![]() The Citadel is a “city” built around a giant rock formation that doubles as a fortress. ![]() This particular installment centers around a nondescript region of (probably) Australia, and a settlement called the Citadel. World war follows, and in the aftermath, little of civilization remains (although in the original Mad Max, things were still organized enough to have a standing police force). The state of the world is more or less the result of us running out of oil, which causes a global energy crisis. About this Wasteland, why is the world all messed up? It’s simply one more legend of the “Road Warrior,” and his journey through the wasteland. It’s not a direct sequel to Beyond the Thunderdome (the third one), it’s not a prequel, and it’s certainly not a remake. Fury Road definitely works best on this level. Both the second and third films are implied to be stories told decades after they happened, long after Max has faded from memory into myth. It’s best not to think of the Mad Max movies as a series of sequels, but more as an anthology of stories centering around a particular character. There’s a very, very loose chronology connecting the original Mad Max trilogy, and while we’re supposed to assume this is the same guy each time, every installment is more-or-less standalone. All you really need to know about Max though is he’s a man who’s distilled himself into one single instinct: survive. There’s definitely not a ton of backstory on the guy in Fury Road, as the character has been the star of three Mad Max movies prior to this one. He’s “mad” (at least in this movie) because he’s certifiably insane. Max Rockatansky (somehow still the least silly name in the film) is a former police officer turned drifter, wandering the wasteland after the death of his wife and child. So who is this Max guy, and why is he so mad? So if you’re wondering what the hell an Imperator is, and why this Max guy is so angry, we’ve got you covered. That being said, the movie spends approximately 14 seconds explaining anything before all hell breaks loose, so it’s pretty easy to miss a ton of director George Miller’s rich (and utterly insane) worldbuilding. It’s such a shame they went the next step with Mad Max III: Beyond Thunderdome, which moved away from the car theme, the one thing that makes these films resonate with all who love classic Aussie muscle cars.Mad Max is all anyone is talking about this weekend, and for good reason (spoiler alert: it’s pretty mindblowing). VERDICT: 5/5Ī fitting sequel to the greatest Aussie car film ever made. Great characters, fantastic action, iconic cars – Mad Max II has it all and deserves its inclusions in greatest movie lists. Then there’s Virginia Hey’s smoking hot Warrior Woman, the righteous leader of the compound, Papagallo, with his twin 351-engined buggy, and the Feral Kid with his lethal boomerang and limited vocabulary. The genius of this film is George Miller’s vision of a post-apocalyptic dystopia, not to mention a brilliant cast of characters, from The Humungous and Wez to the Gyrocopter Pilot and the paraplegic mechanic, who gets one of the film’s most memorable lines: “Last of the V8 Interceptors – a piece of history. The original XB from Mad Max was modified and is featured in the close-up and interior shots in this film, while a replica was made for the chase scenes and was blown up as part of the movie. There are a bunch of classic cars among the 80 used in the film, and the keen of eye will spot a pink 1959 Desoto, a couple of Valiant Chargers, a Monaro with a front end that looks more at home on a Willys, a ZG Fairlane, a Landau, a couple of F100s, a VF Valiant, an XA coupe, a chopped up HQ Statesman and a Customline. But a shot of NOS, and a chrome exhaust stack, brings about the tragic demise of that wonderful XB. ![]() The rest of the film is about how Max tries to outsmart the gang, so he can get in and out of the compound with full tanks of gas. Leader of the gang is The Humungous, who looks like he had a nasty accident with a pot of boiling human growth hormone as a toddler, and his lieutenant is Kawasaki-rider Wez, with his male pillion bitch, who Max narrowly avoids in the opening scenes. Trouble is, the nastiest bunch of no-good villains this side of Broken Hill (where much of the film was shot) were also in the queue for a tank of guzzoline, and Max had already managed to get them off-side earlier in the film. When he foils an ambush by a gyrocopter pilot, Max learns there’s a heavily defended refinery churning out fuel, and he’s just got to have some, which is the basis of the film. The thing that keeps him going is the occasional run in with the more organised riff raff who have the same life goal of finding fuel to keep them going. Yep, life couldn’t get peachier for ol’ Max – blasting down the road, scavenging for fuel and living on dog food.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |