MovieChat Forums > christomacin
avatar

christomacin (4549)


Posts


Bonobo no show? A glorified Adult Swim episode... Williams: the most successful career of anyone in cinema history? Two Minute Black Die Hard Sunday Rollercoaster Warning... Connery's Greatest Performance? I killed more people than Stalin or Hitler, bitches! I killed more people than Stalin or Hitler, bitches! Anyone thinking Americans will rally together in a "Big War" like World War II or 9/11 are deluding themselves This is NOT a film or personal entry... why does this page exist? I recommend the Japanese 1966 film "The Face of Another" if you like this... View all posts >


Replies


2 hours, 18 minutes... Oh, I apologize. I misread your intent. You could either watch them in release order or not. If you watch them out of order start with Part Two, watch Part One as a prologue. Thrre and for are non-essential, in my view. The fourth one was better than three...but no Mel Gibson. You have to remember the first Mad Max was a very low budget film with strong exploitation roots (the biker film, post-apocalyptic schlock, etc), so they started off small. The world of Mad Max wasn't fully fornmed yet. In fact, it originally wasn't supposed to be a sci-fi film at all. The original idea was that it would be "a documentary. One day George Miller had been hearing about a radio journalist that would follow around into places of car accidents to interview people about them." That's why the first one has a relatively realistic feel, and highway patrol officers are part of it. He begins to become as feral as the prey he hunts, but part two shows there are lines he won't cross, and he often takes a good beating for his troubles. He's an antihero. I mean sure, he is ruthless in his pursuit of revenge for the deaths of his friend "the Goose" and his family, but he's doing it for understandable reasons against the ones that did him harm and has a certain code he still lives by. Short answer: yes, you should a watch at least watch part two, one of the best genre films of the 80s. Long answer: I mean, you could read the plot synopsis, but about being a highway patrolman - Max is a highway patrolman living in a post-apocalyptic Australia, so he and his fellow officers are tasked with doing battle- often to the death - with marauding road gangs which are becoming more and prevalent and out of control with each passing day as society gradually collapses. In part one, we see Max and his other coworkers responding to violent road accidents and assaults caused by these gangs. We don't see them writing out any tickets because things are so bad they have little time for minor offenses. By part two, society has already collapsed, so all Max has connecting him to his past life is V8 and some dim memories of his family and occupation. For some reason you seem determined to dislike these films without having seen them..But you're missing out. The Road Warrior at the very least you should give a shot. Mad Max you can then watch to get the back story if you're so inclined. Bad luck and typecasting. He was the star of the stage production of Amadeus. If he had starred in the film version of Amadeus (Best Picture winner) his whole career would've been very different. The director Milos Forman flat out refused to consider him, saying (according to Hamill) "How can you play Mozart, you're Luke Skywalker?". He appears a bit mad (insane), but is "an honorable man" if you can win his respect. So, he's not really insane, more psychologically damaged for obvious reasons l. The Road Warrior is a masterpiece of 80s action cinema, but also a very interesting updating of Western movie tropes to a post-apocalyptic of Australian future. Everything about the film is satisfying, and Miller reaches Sergio Leone level mastery of storytelling. Mad Max is an above average Ozploitation biker/post-apocalyptic film. It is a lot cruder and less well-placed film than Road Warrior, but is also interesting in its use of Western tropes, in this case the Revenge Western. If you can get passed the exploitation aspects and moderate pace it's still an amazing film for a first time director. Beyond Thunderdome starts off well, but veers off course with the Island of Lost Children, and the finale feels like a parody of the classic tanker chase (this time a train and lots of feral kids to protect instead of just one) from the Road Warrior. A disappointment with some good scenes, especially in the first half. Fury Road brings back the austere, laconic tone of the Road Warrior (and an R rating), which is welcome, but somewhat misses the master storytelling of Road Warrior, relying exclusively on one long extended chase scene with not enough humor, or memorable dialog or characters. In the first movie, Max is a highway patrolman with a reputation for being so aggressive in pursuit of suspects that it borders on being unhinged. His willingness to play chicken with a suspect in an oncoming car in the opening chase shows this. However, he still has a job and family to keep him from going off the deep end. In the second film, after losing his wife and son to a gang at the end of part one, he quits the police force and heads out into the outback in his V8 police cruiser. The car is the only thing still tying his former life. When we see him again in part two he is living a feral, nomadic existence as a scavenger. Now that he has nothing to lose he is even more unhinged than before. His gradual return to being a hero again is what makes the second Max film (The Road Warrior) the best in the series. Trump: "I prefer bitten-in-half people who don't scream like little girls." Would calling them "fish" be deemed a racial slur? Seriously though, which one is the Connery of Flipper, and which the Lazenby? View all replies >