Trilogy Review: Mad Max

So it turns out I had not seen the original Mad Max, nor had I seen the third installment of the trilogy (although with its current infamy it seems like I have) and with the incredible Mad Max: Fury Road out in theatres, I wanted to revisit them all.

Now for the purposes of validity, I wrote the reviews for Mad Max and Mad Max 2 before I saw 2015's Fury Road. Due to computer problems these reviews were heavily delayed in publication, which I apologise for. Just so you know that these are not written in hindsight of Fury Road, but chronologically.

Mad Max (1979)

A story of revenge, a near-future police officer goes after a bike gang responsible for the murder of his partner, his wife and son.

At least, that's what the IMDB synopsis says, it even goes so far as to say "post apocalyptic", I... wouldn't call this post-apocalyptic.

Mad Max is the first incarnation of director George Miller's classic character that would go on to see two sequels and a reboot. I am a fan of Mad Max 2: Road Warrior but believe it or not I had not seen this film until now.
Well, I sort of wish I hadn't.

The franchise of Mad Max to me is three things: crazy car chases, crazier characters and a lot of carnage. But the first film is virtually none of these things.
One may have to look at this film as an origin story for Max; he isn't a lone, mysterious warrior yet, he is a husband and a father, has a home and a job in a police force. He even goes on vacation. The film follows the youthful Mel Gibson as Max, and initially his partner for the most part as they hunt down The Toecutter's motorcycle gang who have been terrorising the roads.

The film does eventually get into the themes synonymous with the franchise, but it takes about an hour to get there, of a ninety minute film! The pacing is toe-curlingly slow and while I try to not beat on any film for being dated... this has dated. Not in a particularly "70s science fiction" manner as one might guess from the poster (in fact this film is barely science fiction at all) it has dated because it looks as apocalyptic as a 1970's episode of Top Gear.
The film making itself is surprisingly weak too. For a franchise best known for being eccentric none of the characters here are memorable or remotely interesting, scenes feel badly executed and apart from the eventual revenge story in the final act, there's nothing to give it direction.

It is apparent that George Miller loves his cars and his chases though. If one thing is done right here it is how the motorbikes and vehicles are shown and filmed, and the opening car chase (while a little boring in some instances) has a good old fashioned twisted metal feel to it.

I really don't have anything to say about it, this is not the Mad Max I was always aware of. No post apocalyptic psychos, no barren wastelands, no crazy vehicles and insane car chases; it feels more like a 70s cop drama with all the emotion and intrigue sucked out of it. 

Maybe had the revenge plot started in the middle rather than the end, we could have had an exciting movie?   

Additional Marshmallows: Admittedly one can only be so harsh on Mad Max: its budget was a measly $650,000, compared to Mad Max 2's $2,000,000 budget. Even director George Miller made money for the production by working as an emergency room doctor!

Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981)

Now this is the Mad Max I know.

Finding himself alone and the world turning into a desert wasteland, Max encounters a settlement under attack from a horde of bandits. Enlisted to help, Max has to defend one of the last supplies of oil from the marauders.

There really isn't a great deal to say about Mad Max 2, compared to the original film this is your quintessential action movie. While it does open with establishing what happened to Max and his family, this is a very different experience. 
Unlike the original that exists in an unspecified time and place, The Road Warrior is definitely set in the far future when humanity have mostly become raging lunatics living in a wasteland and living off tinned dog food.

Mel Gibson returns as the quiet hero Max, who is now tormented after the ending of the previous film; he wants nothing more than to be left in peace and to have gas for his car. The survivors he encounters are peaceable and while they see him as one of the savages from the roads, they also know he could help them escape the bandits.
The bandits are insane. Raping and pillaging their way across the deserts, strapping their victims to the fronts of their cars, wearing bondage gear in the desert (these actors must be uncomfortable...!) and led by the hockey-mask wearing individual called The Humungus.

There's a lot more style here than with the first film, certainly style over substance; the film is only ninety minutes long and has a host of characters, from Max to the Feral Kid, from the Gyro Captain to the crazed Zetta. There's little to no characterisation outside of their actions.

But the action is incredible. Director George Miller clearly got a much better budget here and could actually go to town with the vehicle design and the carnage of the crashes. The Road Warrior inspired so many action movies in the 80s and 90s, especially the near carbon copy called Waterworld.
Unlike the first film, The Road Warrior has dated acceptably, mostly due to the film's devastated setting. I would recommend anyone who hasn't seen this to watch it at least once; this looks like the main inspiration for Miller's 2015 reboot.

It is a mad world, just go with it.

    

Mad Max 3: Beyond Thunderdome (1985)

This is like the Batman Forever of the Mad Max trilogy. It has some good parts, but the tone is all wrong.

Coming straight off the back of Mad Max 2 (aka The Road Warrior) we find our silent protagonist Max alone in the desert wilderness. When his camels get stolen he finds his way to Bartertown, a town run by a woman named Aunty Entity and a duo called Master Blaster who are warring for control.

Thunderdome is one of those films that makes it hard to pin the plot down in a simple synopsis; the plot doesn't know what it is doing. It is less than two hours but feels like an eternity as we see Max stumble from one random encounter into quite a different one without any rhyme or reason or design. This film is mad, but not in a good way.

Things don't start off well as we are introduced with a song by singer and lead actress Tina Turner, which instantly breaks the tone of previous Mad Max films. You know this isn't going to go well.
But there is some promise; Bartertown makes for some nice world building that keeps with the tone of the superior second movie. There are a lot of strange characters, but none of them are especially memorable asides Master Blaster; a hulking muscle man in a fully enclosed helmet called Blaster, with a midget on his shoulders named Master. And Tina Turner as Aunty Entity. Surprisingly, Turner isn't in the film a great deal, appearing only at the start and at the end.
Even the titular Thunderdome does not feature particularly strongly. It isn't especially enthralling.

What does feature prominently? Small children. The film takes a massive tonal shift. When we haven't had any vehicles or chases or even carnage (like the first two films) we get... the Lost Boys from Hook. They are alone in the desert, wild children but not like Road Warrior's Wild Child these children are innocent and full of wonder, believing Max to be a messiah. 

What hurts this film the most is (not Tina Turner, though she is random) its two separate storylines that have no relation at all. First we have a town that is powered by an underground methane farm, then we have kids wanting to fly in a crashed airplane. Max's apparent lack of empathy towards all of these characters is the only thing I could relate to.

The ending attempts The Road Warrior's chase sequence again, but replaces bloody carnage with... hitting people in the face with frying pans like a Looney Toons cartoon. There is little to no violence or gore here; it is massively toned down.

I don't know what is worse; the first film's lack of budget or this film's lack of cohesion and tone. 

Review: Mad Max - Fury Road

A one hundred and twenty minute adrenaline shot; absolute carnage in the desert and all shot with awesome grungy, violent and most importantly, physical, action.

Immortan Joe, a tyrant of a blasted and wasted desert after Earth suffers a nuclear apocalypse, controls all supply of water for his downtrodden citizens. He also holds sway over his Five Wives, imprisoned in his citadel. But when one of his subordinates attempts to rescue these women, he is led on a gasoline fueled chase across the open desert, while amongst all of this, a traumatised loner named Max gets pulled into the fray.

Back in 1983, Australian director George Miller redefined the action genre with his sequel “The Road Warrior” to the 1979 Mad Max, a film with so much vehicular chaos and destruction it was praised for its physical stunt work and world building. Now in 2015 we get Miller returning for a reboot/re-envisioning of the same story.
But fear not, this is Miller's baby, and it is in good hands. Fury Road is exactly the film it should be. Like 2012's Dredd, it is a one trick pony but the ace up its sleeve is undeniably astounding. Capturing the pre-computer generated age of the 80s and 90s, the film is a visceral and eye-popping spectacle of carnage of the highest caliber, made even more so by the current over-saturation of action films.

Tom Hardy takes on the titular role as Max, a man haunted by the death of his family (shown exclusively through jarring, nightmarish flashbacks) beside him is Charlize Theron as Imperator Furiosa, the warrior woman with a bionic arm who defies a tyrant to free his slave wives. Immortan Joe is played by Hugh Keays-Byrne, who played the part of the villain Toecutter in Miller's 1979 Mad Max. 
All of the acting, asides perhaps the anger-fueled Immortan, is downplayed but not forgotten here. The film shows rather than tells with Hardy barely speaking at all outside of an opening narration, Theron's Furiosa very well steals the show as the character with the most to lose. A worthy note should be given to Nicolas Hoult (X-Men Days of Future Past) who disappears into the role of one of Immortan Joe's pasty pale War Boys.
People argue that there's a lack of “characterisation” here, when in fact there is plenty to progress the story and make you understand their motives. What this film lacks is unnecessary quips, one-liners and exposition dumps, all which can bog a film down.

But the action takes centre stage here, and the budget delivered towards the vehicle, costume and character design and construction. Near everything is practical effects, you cannot watch it and not appreciate how everything looks, my eyes were on stalks just taking everything in.

I actually can't think of anything “wrong” with it. It is a grisly film, a visceral film with such an astounding visual style that has been long forgotten about.

There's a truck in this film covered in massive drums, amps, and on top a blindfolded dude suspended in bungee chords with a double-necked guitar that shoots flames! How... how can you NOT like that??

Additional Marshmallows: Nicolas Hoult, who plays the war boy Nux, apparently knitted Christmas presents for cast and crew during filming. Even while in full costume!

Review: Mama

A horror I was always keen to visit with producer Guillermo Del Toro's name attached, but feedback had been shaky at best. Personally, the film wasn't terrible, in fact it had a lot of atmosphere to give.

Actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (of Game of Thrones fame) leads the film as Lucas, the brother of a father who disappeared mysteriously and how he has to care for his two nieces who had also disappeared only to be found alone in a woodland cabin. The two very young girls are traumatised from their experience, believing in a spiritual guardian they call Mama...

The film is a very simple premise, one of has been done before, but similar to Del Toro's other production project The Orphanage, Mama has a lot of presence and atmosphere as well as some nice character development. I think my only grievance with the movie (asides some mildly frustrating horror tropes and cinematography cliches) would be some dodgy CG imagery for the entity Mama. Mama's design is very intense and subtle, her hair moving as if underwater, but it feels as though the technology wasn't there to fully render her – her hair being a prime example.

The film is very murky but has excellent use of shadows and camera angles. Much of the film revolves around the two young girls, Victoria and Lily, and fortunately they are mostly competent actresses! Victoria is the older of the two and has more to do than the traumatised Lily. While Nikolaj Coster-Waldau does well, his character's girlfriend Annabelle (Jessica Chastain) steals the parent role midway through. Annabelle is part of a rock band (the film acknowledging how these two are not the sort to care for the two girls) Annabelle being the definition of unfit. The film does well to inspire confidence in her as it progresses.

Some criticise the ending of this film, but without spoiling anything I felt it was effective in an unconventional sense; it was going one direction but quickly pulls the rug from under your feet.

I enjoyed it, though it has already dated with visual effects which is very disappointing as it makes Mama less threatening. The film has plenty of horror tropes that it stumbles over and works tiredly with, but that isn't surprising for many horror films.