Mad Max: Fury Road.
The entirety of George Miller’s Mad Max saga is back where it should be: on the big screen. And you can watch it at UW Cinematheque.
The first installment, 1979’s Mad Max, was shown July 11, but there is still time to see Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (July 18, 7 p.m.) Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (July 25, 7 p.m.)and 2015’s reboot Mad Max: Fury Road (in 3D, Aug. 1, 7 p.m.), all at 4070 Vilas Hall. The influential series was chosen by Cinematheque to honor the 40th anniversary of the first time Max Rockatansky appeared on screen. Also because it’s, you know, awesome.
This series might seem an odd fit for Cinematheque, a film society generally thought of as a home for art films, obscurities and older classics — all of which are still to be found in the summer calendar. But in the past, Cinematheque has also featured cult movies, action flicks and popular films, all of which can describe this franchise.
The first film enjoyed popularity in its native Australia and various other countries, but fizzled in the United States. Its story of a police officer in a decaying society seeking revenge for his family’s death was marred by the choice to overdub its Australian accents with more palatable American voices.
It was so unpopular here that when the sequel came out in 1982, it wasn’t released as Mad Max 2, but as The Road Warrior. This film set the template for all those that followed. Max is a lone scavenger in a radioactive outback. He is abused by an evil tribe wearing bondage gear, led by an ominously named chieftain. Max ends up protecting a weaker tribe. There is an epic, brutal chase with outlandish cars (and maybe a train or rudimentary flying machine). Good prevails, and with it the hope for a better society, which Max cannot be a part of. It’s an old story.
Cinematheque director of programming Jim Healy says Max is “definitely in the tradition of the wandering samurai played by Toshiro Mifune in Yojimbo and Sanjuro and also Clint Eastwood in Sergio Leone’s Westerns.”
With Road Warrior came great reviews, modest box office success, and the start of Mel Gibson’s stardom. Its popularity exploded when it hit video stores and cable. Fans counted its follow-up, Thunderdome, as a lesser film due to its comic tone and its Ewok-like band of children that needed saving. But, the least Mad Max film is still a Mad Max film. Siskel and Ebert lauded its world-building, and named it one of the 10 best of 1985. The movie even spawned a hit song by Tina Turner, who co-starred as the villain.
Despite the acclaim, no one could have predicted the reaction to Fury Road, the 2015 reboot in which Tom Hardy replaced Gibson as Max. This two-hour chase scene garnered 10 Oscar nominations and won six. It lost Best Picture to Spotlight, which is a fine movie, but has zero flame-throwing guitars.
Flame-throwing guitar. This memorable scene in Fury Road somehow works because Miller knows how to get that moment. What he does is bonkers, but it makes sense in the mad world where “mad” Max often seems to be the most rational person. Tina Turner’s desert city is fueled off pig shit and devised by a small genius mounted on a masked brute’s back, so of course it has a domed gladiator pit lined with terrifying weaponry (that’s a Thunderdome, if you don’t know). The movies are fueled by crazy, making the audience demand crazier. It’s a tough trick to pull off, and Miller’s success proves his artistry.
This weirdness allows for the repetition of plot. By creatively changing the parts, the structure becomes differently magnificent.
Most fascinating is the change in its female characters. In Mad Max they are victims. In Road Warrior, a woman assists Max in the final fight, a powerful new image in 1982. Thunderdome has a female villain. And Fury Road’s fight is led by women, including the sublime Charlize Theron as Imperator Furiosa — with Max along for the ride. The parts change, the story stays the same. Keep the hero. Add comedy. Add a train. Add feminism. Add a flaming guitar. It becomes new.
The big screen makes the action operatic. Healy explains that Miller realized early on that using an anamorphic, widescreen frame enhanced the quality of the film, “especially in his propulsive action set pieces. Working with a smaller budget, especially on the first two films of the series, Miller understood that a scope frame immediately provides a movie with production value.”
And let’s not forget that it’s awesome. “I got to see it in the theater in 70mm,” says Healy, recalling seeing Thunderdome in 1985. “One of the greatest movie-going experiences of my youth.”
