Okay! So.
This week we are going to do a Mini-Canon for
characters who don't have very many iterations but
have been revamped nonetheless.
I was originally going to launch these minisodes later this year for certain...
you know...
Movie... Event...
Corporate, y'know, Interest
vertical-integration-type-things...
But!
I think, like most people in the last few weeks
who saw Mad Max: Fury Road,
loved Mad Max: Fury Road more than I,
or probably anyone,
expected to, so, we're going to talk about the MANY portrayals of Mad Max.
All... two of them.
Mad max is one of those franchises that most of us
absorbed through cultural osmosis or late-night cable reruns,
but they were highly influential
not on the ubiquitous level of, say, an Indiana Jones movie
but the Mad Max movies were big precursors to high-testosterone
late-80s and early-90s actioners like Die Hard
though Max himself is more of a subdued anti-hero type.
Neither muscle-y nor obtrusive, "Max Rockatansky"
is a much more withdrawn sort, getting forced into communities
and stories that are not his own, but shit needs to get done
so, hey, Mad Max is in town.
Four movies and two different versions:
The original that made Mel Gibson famous
and the 2015 "revisitation"
Starring masculificent-grunt-machine Tom Hardy.
For Mad Max, the canon is a lot more,
y'know, loose than we're used to seeing in other franchises
Continuity kind of being an afterthought.
Are the Mad Max movies officially in the same continuity? Well...
(*ambivalent verbal shrug*)
Mad Max is basically a feature-length Act One
Civilization in Australia is not doing so hot, though it hasn't exactly crumbled either.
We still have infrastructure and a police force and biker gangs are flourishing, but you know
Civilization still stands. Max and his partner, Goose
are cops trying to hold the whole thing together. While the name Max Rockatansky
has a sort of John-McUnconvincing-name vibe to it,
He's actually named after Baron Karl von Rockatansky, a bohemian
Pathologist and likely nod to the director George Miller's time as an ER
doctor. Max is one of those archetypal "best at what he does" types
[in the movie] "You're a winner Max! You're on the top shelf"
[Lindsay]: He's good at shooting and better at driving and in the wake of the deteriorating state of things here in almost post-apocalyptic
Australia he's beginning to fear his darker side especially after his partner
Goose gets killed.
[Max]: "Look, any longer out on that road, and I'm one of them, you know? a terminal craven
I've only got a bronze badge to say I'm one of the good guys.
Linsay: so does max get mad? nope, he goes on vacation
seriously he is on vacay for a
shockingly huge chunk of this movie
if you've seen fury road or any of the other two you'd know what's about to happen to the wifey and the baby and the
Preamble to wifey get fridged, which in turn is the catalyst for Max getting mad is
Most of the movie. Max doesn't really get mad until the last 20 minutes when the baby gets killed and the wife gets
Maybe killed we actually never find out if she lives or not. Max goes on his vengeful rampage and then the movie ends
Budget being what it was, max is nowhere near as effective at exacting revenge as he would be in later entries
He gets shot in the leg almost
immediately during his rampage and as a result has to wear a brace that we see in all three of the other movies even the
exceptionally continuity-ly wonky Fury Road
But given that max is now mad and exacting revenge on these biker gangs, is he's supposed to be the hero, or even an antihero?
George Miller was not a very experienced filmmaker in
1979 which comes across with issues of pacing and structure and the simple cliche interactions of the characters especially
Between Max and his wife plus the budget was basically non-existent, but he already had a good grasp on them and character
[Characters on screen]: "You're bad"
Max's turn to the dark side, such as it were, was the sort of unsympathetic turn you could get away with in the 70s
Especially for an independent australian film that accidentally made a lot of money here in the states
The audience not knowing whether or not max's wife survives isn't a boo-boo on the part of the filmmaker
But it doesn't really matter max has by the end of the movie basically given up on humanity and his own humanity
Finishing the movie by roasting one of his enemies who is by the way helpless and begging for Mercy
[Character on screen]: *unintelligible crying/begging*
And this is also like a young kid who's a toady of the bad guy?
And that's his arc Max isn't just mad he's gone. That's not very heroic
But after that first movie Max more hits his stride and becoming a player in other people's stories
So for the people who complained about that aspect of Fury Road. I have to assume. They aren't terribly familiar with the franchise
Mad Max: the Road warrior or mad Max: hooray a budget! is where Max the post-apocalyptic
wandering loner gets set as his archetype. Max gets caught up with this peaceful ish
Little Community that has some gas and then the bad guy, lord humungus
yeah, he wants to kill them to get the gas Max keeps doing these people favors in exchange for stuff people keep begging him to
Stick around he keeps wanting to leave and is forced to stay he just wants his stuff...
[characters on screen]: "He said if I brought him back give me some gas"
[Lindsay]: stuff is a big theme in these movies
No wifey to get fridged this time, but he does have a cute and extremely obedient well-trained dog
And you can guess how that ends?
[onscreen]: *gunshot and doggy whimper*
Max defines himself more in his relationship to his stuff than to other people in Road warrior
He's all about gas and then he's all about his car once
He finally lets go of this stuff he finds out that he'd been duped by the very people
He risked his life to help. turns out that maybe Max was right to want to go it alone.
[on screen]: "That was the last we ever saw of him..."
stupid, disappointing other human beings.
[Max speaking]: "Thunderdome,"
[Max]: "How do I get in there?" [Woman]: "that's easy, pick a fight"
And now we get to the infamously bizarre Beyond the thunderdome where once again Max's primary motivation is stuff. it's a few
More decades on after what appears to be a worldwide nuclear war. where in the last one
It was his macho car driving and this one. It's his macho face punching and not dying in the face is probably dying
Congratulations
first survive the audition
Then looking for his stuff Max falls in with the evil Tina Turner and goes along with what she wants until he's basically
Punished for not being a total monster and refusing to kill a mentally disabled man
before long, he escapes barely survives and then gets
thrust into this lost boys nightmare
And he's not thrilled to be here
But you know whatever the kids so while always with the mind to get his stuff back once again
He's reluctantly drawn in to a sort of...
Eh... I probably shouldn't let these children get killed
situation. In the end, Max bring some misfits together, sacrifices his own well-being for some of those kids and
while Thunderdome is the
Goofiest it's also got the most complete arc for Max as a character of those first three movies and that he actually does something
Somewhat selfless, and then doesn't regret it, but at the same time he ends up being alone now for a while
This was supposed to be the last entry in the series in part for that reason
But then 30 years later
Mad Max Fury Road is the hardest to pin down in terms of continuity
Max alludes to having been a cop at the very beginning
But it's pretty obvious that it's been at least a couple of generations since civilization fell
Max is now portrayed by pitbull/elf hybrid Tom Hardy and when we first introduced to Max
he's haunted by memories and even hallucinations of people he could not save and
No
This doesn't appear to be a clear reference to any of the previous three movies the most frequent of these
Accusing Dead is a little girl and she's definitely not in the previous three so is this his daughter some kid
Eh, I donno. There's several other characters who weren't really there in the previous three. Again, in terms of continuity, the thread seems to be
Don't worry about it. So is this the same Max
a road warrior searching for
Max in Fury Road is the lowest we've yet seen him. At the beginning of the film, he's been alone for so long
He's almost forgotten how to speak horribly traumatized and suffering from intense post-traumatic stress.
We're Gibson's Max was controlled
Calculating Hardy's Max can barely keep it together part of what makes fury Road
So compelling compared to the other three the thing that's being fought over is not stuff like gas and cars
But personhood for the first half hour not only the Max drift of all this stuff
But also of all agency strapped to the front of a car as a blood bank for the war boy Nux
under the belief that this will make his blood more adrenaline-y.
I mean he is pissed about the whole ordeal but
Mostly he's mad that he took his stuff
Namely his car and his blood
But as far as the plot proper Max is not motivated by stuff ever as in the previous two
but like Furiosa and the wives by
Survival and the movie wastes very little time getting our heroes to get over themselves and work together because it's just a logical thing to
Because the world is harsh and awful and really hard to survive in so you better work together, damnit.
They don't waste any time being surprised at the abilities of the other. It's just like oh
you can do the thing. Good, do the thing.
That is surprisingly rare with male and female co-leads.
Almost immediately after Max Escapes captivity he gets the shit kicked out of him by a one-armed woman
But there's never any egotistical butthurt about it and that does set him apart for most action movie heroes
He doesn't need to reassert his masculinity. There's just no time for that
But the real brilliance of fury road is the way it thematically examines its own predecessors
especially in regards to characters being motivated by
Stuff and fury Road the stuff is people
Human objectification is a huge theme the wives are Joe's property the war boys are joseph's orzabal or hotter
Their unborn children are Joe's property and Max himself basically an organ and blood donor is also
Property so while fury road is awesome and fun as hell to watch it's also a fascinating
Reexamination on the themes of the previous three. Max was never an ideal more of a fall-from-grace
sort than an honest-to-God antihero maybe in the third one, but yeah
But the first three films are more thematically complex than idealizing Max's either running away
Or violence as a solution to everything approach to masculinity
I
Don't think it's any coincidence
That nuts bears a strong narrative resemblance to the young brainwashed Johnny who Max killed in cold blood in the first movie
Modern Max has zero interest in vengeance or even come up as
just survival and as a result we have the highest stakes we've ever seen in a Mad Max movie and
of course, they're talking about sequels and honestly I I
Don't I don't know how they're going to follow this one as it was very
Complete, but hey if we can go from here
to here in 30 years who knows
We will be back next week with a real full episode of the loose Cannon, which is yes?
And it's coming I promise hang in there. Thanks for watching Patreon Twitter
Go see Mad Max Fury Road. You'll love it. If you don't I