With Mad Max: Fury Road set to arrive this month, Tom Jolliffe revisits the Mad Max Trilogy…
For the last year we have been treated with some tantalizing footage of the upcoming, Mad Max: Fury Road. Every new trailer provides yet more spectacular and eye-catching visuals, and promises a film absolutely crammed with dazzling vehicular carnage. The film will reboot the franchise which began in 1979 with George Miller and Mel Gibson, and ground to a halt with the contentious third film which went epic and threw Tina Turner into the mix. Miller has remained to once again helm the reboot, whilst Mel Gibson (blighted by age and awful press) has been replaced by Tom Hardy. Can the film re-launch the once popular franchise, and can it transform Hardy into a leading draw at the box office? We shall see.
So with the release impending on Fury Road, I take a look back at the original films. First up is Mad Max, the uber low budget, Ozploitation classic. Mel Gibson is Mad Max, a cop and family man in near future Australia, which is blighted by economic downturn and rampaging gangs. Civilisation is falling apart. It’s not quite the post apocalyptic setting that one immediately associates with Mad Max (which comes in the second, and most universally popular film).
What is immediately evident in the first film is the visual style of “Mastermind (as the trailers put it for Fury Road)” George Miller. Despite a shoestring budget, Miller creates a film with lush visuals and spectacular car chases. There are some insane stunts in the film, undoubtedly at a time when the health and safety laws of stuntmen were probably much less stringent than now (not that Fury Roads footage suggests this). The first film sees Max lose everything, as his partner, wife and newborn baby are savagely killed by a marauding gang of bikers. Max hunts them down seeking revenge. Carnage ensues. The film is pretty grindhouse, and a little trashy. It’s rough and raw but there’s a great visceral energy to it. It’s left open-ended.
A couple of years later Miller upped the ante with sequel The Road Warrior. Now the films vistas are long stretches of desolate road surrounded by sand and remnants of carnage. The world looks dead and society has well and truly broken beyond repair. Lawlessness is the way and everyone battles for the last great commodity, petrol. Like the first film this is shot in widescreen, and beautifully captures the films setting. Miller, armed with more of budget this time (though still fairly meagre) takes the set pieces up a notch.
Max comes across a small group of fortress dwelling survivalists sitting on a huge stockpile of petrol. A gang of sadochistic marauders lie perennially in wait, trying to invade and conquer, and take control of the precious resource. When Max rescues one of the group (left for dead by the marauders) he makes an agreement with the leader. He can bring them a vehicle big enough to transport their stock for their escape to a better place. Max’s only interest is enough gas to keep him drifting for the time being. Ultimately he won’t reconnect with this last semblance of humanity. Gibson again excels as the stoic, mono-syllabic and haunted Max.
Road Warrior set epic new levels of vehicular insanity. The set pieces are astonishing and vast in scale, taking place on highway and off road. Once again the stunts are eye-bogglingly bold (some of the aerially captured shots are exquisite). The films raw simplicity is to be admired. It’s not bogged down in sub-plots. It’s a lithe 96 minutes and much of that is made up by the crazy set pieces. It’s action efficiency at its finest.
This brings us to the third film. The first was uber-low budget, the second low budget and both still adhered to the Ozploitation formula. The third goes epic. The budget, while far from huge is a massive step up from the previous (and the first film in the series with American financing). Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome remains a highly divisive film. Some really enjoy it, some think it’s awful. Where Road Warrior was svelte and lean and unhindered by pointlessness, Thunderdome is weighted down. Miller himself due to personal circumstances decided to share directing duties with George Ogilvie.
Here Max heads into Barter Town (run by…Tina Turner of all people) to retrieve his stolen car. He soon catches the attention of Aunty Entity (Turner) and she agrees to give Max his car back, if he helps her overthrow the rebellious Master, who runs the underbelly of Barter Town and controls its power. Things don’t go to plan and Max is banished and left for dead in the desert wilderness. It is here the film goes awry, as he’s rescued and taken to a tribe of children who live in tranquility waiting for a legendary pilot known as Walker to come and take them back to civilisation. There’s little further logic, nor explanation. It seems like these kids have been waiting for generations for Walkers return and none have any previous memory of the World before the apocalypse, yet it’s only kids. Is it a Logan’s Run type deal here? Turn 18 and you have to leave. Lets not get into the subject of inbreeding either, but needless to say, their existence is somewhat perplexing and never fully explained.
Despite the film seemingly being a little more child friendly (it’s still violent, but this was PG-13 rather than the familiar R rating the franchise started with) and the annoyance of the child tribe sub-plot, Thunderdome still ticks the main boxes expected from Miller’s franchise. Firstly it’s visually resplendent. Secondly, the action set pieces are stunning. If you’ve watched in awe the Fury Road trailers at some of the majestically captured stunt work, you’ll see much of that in evidence in the now 30-year-old Thunderdome. Epically scaled car wars, replete with explosions, death defying stunts and gleeful destruction. The film is flawed but still delivers where it most counts.
Though Thunderdome split opinion and has often been the subject of spoof and piss-taking, it was still a hit. So the long wait for a follow up, particularly with rumours circulating year upon year in between (with Gibson initially to return to his star making role) is surprising. The original franchise still holds up very well and the arc of the franchise is interesting. It always maintains a B-movie sensibility, starting with Grindhouse and moving to near fantasy. The effect on cinema in the 80’s was particularly prevalent as you almost couldn’t move for cheap post apocalyptic films throughout the dawn of VHS. All inspired by Mad Max.
Fury Road hits UK cinemas on May 14th. The trailers promise much and it will hopefully deliver. Until then I highly recommend revisiting Mad Max in his journeys through a lawless future Oz, Desert wastelands and even Barter Town. Road Warrior is the pick of the bunch if you have to pick one.
Tom Jolliffe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL18yMRIfoszFLSgML6ddazw180SXMvMz5&v=pnc360pUDRI&feature=player_embedded
