It just occurred to me why I was underwhelmed with Mad Max Fury Road and couldn't even be bothered watching Furiosa. Or for that matter why although I enjoyed the spectacle of Beyond Thunderdome as a kid, I don't think I'd bother with it either as an adult.
(1/?)
The point of the original Mad Max (1979) and it's 1981 sequel, was that life after nuclear armageddon would be brutish, hopeless and short. Like The Day After (1983) or When the Wind Blows (1986).
Although Max and a few other characters were heroic in the way they faced the extreme situations they found themselves in, there was no glory in it. Characters who did the honorable thing, and tried to help others, were just as likely to be betrayed, abandoned or killed as those who didn't.
(2/?)
Both Mad Max 1 and 2 were relentlessly grim. Every exciting action scene was followed by a disappointment.
Take the climax of the second film. Max, badly injured, insists on driving the fuel tanker and then discovers that its full of sand, not fuel. He's been used as a diversion and left for dead. If it wasn't for the Gyro Captain he would have had no way to get his car back.
Both films are a series of lose-lose choices, even for those trying to do the right thing. No glory.
(3/?)
In Fury Road, from what I remember, there were no stakes or difficult decisions. There were no honourable characters forced by circumstance to do dishonourable things. There was no sense of hopelessness. It was just one big, long car chase.
Max wasn't a brooding outcast, haunted by the death of his family, or the society it was once his job to protect and serve. He was just a square-jawed action hero, kicking arse and taking names.
(4/?)
Like the Star Wars sequels, Fury Road captured the visual aesthetic of the originals beautifully. But completely missed the point of their stories and their characters.
That aesthetic and the premise it visualised was just backdrop for a set of completely unrelated, paint-by-number scripts. Which no one would have watched or raved about if they weren't attached to beloved franchises.
(5/?)
This is true of so much of the franchise-milking that goes on in the entertainment industry these days. It's why I decided a year or two back to stop paying for anything related to an established franchise.
I want to see new stories, about new characters, painting their own conceptual scenery rather than leaning on nostalgia. I want more films like The Creator and M3gan, and TV shows like Devs and Blue Eye Samurai.
Let's make entertainment creative again.
(6/6)
Unfortunately, nobody has bothered setting up an ecosystem like that in the West, so there are options are either the milk old franchises or to immediately go for broke spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a new idea that might suck.
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Your story reminded me of existential comics' take "mad marx: the class warrior"
https://existentialcomics.com/comic/186
Which if you haven't seen it is described by the writer as "I mean, there isn't much to explain. It's a communist fanfic. Honestly "Fury Road" basically has the same plot, so it's hardly even a stretch"
With that, people follow their primal urge to create rituals - Barter Town uses them to recreate a shadob of the world bygone, with strong ruler and equally strong contender, beginnings of class war and industrial civilisation. IIt even recreates the highwaymen professon (Jedediyah&Son)
Planet Erf children, portrayed as "noble savages" use their more tribal dynamics (including shaman-like Scrooloose) and mythology to stay together and "explain" their roots and beginnings.
That story is less about Max, and more about the humanity trying to recombine after the shattering event. Pretty much what our children or grandchildren will have to deal with.
The finale adds more mythology-in-the-making flair, making the innocents and the misfits go back to abandoned cities, where they can (selectively, we hope) rebuid humanity along different lines.
Those who could not shed the old s(k)in, stay behind. And Max, not much unlikely to Moses (only unwilling, godless, and highly recyclable), stays as well, to find others who may need a guiding angel with a shotgun and knife.
Part of my crush is the stunning way the said ritauals were create and depicted, blending grotesque, thrill and some cultural "wink", that kept me at the same time immersed and admiring the cinematographic genius. Something I only experienced (I think) watching Cirque Soleil before.
So, perhaps you may give the Thunderdome another chance?
@8petros
> In defense of "Thunderdome" (apart from my eternal love for Auntie Tina), let me say that it adds to the "Max universe" some aspects that are (anthropologically speaking) logical and necessary
Thanks for this forcefully thoughtful rejoinder. To be fair, it's been a long time since I saw films in the original trilogy. I may have been misremembering aspects of Thunderdome as being part of the first film.
What you describe makes Fury Road all the more disappointing as a sequel.
In case it needs to be said, my criticism of Fury Road has nothing to do with the prominence of Furiosa. I just don't think this is the radical departure from the earlier films it's made out to be.
My vague memories of the second film include a prominent female oil refinery settler, who could have been Virginia Hey's character, credited as "Warrior Woman", or Moira Claux as Big Rebecca, another battle-hardened settler. I don't remember any damsels in distress.
(1/?)
As @8petros pointed out in his reply to my initial rant, Beyond Thunderdome developed on the first two films by depicting a return to a more settled way of life. As suggested by the ending of the second film.
It's significant that the leader of the settlement featured in the film was a woman, Tina Turner's character Aunty Entity. In this respect the writing choice in Fury Road to have the strongest female character begin as a lackey of a male community leader was a step backwards.
(2/?)
TBH I think a better movie could have been made by combining the plots of Fury Road and Furiosa into one script and cutting out of the deadwood, including Max and every reference to him.
Charlize Theron's performance could have easily carried a tentpole movie without using Mad Max nostalgia as a crutch and a hype tool. It could have been set in the sane story universe without including Max at all. Or even just been it's own new thing, with it's own post-armageddon visual aesthetic.
(3/?)
What Hollywood did instead was take a film that could have been about Furiousa, and set up a new franchise around her character, and tied it to a legacy male character. Then blew smoke up their own arses about how progressive this supposedly was. It amazes me that so many people on both sides of the Culture Wars fell for this bullshit, and set about arguing furiously with each other as if it was true.
(4/4)