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George Miller was a thirty-four year old M.D. who dabbled in short documentary filmwork when, in 1978, he he and friend Byron Kennedy came up with the idea for a film which was equal parts Dirty Harry and Death Wish, without the pseudo-philisophical musings of the former, or the moral outrage of the latter. The film was...
I believe that Mad Max was therapy of sorts for George Miller, and Byron Kennedy. Allow me to explain. George Miller, after working as an MD in the years prior to making Mad Max, once quickly summarized the theme of his film as "...a cautionary comment on unsafe driving which, as an MD, I have had to treat." While Byron Kennedy, researching the film locations, and character dynamics, had come into contact with several road accident victims who had survived crashes but remained traumatized as a result of their experience. The road as a site of danger, and the car as both thrill machine, and weapon are both elements that feed into the film.
Why does Max Max endure as one of the greatest Sci-fi/action films of all time? I have several theories. First-- the year is 1979. For too long, Sci-fi was about trips to the moon, and martians attacking. I have always believed that a film cannot ever be truly great unless there is a strong element of truth attached to it. No matter how much we may want Star Trek to be real, we know it is not. What immediately stands out about Mad Max is the plausability-- the simple fact that it could happen. Second-- What was intriguing to audiences of the time ( apart from the fact that it is a kick-ass movie )is Mad Max's contribution to relatively uncharted territory- i.e. Australian Science Fiction, and its vision of the future as a new dark age, in which modern civilization has not only stagnated, but has provided weaponry against itself and dismantled its own development. The new society imagined here is not going "Back to the Future", but foreward to the past, toward a new dawn of barbarism. It offered--
very simply, survival of the fittest, and audiences ate it up. Testament to this are the many distopian "Max-esque" films that have sprung up in the last ten years or so. Lastly-- and, I belive most importantly, The characters are real people. The story revolves around a man who has lost his wife, a son, his best friend, and most of his soul, and is clinging dearly to the final shreds of his sanity, and humanity. Max even says "...I'm scared, Fifi. You know what it is, it's that rat race out there, I'm beginning to enjoy it. Any longer out there and I'm one of them-- a terminal crazy, only I've got a bronze badge to prove i'm one of the good guys..." That's my kind of hero. Always clinging on by his fingertips. And I feel that, from one extent to another, we've all felt like that from time to time.
Mad Max is an excellent movie, but the sequel astounds as a movie superior in all respects.
So proclaims the spray-painted grafitti on a truck sprawled by a desolate stretch of road. At first horrified glance, moviegoers may be convinced that the vermin have also inherited the movie industry. In The Road Warrior, cars crash, somersault, explode, get squashed under the wheels of semi trucks. Skinless bug-eyed corpses hurtle toward the screen. A mangy dog sups at a coyote carcass. A deadly boomerang shears off fingertips, creases a man's skull. That's entertainment? As a series of isolated incidents, no; our nerve endings have long since been numbed by the carnage. But as garishly precise daubs in George Miller's apocalyptic fresco, they add up to exhillerating entertainment-and a textbook for sophisticated moviemaking. Mad Max II (or The Road Warrior, in America) is set in the postnuclear future. The world has been totaled; civilization is "...a white line nightmare..." where the only amenity is staying alive. In one of the film's first images, an automobile breaks angrily through one side of
the truck that has been holding it; this is the caesarean birth of the new mutant marauders. They race across the scarred landscape on stripped-down motorcycles, killing for fuel, raping for fun, going to hell at 80 m.p.h. In a jerry- built fortress, the more admirable survivors are putting up the fight of their lives. Into this brutal version of the bandits vs. the homesteaders rides a scurvy Shane: Max. Once the leader of a vengeful highway patrol, now a misanthropic me-firster. " You're a scavenger Max, you're a maggot! You're livin' off the corpse of the old world..." Finding a piece of humanity inside him which has probably lain dormant for ten years, Max makes an uneasy pact. He will help them break through the cordon of marauders and speed them toward their image of paradise--the seacoast, over 2000 miles away, and peace.
The outline suggests a scenario of armageddon aftershock. Bikers have terrorized many a decent citizen in movies over the past three decades, and the underdog has emerged to defend them many times. ( Shane, The Searchers, Yojimbo) What Miller has done is create a milieu as dense and tangy as Tolkien's Middle Earth. Miller suggests violence; he does not exploit it. He throws the viewer off- balance by mixing the ricochet rhythms of his chace scenes with grandeur: Wez's rain dance, a fiery crucifixion, a vision of Max flying supine over the outback. Byron Kennedy deserved an Oscar for his choice of sites. Miller keeps the eye alert, the mind agitated, and the Saturday matinee spirit alive.
This is what makes Mad Max II truly supreme. Mad Max returns in 1985 to sort out another post-holocaust disaster in...
I've been putting off writing my critique of Mad Max III for almost a month now, mostly, I think, because I have mixed feelings about the film. That said-- it's time for me to get off my butt and start writing. There is no doubt that Beyond Thunderdome (B.T. from now on) is a rich, brilliant landscape of a picture, with several discernable levels of meaning, and, if anything, more of a heart than the previous two installments in the series. Contrary to some people's beliefs, there is an enormous amount of character development in B.T. . Max has developed from a loner who would rather face almost certain death than join humanity, to, quite literally-- humanity's savior. Gibson once spoke out against the movie and his performance, but for me, the Max we see in B.T. is the best Max ever. There are moments of brilliance, the kind of movie brilliance that makes you believe, makes you WANT to believe. These are the parts of B.T. that I will talk about.
The societal satire in B.T. is excellent. There was always a satirical streak in the Mad Max films, but here it is bordering on self-parody. Nevertheless the gags are great. For example, when asked to shed his weapons for entry to Bartertown, Max takes a full minute to comply completely with the request, eventually piling up quite a mountain of shells, guns, crossbows, knives etc... . I never fail to laugh at that part. The casting of Tina Turner as Auntie Entity was a bold, and ultimately wise decision. She plays the part as though her life depended on it, with gusto, and fire in her eyes.( A quality I believe most Hollywood leading ladies could take a lesson in ). Gibson is on fire, and, as Max, has some of the best scenes of the trilogy. In Ken Sanes' excellent essay on B.T., there is a section which describes, I feel, the very essence of Max. He is a traveller, he is the bridge between two worlds, one already dead ( Bartertown ) and one waiting to live ( the children's " tomorrow morrow land "), but as that traveller, he is never destined to share in that world which he has created. His fate is to never truly feel welcome in either world, to remain a vagabond all his days.Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome is indeed a world full of meaning, depth, and intrigue, and unfortunately I have scratched only the surface...
-TIME magazine, May 10, 1982. ( Richard Corliss )
-Mug
-Dan Man the Oregano Man
-Peter Barton
-Neil Sinyard's biography on Mel Gibson
-Cinescape magazine, Jan./Feb. 1997.
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Geocities Inc.
-MANY,MANY MORE THAT I'VE FORGOTTEN--Sorry...
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