War and traffic accidents

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD

Gosh, I feel like a heretic just saying it's not the best film ever made.

2015
Directed by George Miller
Written by Brendan McCarthy, Nick Lathouris, and George Miller
With Tom Hardy (Max Rockatansky), Charlize Theron (Imperator Furiosa), Nicholas Hoult (Nux), Rosie Huntington-Whiteley (Splendid), Zoe Kravitz (Toast the Knowing), Riley Keough (Capable), Abbey Lee (The Dag), Courtney Eaton (Cheedo the Fragile), Melissa Jaffer (The Keeper of the Seeds), Megan Gale (The Valkyrie), and Hugh Keays-Byrne (The Immortan Joe)

Spoiler alert: mild

Two plots enter, no plot leaves

MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME

1985

Directed by George Miller and George Ogilvie

Written by George Miller and Terry Hayes

With Mel Gibson (Max Rockatansky), Tina Turner (Aunty Entity), Angelo Rossitto (Master), Paul Larsson (Blaster), Helen Buday (Savannah Nix), Bruce Spence (The Gyro Capt—what? he’s not the same character whose idea was it to cast the same actor who played the guy with the flying machine from Road Warrior in the role of a guy with a flying machine in Beyond Thunderdome but they’re different characters that’s INSANE Jedediah the Pilot)

Why walk away, when you can ride in style?

THE ROAD WARRIOR

1981

Directed by George Miller

Written by George Miller, Terry Hayes, and Brian Hannant

With Mel Gibson (Max Rockatansky), Bruce Spence (The Gyro Captain), Kjell Nilsson (Lord Humungus), Vernon Wells (Wez), Emil Minty (The Feral Kid), and Harold Baigent (The Narrator)

Only two years out from the phenomenal domestic financial success and worldwide impress that was his (in retrospect) artistically disappointing first film, a new George Miller joint arrived in theaters, first in Australia, and four months afterward in America. For reasons that probably have more to do with history and geography than quality, Mad Max had spawned a sequel. And in the annals of film follow-ups, Mad Max 2, or The Road Warrior, or Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior—whatever you wish to call it—rules the wasteland.

Hey, fella! You're a turkey!

This is Kinemalogue, the cinema blog (it's Greek so that means I'm educated in all the wrong ways).  We will almost certainly discuss things other than movies, from time to time, because there's a lot of things I love and hate that aren't movies and which I will compulsively shout into this vast emptiness about.  But we'll grok that fullness when we come to it.  The primary mission for now is to share thoughts on new, old, and very old movies.

In commemoration of their combined release on Blu Ray, over this troika of virgin posts, I'm gonna tell you what I thought about one of film's most celebrated post-apocalypses, from its humble Ozsploitation beginnings in 1979, through its 1981 breakout into the mainstream and what Roger Ebert (pbuh) infamously declared one of the best movies of 1985, to my hopes for the Mad Maxes to come.

Oh, and: welcome home.  We love you.

MAD MAX

1979
Directed by George Miller

Written by George Miller, James McCausland, and Byron Kennedy

With Mel Gibson (Max Rockatansky), Joanne Samuel (Jessie Rockatansky), Steve Bisley (Jim Goose), Hugh Keays-Byrne (Toecutter)

Standing tall amongst the classic films of our childhoods—or adulthoods, or pre-existences, or post-existences, if you can still get Netflix service at the Omega Point—in any event classic films of the late 70s and early 80s—Mad Max has the distinction of being the movie I think I’d most like to see get remade; because despite its enormous importance to its own franchise, to the genre of badass 80s action cinema, and indeed to the culture as a whole (see how Mad Max taught us not to descend into biker barbarism?), it also has the distinction of being only marginally good.

Rest assured, gentle reader, I do not dislike this first outing in Max’ trilogy, and am not unsympathetic to the fact that it is director George Miller's debut effort.  However, to see Max for the first time in perhaps two decades, after dozens of viewings of Road Warrior and Thunderdome, is almost necessarily to be unimpressed by it.

"Can't we just get beyond Thunderdome?"