a future film, right Well, And that's the other thing.

I mean, like we've talked about with Bruce Spence in this movie. He's kind of antagonistic towards mad Max more in this movie than he is in the last one. I mean they only kind of come around on one another right near the end of the movie. But what's interesting is like again, like he's kind of at odds with Max and is the reason the things are happening in this movie. And but at the end of the movie talked about and Road Warrior in the last movie.

We really haven't talked about him here in this movie because he's a he's another pilot in this film. But this is a different character, like George Miller has said, this is a different character than the first one, right, Yeah, in this movie he has now Max, does he he recognizes him at the end, But that's only to say that I recognize you from knocking me off my correct. Correct, That's the way I read it, okay, because I think when when I was a kid and I first saw it, I thought like, oh, this must be the same guy. I mean, you know, well, it's such a weird vibe to do behind the scenes. Uh uh.

Information was pretty scarce back then, so I couldn't have known George Miller intended that to be a whole different character. So for many years I assumed that was the same guy. It's like Pierre Richard and all those Francis Ever films, just you know, playing a character with the same name, but you know, not the same character. It's I mean, it's well, and what the thing is like, obviously you have Bruce Spence playing a character. Bruce Spence is a very recognizable person, and he's playing another guy who's a pilot flying a vehicle very similar to the last vehicle he flew.

Like there's they're not doing themselves any favors, but also who cares right, like this was a time and a price? Spence have a child, like could we get a child? And one of the next Mad Max movies, somebody who looks just like Bruce Spence to play a similar pilot character, Like it would be interesting. I mean, they've they've brought they've brought him back twice, so they must think that that he what he's bringing to the role is good enough. I meanhow in Mad Max's adventures there will be a character who is flight flighted who should be part of it.

Like maybe that's part of the myth of Mad Max. It's always the same couple of people he's going to interact with. Like perhaps we're hearing the same story, you know, the bastard eyed version of the Mad Max story from many many years later, where now the pilot who was a grift is now as helper. See that's the thing that's That's kind of what I was wondering too, Like is it just the convention of the story being told the way that they're telling you right? Like you said, like, oh, he's always has these same kind of people, and oh there's always kids somehow, I mean, I guess in Fury Road there aren't kids.

But in this movie and in the last movie, Max has a soft spot for kids. Even Max in the last movie had soft a soft spot for a kid because that a little child throughout the entire movie, Like him and Max are kind of buddies. Towards the end of that movie, they're in the car together and at the chase scene at the end of the movie. Yeah, well, there's only the unborn in uh in Fury Road, so there's no real children interaction. It's just him and Mom's uh wait, I I completely forgot about that.

I forgot that. That's what that movie is about. Geez Louise, Oh yeah, I ken so weird, like so weird. George Miller is such a weird guy, an oddly specific human being that like, of course there's gonna be you know, mum, the mothers in the new Mad Max movie that he has to protect. Of course, Hey, it's of course, like that's George Miller just does whatever the Ellie wants is.

Do you have his filmography in front of you? I do. Could you tell me how many films he has directed? Twelve? It's okay, so he's directed twelve films.

I would like to present George Miller as the antithesis of Quentin Tarantino's Ten Movies and done theory right. His idea is like you only make a certain number of movies and then you just spin in your wheels creatively. Nobody makes a good movie after their tenth movie or something like that. Well, here's the guy in his as I you know what, And ordinarily I would agree with them, because you know, you look at somebody like Ridley Scott. Just stops Ridley.

It's enough already. But George Miller is in his eighties and he's making fucking bangers man. Yeah, yeah, oh totally, I'm with you. It can be done, and he's doing it. So how about that?

How about instead of this arbitrary bullshit I got ten movies thing, you just fucking knuckle down and try and make something great. Steven Soderberg's retired how many times at this point, can't keep him away. Everyone needs to fire their publicist, turn off their social media, shut the fuck up, and just do the work. Just do the damn thing. Just do the damn thing.

Already, and we've even seen that. I would believe that Mad Max may even be able to continue beyond George Miller, because look, that's the other thing. We're talking about. A franchise that expertly recast its main character to someone else. They're also doing it again.

They're recasting a main character from the last film in the upcoming film, Anya Taylor Joy like no one will be spared, No, And I'm okay with that, Like you know what that is, that's just James Bond logic. Yeah, or comic book logic. You know, I'm used to a different artist drawing my favorite characters' comic book logic though, because MCU is the reason shit's like this now, right, Like the MCU is kind of the reason we have like, oh, this actor playing this character can't play somebody else, like the whole Evan Peters, I didn't say, I know, I get it. I said comic book. We're reading a comic book.

I know, but you know what I'm getting at it. It's easy to equivocate the two in this still. And that's what actually makes me worried about George Miller no longer being at the helm of future Mad Max installments. Is now it's going to fall to somebody who's going to immediately go like, what's the mythology? What are we working towards?

What's the mystery box? You know? Like, right, whoever like tanks over the Mad Max franchise is going to go like, first first thing we do is remake The Road Warrior right exactly exactly, And that's that's my point. Like you said, comic books, I agree with you, Mad Max has more in common with comic book logic than it does with most mainstream storytelling the way it is now because there's an expectation that people have been conditioned to now, which is if someone is playing some I mean, look, Hugh Jackman is playing Wolverine again again, again, again, again, again, the guy who said he was done how many times over? Now?

Like they couldn't even recast Wolverine. I saw that preview when I went to see the Planet of the Apes movie, and my mother turned to me and said, is he too old to play that part? No? I think so. I mean, if you look like you look like, if you look like him, I don't think in this case.

In this case, I think that's the point. But yeah, I mean, well, but that's the thing, like, would mel Gibson have come back for Fury Road, Like, that's the question that I always think about because like, yes, they recast him as Tom Hardy, but they were talking, man, I mean for years to happen in two thousand and five, and if it had happened, then he definitely would have played the part right, and I think that the way he plays it in this movie would have been what we would have gotten in the next movie. I think that the way matd Max is used in Fury Road is a response to this movie completely. But I think it's also because there's enough time and distance that they could just go, well, we're just going to do this again.

But if they had actually made four close to or around the time that this movie came out, I think it would been more of this more world building, which I was would be totally game for show. Be more of this world you know, maybe even have Max leave Australia. I mean, if they had made the Fury Road with Mel Gibson, Max, You're right, would have sort of continued this arc from Beyond Thunderdome. He would have been a much more paternalistic character, right, you know, he because he would have very by the very nature of the age he would be at like he wouldn't be doing all those stunts like oh, he'd be like old and Nana Jones I'm sure Knuts, the sort of war boy that he befriends, would have been a much bigger character.

And like sort of acted as his proxy and more I felt. But because they cast it younger, they're able to make Max the more vital of the two, which I think is I think the smart way to go about doing it. I mean, look, yes, we have Mel Gibson in this movie, and he turns in his best performance is Mad Max. But literally, this is not what was going to continue to define the franchise once they got back around to making it so, because again they were cognizant of the response to this movie, which I think is unfair. Because the chase at the end of this movie is as good as the chase at the end of the last movie.

It's different, It's very different. The expectations are different, the kind of vehicles they're using are different. But I think it works just as well. It's just different. Yeah, I don't have any problem with any of the action in this movie.

Yeah, it's what you're saying, that this is a different movie than the last one. But I will say that certainly with distance, I'm sure people could reevaluate it if they gave it a try. And I'll say with that same distance, it is a fitting end to the Mel Gibson era. Mad Max Uh, Yeah, they give this character kind of an ending. Yeah.

It goes from from like losing everything to possibly attaining everything but realizing that it's worth sacrificing himself to maintain that. Right. It's great. Yeah, because he gets he lets them get away. That isn't some hacky, fucking you know, screenwriting chorus bullshit, Like that's a genuine progression of a character.

Yeah, he has an arc through three movies, which is kind of not I guess that's not what people expected or wanted. I like that Max as a character grows and by the end of this movie, he's willing to make a choice that the Max from the last movie was not willing to make at all. Yeah, you might have sacrificed himself for that town. He wouldn't have. He didn't want to.

He is helping them only because he literally fucking had to by the time it gets to that point. He's helping them because there is no other choice for him. For the misguided people who think that this was a wrong turn for the mad Max character, I would invite you to go read the works of Roberty Howard as Conan, the Barbarian Books. Conan never changes in any of those looks. Oh no, wait, he does.

He becomes a king, he learns, he has many many different adventures. I'm just saying, like, this is not a new thing that we would get some other flavor of a character, and the fact that this isn't what they thought they wanted is baffle. And does this not have like one of the great movie fight scenes in it with the Thunderdome. I love Thunderdome, man, we Thunderdome. We wouldn't have that the fucking doctor dre and the Tupac song that's a California love song.

That's fair. Oh, we would have the song, but we wouldn't have that excellent video, that's fair. I mean I love the set. I mean I love the production design in this movie. I mean we've talked about it a lot with the last movie and this movie a little bit, but the production design in this movie's wild.

This is like unlike I mean, it's not that they don't make movies like this in Hollywood anymore, but nobody is interested in making this kind of movie anymore. Only some filmmakers are really availing themselves to go with practical effects for these big sets. I mean no, I mean, look, Ripley Ripley. Ridley Scott made Prometheus the way that Ridley Scott made Alien and people were like, oh my god, what's And George Miller made Fury Road the way he made this movie, which is leaning on the practical effects because you can't replicate the thunderdome in CGI, and it work as well as it does in this movie. Clearly a real set.

It's well lit, it's interesting to look at. They're bouncing around on bungee cords. It's bizarre, but it's way more interesting than two guys just fist fighting in a colisseum. It certainly is. I will say that the thought of a CGI thunderdome does appeal to me.

It done by George Miller, sure like, not done by somebody else. Because you know what I like about Fury Road is it feels like a synthesis of Road Warrior and Thunderdome because we get to spend a little more time in the civilization that's being threatened in you know, a Martin Joe and his little kingdom. We get to spend time with them, and then we get hints to these other kingdoms that exist. And that's just only one part of the wasteland. Right this, this little fiefdom of the Bullet King in the Gasoline Gang.

We're gonna see so much more of this mad Max world in the next decade, I guarantee it. It's a frightening and enticing proposition. Right, it really is. Like it's unfortunate, but at the same time, the hands that it's in I think are good hands. As for all of this movie's perceived failings, like I don't think any of them are fair.

I think it's a purely subjective issue that this movie is fighting with. This movie's well made, it's interesting to look at. It's well cast. I think the practical effects are well done. The set design is fucking insane.

I mean, so much of this is done for real. These are crazy sets and you feel it. And I again, like I said, not that they don't make movies like this anymore. People just aren't interested in going out of their way to make these giant, real movies. And even something like Fury Road doesn't necessarily hit all the notes that this movie does.

But that's okay. In and of itself is doing something different, and I applot a franchise that is trying to do different things with each movie versus a franchise that's just doing the same fucking thing over and over and over again. Because that's just monotony. That's a stunning lack of creativity, if that's any They just keep making the same thing over and over again. What are you doing make the same thing over and over again?

Well, you can't win, yeah, because when they tried to make something different from well, I don't know. I mean again, we talked about Star Wars a little bit, like, you know, there are so many things that they've tried to do anything different with and the fan backlash is just it's The Last Jedi is still the most reviled Star Wars movie ever made. And that movie's been out for like a decade almost at this point, Like give it a rest. Yeah, And that's the thing similarly to this movie, Like I feel like The Last Jedi may may in the future age better than anyone gives it credit for. But this movie has aged.

This movie in a lot of ways, has aged better than the original Road Warrior has because I feel like you could put this on for a modern audience and they would get it and get into it more than with the original. Let me go on record, the Cantell Bite sequence or the Casino Planet sequence in the Last Jedi is misguided and ultimately barring, and he was trying to do something different there because everything else he was doing was also something different. It's just that that one didn't work. I think The Last Jedi is fucking great. I really enjoyed that movie for all the reasons we're talking about George Miller, because it was every time you expected something to happen, he did it differently and justified his reasoning, and doing so over and over and over again and over and over and over again.

Fans were like, no, I don't want that. I wanted the other thing, right, And it's like, guys, you could just go watch the other thing. The other thing's been done. And now we're at the point with Star Wars where people don't want it anymore because it is worn out. It's welcome.

You want to see Luke skywakerfi Do you think that's in any way could possibly be any more thrilling than seeing him fight Darth Vader twice? Right? Right? What would be the goddamn point of seeing Luke Skywalker fighting with a fucking lightsaber again and the only person he can fight is Kylo Ren right it he's so disappointing. Yeah, I know.

And that's and again, like I said, like I I just I look at a movie like this and I think to myself that this has been happening for a very long time. Just the Internet has made it easier to amplify it, easier to really I mean, look, we live in a universe where the Snyder cut came out because of the support for it. And I'm not saying it's a good or a bad thing. I mean my opinion on it doesn't matter. They did it anyways, but it's a bad thing because it was a financial decision, right, That's all.

It was the fan They knew there was a fan base who would watch it, But it wasn't that the fans convinced them at all. They smelled money and then they threw some money at it, and then they got their money. But what it does do is embolden those toxic assholes and now they feel that everything that they think and want they deserve. Right, that's the bad part of this. And again it comes back to this idea of the response to Michael Keaton being cast as Batman or mad Max three, not just being another long chase movie.

When the fans don't get what they want, they tend to get upset. But filmmakers and TV show showrunners are going to do what they want to do. I know the only person for it, the only person who actually figured out how to make sequels that were different than the original one and still satisfied the fans is James Cameron, who did it twice. He not only made Aliens, which is a completely different movie than Alien and satisfied everybody, but he wrote the script for Rambo First Blood Part two, which if you watch that first movie, it's just about a Vietnam veda gets fucked with by the local law enforcement and then like takes to the hills where they hunt him down. There's nothing super heroic about it at all.

The second film is a pure action, fucking extravaganza with him refighting the Vietnam War, and people loved that more than the first movie. Yeah, and I think it's it's interesting because again you mentioned James Cameron. I mean, his name is on the same list with George Miller's name, right, Like, these are people who their involvement in a project elevates it immensely. Just being involved. And look, you know, speaking of Justice League, there there's a universe where George Miller got to make his version of the Justice League because that was the thing that was going to happen.

Oh man, what what could have been? Armie Hammer is Batman? Yeah, boy, that would have been weird. There was a lot of weird things going on in the mid two thousands with comic book stuff, and as sounds delicious, wow, simply stunning. It saved me.

This save me the ribs. Yeah, he's uh, I don't know. I mean I think that you know, George Miller, I give him a very wide berth as a filmmaker because I trust the decisions that he makes, and I think that they have yielded some of some of the most interesting films that have come out in ever. I mean again, a movie about dancing penguins. Is we have George Miller to thank for that.

He wrote the goddamn script for both of those movies. We haven't even talked about the the other. In between shit, like in between Road Warrior and Thunderdome, he does that twilight Zone segment, which is fucking phenomenal, best part of that entire movie, and then he directs The Witches of Eastric Have you watched that? Have you seen? Ever seen?

The Holy God Man? It's so fucking different than everything else. Just like the Babe movie, Just like the Dancing Penguin movie, Just like the Geni movie he just did with Idris Elbert that with three thousand years of longing. Yeah, just like the movie I saw in high school, Lorenzo's Oil. Good god Man.

It's all over the place. Yeah, And it's what's weird, is like, there are very few directors who are as much of a chameleon with the success that George Miller is at. None of the movies that you mentioned have been have been failures. They've all been objectively successes on top of everything else. I mean Mad Max's is or was, at the time, the most profitable film ever made.

Like that's who gets the credit there, George Miller does Doctor George Miller on top of everything else. God bless them. Can you imagine what he must be like, Like what he must be like to just be around. It's probably like Peter Jackson, just like a constant font of just like no, we're gonna do this, Now, we're gonna do this, We're gonna like, I don't know, like those kinds of directors, they know what they want, they know how to get it, and I respect the shit out of that, even if the movies aren't made for me. Being able to make what you want in the studio system, holy shit.

Like there's so many people that have to thank George Miller and James Cameron into George Lucas for being able to make movies and then transition into the studio system and continue to make their movies. It's pretty crazy. And in Miller's case, it's even more kind of spectacular because all of these movies are kind of hard won, right, It's not like everyone was given him a blank check on these things, right up until fucking Fury Road, Like you know, they got shut down a bunch of times that had studio interference on the set and they told him they couldn't have the ending they had to, like they shut down production before they finished the ending and then had to go back and reshoot the ending like so, and you know, in each of them, and it took forever to get made, Like this guy with this proven track record with these movies, it took him forever to get anyone to like let him make another one, so you know, it's not like a Spielberg situation where it's just like what do you want to do?

Right right here here, Steve, We'll just back the truck up to your house, and the Jurassic Park We'll just give you that one too, because why not who cares? Yeah, yeah, that's the thing. I mean, George Miller kind of stands alone in terms of making it on his own with his own ideas. I mean, it's very Sam Raimi probably is a better comparison totally George Romero, Like he's one of those mavericks. Yeah, like making his thing and not taking anybody else's ideas, like any further than he needs to, but he's going to stay true to his idea throughout.

And again that's very hard to do in the industry. Like if John Waters was a motorhead, he'd be George Miller. Yeah. Again, like you're we're just naming our tours pretty much, like that's what name is. Well.

I mean I would even go as far as to say, like Scorsese really, like I mean you see that Megalapolis trailer? No I haven't. But again, someone who's doing what they want right like these kinds of directors are few and far between. Now, you know, a Jonathan Glazer type or I know you and I probably different opinions about some of his movies, But an ari astor type just making something very specific, very weird that they want to make. And that's again, you know sometimes in movie trailers where it'll say from the visionary director of blah blah blah, and it's the most pretentious thing ever.

But if they say from the visionary director George Miller, I'm like, yeah, yeah, pretty much. What is it that George has done? Please tell me, mar right, and tell me tell me about the Penguin movie again. Again, the Penguin movie is George Miller. That's the other thing.

Like some of these other directors we've mentioned have not been able to navigate children's films the way George Miller has, like and on top of that, an animated child's film, like, not a live action kids movie, a animated one. Just sure, sure, And I think that, I mean, look Beyond Thunderdome is such a pivot for George Miller, and I think it informs the rest of his career too, Like this is this is in a lot of ways, you know, This is literally his third movie, but it is the first time in a long line of times where he's bucking expectations and probably reveling in it, I would assume, because if I were him, I'd be like, I don't give a shit if you don't like my movie, because clearly some people do.

This movie still made money. This movie was still immensely successful in terms of host release, but had a big tail in like the rentals. And again, Mad Max three is being made because of the success line two movies, so can't take that away from him either. People didn't resonate with this movie. It's aged way better than so many other movies that came out around the same time have because this is so unlike everything else.

You only get to see this in this movie, which you can't say for a lot of stuff in the eighties. Put this third movie against the most recent third Star Wars movie. Yeah, see, that's the thing. This movie and star that new Star Wars movie have nothing in common because that third Star Wars movie feels completely reactionary to everything that everybody had bad to say about Last Jedi. I would compare Fury Road and Rise of Skywalker more than I would compare this and that because this movie is the movie that the next movie's made in response to.

Right, I would compare them as the anti fat Yeah, like a movie that just made every wrong decision. And people like that movie Rise of Skywalker. Yeah, man, we hate it as well. That's weird to me that anybody could like that movie. It's so it's so reactionary.

It would be like in this movie, if all of a sudden, you know, Max had a family again, and Max, it's like, it's these are decisions that don't need to be made here. We don't need any of this anymore. Take it in a different direction, but don't take it in that direction. And that's the thing. I feel like, people watch this movie and when you're taking it in a direction I don't like.

But I think it was the logical direction. I mean, if we're watching a character who has been unable to connect with people, essentially only children. Really, the only person Max resonated with in the last movie was a child, why are we surprised that in this movie a whole group of children are wanting him to be there and protect him or protect them and them protect him. I don't it's not that big of a stretch to me. But again, having seen these movies boom boom boom, maybe that's why.

I mean, that's got to be part of it. Clearly, because I was way i'd never seen this before, I was more amenable to this, and I feel like people clearly in eighty five were. But again, the worst thing about this movie really is the fact that it's coming out after a movie that is a genuine classic, a genuine classic that deserves all the praise that it gets, and I think this movie does as well. It's just you can't come after a movie like Road Warrior and not expect to get compared to it constantly. And at the time you got to remember that, like Road Warrior was on cable NonStop, right, and people were wearing out their videotapes of the Road Warrior, so they wanted was Road Warrior two, right, Not Mad Max three, which is what this is.

And that's the important thing to your point. This is not Road Warrior two, it's Mad Max three. This is the character and mad Max Fury Road is Road Warrior too. I would say, at least my recollections of it are that it is more like what I saw in Mad Max two, that it is a weird movie about saving a ragtag group of kids who survived from a down to Boeing seven forty seven. But it is they just put them in the cab of the truck, right, Yeah, they toe the line, and you know what, I still am kind of curious and maybe you can explain it to me.

So the thing with so he just shows up and they already have a story about him, and they know what he looks like. I couldn't figure. I still haven't. I don't understand the story of Walker. He leaves, but then he's supposed to come back and look like Mad Max.

I'm assuming whoever Walker was already looked a bit met like Mad Max. Okay, he had graying temples, which is not like, you know, a bizarre distinct, right, but like the picture on the wall is literally Mad Max. Though, yeah, okay, yes, but I'm just saying, but I'm just saying, like, what I didn't understand is that whole aspect of that story. I didn't understand what the point of him him as a character was. And then then being like, well he's returned, it's like that that doesn't that No, I just I didn't get it.

I didn't get what they were reaching for there. This is some sort of like, you know, this is all faded. It was like, I don't is that what they're going at. I can't figure it out. I don't think I don't think it is faded.

I think if anything, it's a huge mistake because they follow that prophecy. They make that prophecy happen by going to Bartertown and making themselves flee. Their myth was that Captain Walker at These are all the children of the descendants of a plane crash who found this grotto of paradise and have been living there sort of ever since. And they're no more adults. It's all the kids.

And they have this myth that the captain went off to find help and that he would return one day if they had just left it it that that would be all right for them. But like, because they thrust that upon Max, who shows up and bears some resemblance, a very striking resemblance to their myth, you know, it ends up being kind of end of paradise. So in a way it's defying that expectation too, because this isn't this isn't Paula Trades coming to save the the the Eric Keen, he fucked it up. And I know by the way, I know that Paula Trade is not the chosen one of the Benijeza like orchestrated all that. I know all that.

Okay, don old, don't leave that in the comments. We get it well. And to your point about subverting expectations, I mean, yeah, the mad Max character at the end of the movie subverts the expectations again like you said, like he makes a choice that is not a choice he would have made the last movie not willingly, which is, you know, to help out this group of people. We see him literally forced to help them in the last movie and then they screw him over. Anyways, in this movie, he makes that choice, which is so interesting because it's clear that those kids have had an effect on him and that has transformed him as a character.

And you know, again, like you said, I feel like this was a worthy conclusion to Mad Max as played by Mel Gibson. But I also kind of just be at the best that that guy who lost his family was going to get in this wasteland, right, that's the furthest he can get help other children escape the fucking madness and go start a civilization, which makes sense, like that makes sense as what the character of Mad Max ultimately becomes. And I will say, honestly, for me, if anything, it kind of feels like a shame that the Fury Roads a reboot and it wasn't just its own thing, Because if I'm being honest with you, Chris, I got the same feeling when I watch it. I love the movie, I'll watch it. I'll go watch it right now.

But I did feel like, well, as much as he's zigging and zagon in each of the three previous movies, this does feel like a return to something. And yes it's spectacularly done, and yes it's a different adventure, but it did feel like we were kind of treading the same ground. Yeah, and that's like I said, as we kind of closed this episode out and look to Fury Road as the second to last stop or the last stop before at Furiosa. I haven't seen Fury Road since it came out, and all I remember is that exact thing you think you're saying, which is why isn't this just its own thing? It's it would you can do so much more if this is the starting place as opposed to this is where we're picking back up, and look, all I remember is the car chase of it all.

I don't remember any plot particulars or anything. But knowing that this is where the story ends, and I hadn't seen this part of the story, it is kind of like, I kind of wish that there was not this Mad Max aspect of that character, because it's still there. It's baked into it. I mean, you mentioned the thing about ghosts at the beginning of the fourth movie. That's got to be in reference to these three movies, if not just Mad Max, probably I'm assuming in terms of his wife and son, or maybe that's the other thing.

Like, I guess there are some other people he failed to save, like the woman in white in the last movie, but and I guess pig Killer in this movie. But for the most part, like it's also very good at getting the job done successfully. Well, now that you've watched these three movies and you know that he's capable of saving people watching Fury Road, you'll do it with kind of newer eyes because none of the ghosts that are presented to him are ghosts from these adventures. Sure, I didn't expect him to be specifically right, So, but I mean, they very well could have just druss somebody up like a pig killer and like had them run at the screen or something, but they don't do that. So you and yes, like when I said that, I did feel like it was a retreade when I was watching it.

It's a rare movie that gets better on every rewatch, So I just wanted to qualify that, like, I don't feel like it's just a retrade to the other ones. It's a fucking fantastic movie like all on its own. But it is a legacy sequel. Yeah, I mean in legacy, I mean sequels one thing, legacy sequels another. And with the term legacy in front of it, you know you're going to be getting what you've already got.

I mean Halloween that was a legacy sequel. Any legacy sequel that's out there is really I mean, Force Awakens is a legacy sequel. It's just a New Hope all over again. Fury Road Is shares more in common DNA wise with Road Warrior than it does with this movie, if I'm remembering it correctly. Well, what I was trying to say is that you know now that you haven't seen that movie in a while watch it now and know that somewhere in between Thunderdome and this movie, something really fucking horrible happened to Max clearly clearly, because yeah, I mean does he does he even talk in Fury Road?

Very little? Okay, because that's why. That's the other thing I remember is like Tom Hardy doesn't have much to say as mad Max, and that was a whole thing that people were making a big deal about, And now I understand why, because again where he's it makes sense for the character to kind of return to road Warrior Farm if something fucking catastrophic that occurred to him, and clearly it is, right, huh, Yeah, No, I'm I'm super excited to revisit Fury Road and then obviously you know Furio so beyond that. But yeah, no, I'm glad we finally are here at this point because I was curious what my response to be on Thunderdome was, and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it a lot more than all the things I had heard up until this point for the most part, because again, like this is a movie that for the long time was talked about as being a bad movie and a bad sequel, and I think it's complete, Especially now that's really unfair given the bad sequels.

We ab scene to franchise things that are objectively bad. But yeah, this movie is just different. And I actually again, I will always appreciate a director doing something outside of the box, and the further outside the box that they can make it entertaining, the better. So agreed, Anything else we want to talk about with beyond Thunderdom, I think we said it all cool, So Father Malone, until you and I talk about Fury Road, Where can people find you? And the assorted audio things that you do?

Go to a weirdingwaymedia dot com. I'm the co host of Night Mister Walters, a taxi podcast where HP and I talk all about the classic television series. Or you could hear me on Midnight Viewing, the Horror Anthology podcast and its sister series, Midnight Viewing Anthologies Attack, which as I co host a new sort of biweekly show with Antonio Lapour where we're we're checking out anthology, not just horror movies, any anthology movie, starting with Batman. The Batman the animated series anthology episodelet Almost Got Them That's coming up soon, which is a great episode, probably the best episode of that show rankly undoubtedly. Yeah.

As for me, weirding Way Media is where you can find all the stuff that I work on. Audio wise, I do do a weekly video podcast that you can find the audio of that's called Film Foundations, and then I do a monthly show on Patreon called Ranking on Bond with Patreon exclusive content as well on my Patreon, but that's the main exclusive ten dollars and up. You can hear the projection Boots, Mike White and I, along with Richard HadAM Richard Adam's paranormal Bookshelf talk about James Bond once a month and Father Malone. You will be joining us very soon. I'm very excited.

Actually, the next recording we're doing, I'm pretty sure is the one that you're on. We're gonna be talking about the first Roger Moore, Phil, the moment James Bond pivots, as one might say, talk about inflection points for a franchise. Is he living and letting letting die? Well, he's definitely doing a reggae interlude with Paul McCartney, that's for sure. Jeez excited.

I'm super excited. And yeah, until until you hear us talk about Fury Road we'll catch on the next episode.