Yeah, I'd be pretty mad too. Want to vote on what I should watch next? Click here! www.patreon.com/jamesvscinema Re-watching Blade Friday/Saturday! Enjoy the day!
James, i know you are a big Berserk fan. So i will already say a fun fact about mad Max and how it inspired Berserk.... Max on The first 3 movies was Miura's biggest inspiration for Guts besides Kenshiro from Fist Of The North Star and Violence Jack from Violence Jack and Akira Fudou from Devilman. If you have read The prototype for Berserk, you will see The similarties that earlier Black Swordsman Guts had based on Max,both are anti-heroes that have a tragic past and go on their own journey for revenge Who later troughout their series tries to make themselves not care about other people,even though they clearly still have their good nature about them and ended up giving in to their morality and saving people in need..... In fact,Miura stated that he wanted a main character that had a cold and stoic and non-heroic personality while still being able to represent Rage in such a realistic manner like Max did on The older movies. And also, you Definitely should watch The Road Warrior,not only it is The best sequel of The franchise besides Fury Road but it is also where The world and Max becomes what they are on that movie. And also because you will see how Max inspired Guts later on road warrior movie due to a wound on his eye that makes his eyelids swell and cover his eye( Just like Black Swordsman Guts).
The Mad Max series shows the fall of civilization. This one shows the world just before the final collapse. The Road Warrior (Mad Max 2) shows the world a few years after the collapse, Beyond Thunder Dome (Mad Max 3) shows the bleakness and insanity as humans fall back into tribes. So worth watching all three of the original trilogy.
@@CapteinRiggs Beyond Thunderdome is off balance cause while location hunting, George Miller's good friend and producer Byron Kennedy died in a helicopter crash as he was also a pilot. By that stage, Miller had lost interest in the project and a second director was brought in by Warner Bros to finish the film with him. Miller did the action scenes, while Ogelville did the drama, hence the off balance.
In between the road warrior and thunder dome a nuclear war happens. It's referenced a few times in the thunderdome. Also in one of the scenes when max first gets to bartertown theyres a water merchant and max pulls his gieger counter out and it goes insane with the amount of rads the water has
This was George Millers first film. He got the high speed motorcycle footage by sitting on the back of another motorcycle, no helmet, camera in hand following the action. He directed all the Mad Max films as well as Happy Feet.
@@LoneWolf_Cub_Ogami_Itto It was released in U.S. theatres as The Road Warrior. The first release of Mad Max didn't gross very well in America, so Mad Max 2 was renamed here.
A fact I always thought was interesting, is that the Director and creator of Mad Max was actually a paramedic. He had first hand experience on the kinds of accidents, collisions, wipeouts, and injuries depicted in the film. Which only adds to the gritty reality because literally everything is 100% practical effects. Not a single green screen.
That is an interesting fact: I don't know if its true, but I read somewhere he got the idea for the film while working in ER and seeing all the traffic accident victims!
@@rrmenton8016 Miller's initial concept was for Max to be a journalist reporting on accident scenes and losing it from the horrors he saw. It was also going to be set in the modern day, but they could't afford to film in heavily populated areas, so the near/post apocalyptic aspect was from necessirty to explain the empty streets and busted industrial sets.
Fun fact: The stunts in this film were so impressive at the time, when the film made it's U.S. release, Hollywood stuntmen were jealous about how well the stunts were done. They spread a rumor that a couple of stuntmen died in the making of the film in order to give the film a bad rap.
To be fair, one guy did almost die in the sequel, "the road warrior". When you see the guy go cartwheeling off the bridge, that was totally not planned, he caught his foot and went spiraling.
@@rrmenton8016 And he was the stun co-ordinator, so the guy who was in charge of the safety of the stunts. The cartwheeling might have been planned, but missing the boxes to break his fall definately wasn't.
@@Carandini This isn't true. It's a debunked myth and has been for many years. The stuntman for that scene had already come out to say that he didn't die from it.
@@Carandini No he wasn't. The stuntman you are referring to who did the stunt is Guy Norris. At the time he was just another stuntman, be it assistant to the coordinator who in this film was Max Aspin, though he too suffered an accident that sent him to the hospital. Guy would become stunt coordinator on Fury Road some 30 odd years later.
This I would say is the definition of “Ozploitation”, Guerilla style filmmaking, shoestring budget all based on really bizarre, chaotic almost satirical look at all the craziness of rural Australia in the 70s. Some of the actors where even payed in cases of beer by the director.
The days when Mel had an Australian accent! Even in these early films you can see the camera loves Mel and he had ‘it’. You need to see the sequel (Mad Max 2) it is a masterpiece.
Fun fact James. When this film was first shown in the US( mostly in drive-ins) the distributor didn't think American audiences would be able to understand the Australian accents so they had the film dubbed by voice over actors for North America. It was a number of years until the film was available with the original dialouge. The "experimental" thing you are seeing is actually an old techniques from early westerns. The filming was done at real world speeds and sped up to make the chase scenes look faster.
That blue van that gets destroyed in the opening chase was George millers own van. He sacrificed his own car for the sake of shooting that stunt. What a legend. He really had a lot of faith in his film as he should.
No it wasn't. It was a shell they got from the wreckers. It was originally white and they painted it blue to match George's who he himself said they could not afford to crash his van cause he was using it still as production and crew transport from scene to scene. The drive up before the Crash is George's van, then the impact is just the shell. The give away is when the crash happens and you see the doors fly open, you can still see the while of the interior of the van, where as if you see production shots of George's Van, it was factory blue in and out.
@@gutz1981 I think your right I watched that clip ten times over now and it looks like a different shade of blue on the van. Also I forgot cars just don’t disintegrate like that. Thanks for pointing that out. Man cinefix lied to me.
I saw this film on the Sci Fi Channel in 2000 and it was pretty insane! Then 2 years later, I watched Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior on the now defunct UPN network. Mad Max 2 is now considered to be the best action movie ever made.
I love T2, but its got the benefit of cgi. Road warrior is all practical and in my opinion, one of the most Bad *ss things ever committed to celluloid.
'The steering in on the other side!' it's set in Australia bro :) This is an all time aussie classic. They had actual zero money (300k) so the crashes are all 1 takes, the crew/extras were paid in slabs of beer, and they just asked a real biker gang to be in the movie. 40+ years later it's still a blast :)
I really have a special attachment to this film. When I saw it for the first time, it was a few years before the release of "Fury Road" (I didn't even know they were going to make a Mad Max 4). At that time, I was 14 years old and my father absolutely wanted to show me this, he told me : "when I was a teenager, this movie came out and we fucking loved it !!!!" 😂😂. It was so cool to be able to see it with my dad, it's unforgettable ^^
"How one director's idea is this and how another director's idea is this." Yeaaaah, I know you like not doing much research on these, but the same director literally directed all of the Mad Max films. And yes, this is indeed the first one. Made with a shoestring budget.
I came in to see if someone else pointed this out. It makes sense to avoid spoilers and such, but knowing the fundamental background is usually justified (I'd argue even desirable) so one knows how to evaluate what they're seeing. Whether it's knowing that a film was done by the same director as another, or whether it's the first in the series.
Maybe not so much Thunderdome. As I heard, he kinda took a step back and allowed assistant director a lot more freedom due to personal circumstances. Not throwing rocks at anyone, but this might explain differences in writing and atmosphere with the rest of the series
@@deptusmechanikus7362 Ahhh, very interesting. I had never heard about that before. Thanks for mentioning it. I agree that it would make sense with how different Thunderdome feels from the rest.
When this movie came out theatrically and originally on cable, the voices including Mel Gibson was horribly dubbed into American sounding English. The Road Warrior is incredible, it’s Fury Road 30 years earlier
Mel Gibsons voice was not dubbed, but other actors were. The dubbed version is the one I grew up with, and I am shocked at how terrible these voices sound in this version he is watching! My jaw is on the floor with just how bad this sounds lol. Give me the gritty-sounding dubbed voices any day of the week. These voices sound like weak kindergarten teachers. Totally ruined the gritty 70s movie immersion for me here.
It wasn't an issue of understanding the accents. It's been documented that it was because the music drowned out the voices in crucial scenes. They were proud of Brian May's "Hitchcock-esque" soundtrack and they cranked it. The American distributors didn't want to send it out like that. Unfortunately once you've replaced a few lines with American voices you have to replace them all. The thing about Americans "not understanding Australian accents" is somebody's assumption run wild. It's never been true.
Hey man...thanks for watching another absolute classic. Somthing to remember is that these aren't meant to be a chronological account of max, but rather the telling of the legends of "MAX" in the post apocalyptic world. Keep watching the max movies, they're all bangers.
A valid point you make. I always here people talk about plot holes in the chronology, or same actors playing multiple parts. But I take it like the legend of Robin Hood, or Samurai legends; there not meant to be "true" so much as multiple stories about a mythical character. The (unreliable) narrator from road warrior and the storyteller from thunderdome make me think, this is not canonical storytelling, but legends from the apocalypse. Max may not even be a real person, but just a legend about the future dark ages. I love that. Cuz you can do anything with the character, like Conan the Barbarian, or the Lone Ranger.
They were ALWAYS chronological. This lame, nonsensical argument was only invented in c. 2016 to justify to completely disjointed Fury Road. It was always so chronological Max would have injuries in second and third the sustained in earlier ones, even damage on his costume. Have you ever seen these films? Or just Fury Road.
Well, I guess, if you wanna, you can have an argument about what's "true" in some fictional movie. But its all just a story, so any one way of thinking about is as valid as any other. To me, mad max is a "legend", no continuity required.
@@rrmenton8016 Yeah, no fanbase ever benefited from relativisation, and neither shall we. Miller went out of his way to show the continuity (the montage, the age, missing sleeve and hurt knee in Road Warrior, damaged eye in Thunderdome etc.) and it was like that for 35 years until fans of Fury Road, a sloppy, pointless yet perfectly timed cash grab with a fantastic marketing, decided to invent themselves a more preferable history of the movie where their favourite film would not be just Miller's half hearted attempt to milk the cash and long overdue recognition for himself and the legendary franchise/character he's made (and then humiliated)
I m a fan and I benefited from 4 movies I enjoy. Im not stressed about caring about continuity. I enjoy these films exactly how i wanna. So its all good man. You do you. I love the myth.
I think this is the grittiest and most visceral of the Mad Max movies.AS the movies progress and we venture further from the event that ended traditional society,the movies are more fantastical.This movie still shows towns still trying to enforce and protect the increasing rebellious and hostile people running rampant along the roads.
A cool fact: The villain - 'Toecutter' - in this original "Mad Max" film was portrayed by actor Hugh Keays-Byrne. They brought him back to play the villain - 'Immortan Joe' - in the recent "Mad Max - Fury Road" film!
And next, The Road Warrior. The original Mad Max wasn't released in the states until after The Road Warrior so the second movie was my first introduction to this world and it did not disappoint. In fact it's top 5 movies ever for me.
@@nickfatsis9607 you're right, Mad Max had just hardly been seen by anyone thus the title The Road Warrior rather than Mad Max 2. But, I swear I heard in a commentary or someplace the original wasn't released in the U.S. until after the sequel gained popularity. Guess I was mistaken.
@@johnfriday5169 you're correct about not many people seeing it in the U.S. I have seen newspaper clippings from the U.S. advertising Mad Max and calling it "Mad Max 1" the tag line was something like "Max had a job, a wife, a family" along those lines, I'm not sure if that helped with promoting the movie.
@@johnfriday5169 Yes, the American distributors felt that the American audience would have a hard time understanding our accents, I have a copy of a DVD that was released and has both the Australian and American audio, the dub does sound pretty bad!
George Miller got the idea for Mad Max from his time as a doctor. When he was doing his residency he worked on a lot of victims of car accidents. You should check out some other movies from the Aussie New Wave. Just off the top of my head: Wake in Fright, Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Last Wave, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Breaker Morant, Gallipoli and The Year of Living Dangerously.
Stone is also AWESOME Hugh Keays-Byrne is in that too as the Grave diggers bikie gang leader. Also the actor who played the Nightrider (Vince Gil) was in it too.
George Miller is one of the nicest blokes from the film industry that I ever had the pleasure to speak with. He showed up at the post-production party for Croc Hunter, my wife was a stand-in for one of the other characters in the movie. His made-for-TV movies that he produced with George Kennedy in the 1980s here in Oz were similarly fantastic, if different in theme than Max’s world.
This is the most “Australian” film ever. The slang, the terminology, the environments used. Makes you proud to be an Aussie. I first saw this on videotape in the very early eighties. One of those movies that has a vibe all its own.
"My life fades. The vision dims. All that remains are memories. I remember a time of chaos, ruined dreams, this wasted land. But most of all, I remember the road warrior, the man we called Max." Get Ready for the next adventure
This was a low budget movie so many decisions were made for practical budgetary reasons, I'm sure that also greatly effected the world building we got here. But this actually worked in its favor. Instead of a full post-apocalyptic world we see in most movies (and indeed in all later Mad Max movies) here we get this in between world where society is still trying to hang on but there are these big ugly cracks. Just one of those things that make this movie still interesting after all those years. Now, on to The Road Warrior!
It's funny how you mentioned that what you see in the film is "what's gonna be happening soon" with gas prices going the way they are. The USA and the rest of the world were in a similar situation in the late 1970s when Mad Max first came out. The entire world was going through an energy crisis and a gasoline shortage due to a combination of wars and crises in the Middle East and OPEC shutting down production and distribution, causing gasoline prices to soar and lines at gas stations forming for miles. Mad Max was a reflection of the direction the world seemed to be going in 1979, in a dystopian setting of a collapsing infrastructure and urban decay. The sequel, The Road Warrior, was practically an entirely different movie, depicting a post-apocalyptic world in the wake of a nuclear holocaust.
I watched the gas shortage turn into a crisis, along with the Iran hostage event. Iran invaded the American embassy after the then Shah of Iran was ousted and exiled himself once the revolution took hold by the muslims. They took all American civilians as hostage and I believe killed military staff, too. It got so bad that you were only allowed to gas up on even or odd days based on the last number of your license plate. Lines stretched for miles and miles at every station and some were abandoned in line cause they were out of gas. This was all under President Carter. Stations constantly depleted supply, which exacerbated the issue. I was 16 in 1979. We lived down the street in full view of a nearby gas station.
The girl in the flashbacks in Fury Road is not his daughter, but a girl named Glory. Glory and her mother are characters from the Mad Max comic series. Max saves them only to watch them die from being run over by a tribe called The Buzzards. They are one of many he couldn't save.
One thing I love about this first one, is there's just a vibe of the landscape that feels so recognisable as an Australia, like it could of been filmed around the corner from my old place, those two land country roads, particularly during the intro.
This IS the original Mad Max, the second one is The Road Warrior which was my introduction to the franchise during my college years as a film student. I then went back to see this one to understand the back-story of the title character. The third one is Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. It was a lot more "commercial" whereas the first two had more of an independent film motif. I'll be here to enjoy all of them with you. I love this franchise.
Love this movie. This is the first one. This one and Road Warrior the second movie are my favorite. But i love them all. And the one with Tom Hardy is really great to and so cool.
The late Hugh Keays-Byrne returned to the Mad Max series to play Fury Road's primary villain Immortan Joe, decades after he played the original Mad Max's antagonist, Toecutter.
Thank you for using the Aussie version and not the US overdubbed... ruins the experience... Especially given I am an Aussie lol... thanks for your content... you need to watch MadMax 2 and 3 now... worth it. Cheers
Saw this in Australia back when I was 4-5 in 1985. Saw the tv cut and we recorded it and I would watch it over and over again. It became my obsession and the movie that helped kick start my channel with that one video about the car and its history.
Fury Road is after the collapse of society but this one is as society is collapsing. This movie was also originally released in the US with the dialog dubbed with American accents. The writer/director was inspired by the wounds he saw from fights at gas lines while he was working in the ER.
This movie is authentic and real. I saw it in High School. I had no idea that the future of movie making would be so pathetic. . . . and RIP Jim Goose and long live the KZ 1000 Kwaka!
The first 3 movies, Mad Max, Road Warrior, Thunderdome were all in chronological order, with the newest being a spiritual sequel in the spirit of the Clint Eastwood "man with no name trilogies". All canon from my view.
I just got SO excited to see you reviewed this movie! I love it so much! The piece itself is filmed in such a different way: visually, auditory, and storytelling wise. I also think the energy created from being filmed in such an anamorphic format goes crazy, too. It’s perpetually captivating! Loved your commentary as well, definitely laughed along with you ✨
Man, I go back and forth all the time about whether road warrior is the greatest action movie ever made! Certainly a classic, and if not the best, easily in the top 3 or 4. I love fury road, but with road warrior, it feels like I got sandy grit from australia's dead heart grinding in my teeth!
The interceptor Max had at the beginning of Fury Road was not the same one he set out with, he spent the better part of 15 years rebuilding it from scratch.
My favorite gag in this movie is when you see his happy home with the romantic sax playing, setting the mood, then you realize, damn, thats actually his old lady, playing the sax! Makes me laugh everytime!
Vanishing point is awesome! I hate using words like "existentialism" cuz it always sounds snobby, but damn, that movie asks deep questions, through the filter of a baddass vehicle movie!
Also, in response to your question about the audio, this might help explain some of it. From wikipedia: "According to Miller, his interest while writing Mad Max was 'a silent movie with sound', employing highly kinetic images reminiscent of Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd while the narrative itself was basic and simple. Miller believed that audiences would find his violent story more believable if set in a bleak dystopian future."
For a first time filmmaker, Mad Max is definitely something special. It really grinds to a halt when he and Jess first leave after Goose's death, but beyond that it's got great pacing and incredible stunts, plus a very young Mel Gibson giving an awesome performance
It took me a few years to rate the original Mad Max. It wasn’t as post apocalyptic as I liked and I preferred 2. The more I read, the more I learned to more I appreciated the genius of this film!
This was the first film I ever watched, based on where I was living at the time I had to have been 5 years old. I'd go to the library with my mom and she said to pick out a movie, I grabbed this one cause the cover looked cool. I watched this everyday and return it to rent it again, I was hooked.
We see how he hurt his leg, why he likes a little music here and there, why he has a soft spot for a little boy, where he got that car, why he might like to have a pet, and the answer to the question "what happened to you Max?"
Miller loved Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange and the bizarre future dystopian culture from the film and decided with Max he would fuse that with Australian’s almost religious car culture of the 70s - with Fury Road the car culture religion is ramped up to the point where Joe’s V8 cult worships cars like deities.
Regarding the sound quality: the film was edited (to include sound) using a small, home-built "studio" inside a friend's apartment, over the span of seven months. So it's very possible (probable, even) that the odd mixing choices you picked up on are just a result of the "amateurish" post-production methods. George Miller did also say that his initial vision for the film was "a silent movie with sound", so it could also be a conscious decision to minimize the importance of dialog to the overall product.
It's been documented that they cranked the music because they were so proud that they'd captured the essence of a Hitchcock movie soundtrack. The music drowing out dialogue was the whole reason American distributors dubbed it. The thing about "not understanding Australian accents" was always BS.
You really have to check out the documentary of the making of this film. It will blow your mind. It was made on an extremely cheap budget, one take multiple shots and they had to be quick since the filming was done in Australia, they had to shoot the scenes, pack up and move to another spot before the law enforcement caught up with them. In a few scenes, stunt men actually had fatal accidents and they left some of it in the film.
My favorite of all the Mad Max films. This one just seems more unhinged and real. The very real stunt driving helps. I also like where it takes place in the timeline, right before the world collapses and is overrun by mohawked leather daddies. I don't believe there's a movie before this one, but if you could count a prequel, it would be the 70s Aussie movie STONE, which has some of the same actors (Toecutter/Night Rider). It's a pretty cool film with a dope soundtrack.
The cars were Australian Ford Falcons, Night Riders Holden Monaro, and a Chevy Impala (orange with flames). Max's panel van is a GM Holden Sandman panel van. The bikes were Kawasaki KZ-750 and KZ- 1000.
I've heard that the character of Max is meant to be a like that of a folktale of the wasteland, someone that people tell tales about around the campfire. His deeds and adventures are talked about across the wasteland and that the movies are just some of these tales. Like a folk hero.
Gorge Miller has a wild filmography. Mad max, to Happy feet and back to mad max 40 years later. Plus the actor who played Toe Cutter played Imorten Joe.
Mad Max 2 (The Road Warrior) is where Mad Max as we think of it begins. In Mad Max1, society is on the edge of collapse. In 2 it's full on post apocalypse.. and in 3, societies are reforming... then theres the bleak insanity of Fury Road.
I love at the end when hes setting that trap for Johnny, you can see Max have a face like hes almost regretting what hes doing, then his next face is like hes actually becoming insane, really great call back to how he feels like hes losing his soul on the road, loved watching your reaction!
Mad Max 2 was my first introduction to the franchise. I was about 12 when I first saw it and loved it. Shortly after, Mad Max 1 was on TV and I remember being bored by it, thinking there wasn't enough action and there was too much talking, lol. Nowadays, as an adult, I have a lot more respect for that first film and appreciate how it laid the ground work for such an influential series.
There is a great film from New Zealand called The Quiet Earth, from 1985. It was NZ's first completely produced Sci-fi film to be released world wide. You should check it out. Mad Max: the Road Warrior is a great sequel and you should check it out too! It is one of those great sequels, like T2 and Empire Strikes Back.
Fun fact - The end scene with the car blowing up and the hacksaw in MadMax is credited by the writers of the movies SAW as the original idea of their movie 🍿🍿🍿🎥🎥 Keep up the good work James, always great to watch you 👍👍👍👍
Always great analysis. thanks ..It is a prequel in the time-line. This was when the world was descending into chaos, but before the apocalyptic wars. The next movie in the series seems to be after the wars.
Was looking for someone to do a reaction to the first mad max but everyone was doing fury road and my man you pulled through 🤙🏻 that’s why you’re the best 👏🏻👏🏻
Hope to see you watch "The Road Warrior (A.K.A. Mad Max 2)" and Mad Max 3 "Beyond Thunderdome". The Road Warrior is my favorite and it really shows what the world was changing into.
This first Mad Max was shot with a limited budget which is why the audio probably sounded bad at times. This low budget accidentally inspired Mad Max is post apocalyptic aesthetic. The locations they could afford were very cheap, they mostly shot in am abandoned and run down Australian town. Also at the time there was a gas shortage that was all over the news, and Mad Max sort asks what would happen if this gas shortage was led chaos and destruction of society. These elements he later expounded on Mad Max 2, where the post apocalyptic Mad Max aesthetic we know was established. It wasn't even intended to be post apocalyptic at first, just a revenge cop movie, but the location and news events inspired what Mad Max became in pop culture. Also Mad Max isn't exactly a sequel movie, they're all related, but the stories are inconsistent. Some details remain the same between movies, others change, but they all are sort of stand alone movies. George Miller said he likes to think of Mad Max as a legend that gets retold over and over again in this post apocalyptic society, it's the story of a great Road Warrior, who's a tortured sole and saves people he comes across in his travel. I like to think of the original mad max as what actually happened, each movie is a distortion of the simpler true, the story gets more fantastical and further from the original truth each time it's retold, and as society deteriorates more and more and forgets what the world use to be like the legend becomes that much more epic.
Something I appreciate about the sequels: So when he gets shot, it busts his kneecap. He is wearing a leg brace on that leg in all the following movies.
another great aussie film you should watch, which is the complete opposite of madmax is "the year my voice broke" its based in the 60s in rural australia and its a coming of age story, its an extremely poetic film visually and captures that period its based upon beautifully, watch with an open mind and prepare to be hit on levels you wont expect ;)
I've always been amazed with the various reactors watching the most recent without watching the ones that led up to it. To me, you're missing most of the story and reasons behind things Edit: The steering wheel is on the opposite side of the car because these are Australian films.
The blue van that gets destroyed in the opening chase was director Miller's van. Also alot of the "chase" scenes were filmed by a camera man on the back of a motorcycle with a hand held. And yes, they were going that fast. Most shots are not sped up.
It’s weird to think this film got so much heat for the violence in it when it came out. The film was even banned inNew Zealand and only released a few years later after the success of mad max 2 but only on condition it be given the dreaded R18 rating (similar to an nc17 in the U.S) but watching it again recently virtually all of the violence takes place off screen and we only see the aftermath
With respect to timeline, I would recommend Max be viewed through the eyes of “myth” as one would say view “Robin Hood.” Don’t take the timeline too literally.
Nice James. So glad you didn't skip this one and go straight to "Road Warrior". I love this movie. really interesting camera angles and shot selection.
So in case you didn't know, Fury Road was meant to be the same continuity as the original 3 films, but after a decade of delays George Miller decided to tweak the script and make it like a soft reboot instead. I believe he said that Fury Road is like the exaggerated myth of Max while this first film is the reality. I can't think of another franchise where the director took a fresh look at their own creation (and have it work so well).
As a yank who moved to regional AUS to do biology, I've had a lot of fun finding the places they filmed for Mad Max. I really love how this film captures the scenery that is common in Victoria and parts of South Australia. Max's house reminds me strongly of a shack I stayed in for a few nights on Kangaroo Island a couple of years ago.
In the opening chase and the Nightrider started to break down, you asked what is up with this guy. He finally met his match and he realised it, when Max first drove at him they were playing chicken and Max won, the Nightrider swerved first and he knew then he was outclassed
The scene where Max drives through the bikers on the bridge: A local motorcycle club was recruited for the stunts. They were supposed to ride down to the bridge and lay their bikes down. They kept daring each other to go faster and egging each other on, so the lay down was a lot more violent than planned. Also, one of the bilers was wearing the helmet of the actor he was doubling for, and it was much too big. That's why when he gets knocked in the back of head by the other bike, it looks like his neck gets broken.
No in camera audio, there are photos on the net of portable audio recorders and boom mics, the original release was in mono, then years later the audio was remixed in 5.1, it sounds so much better!
Yeah, I'd be pretty mad too.
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Re-watching Blade Friday/Saturday! Enjoy the day!
James, i know you are a big Berserk fan.
So i will already say a fun fact about mad Max and how it inspired Berserk....
Max on The first 3 movies was Miura's biggest inspiration for Guts besides Kenshiro from Fist Of The North Star and Violence Jack from Violence Jack and Akira Fudou from Devilman.
If you have read The prototype for Berserk, you will see The similarties that earlier Black Swordsman Guts had based on Max,both are anti-heroes that have a tragic past and go on their own journey for revenge Who later troughout their series tries to make themselves not care about other people,even though they clearly still have their good nature about them and ended up giving in to their morality and saving people in need.....
In fact,Miura stated that he wanted a main character that had a cold and stoic and non-heroic personality while still being able to represent Rage in such a realistic manner like Max did on The older movies.
And also, you Definitely should watch The Road Warrior,not only it is The best sequel of The franchise besides Fury Road but it is also where The world and Max becomes what they are on that movie.
And also because you will see how Max inspired Guts later on road warrior movie due to a wound on his eye that makes his eyelids swell and cover his eye( Just like Black Swordsman Guts).
The first Anti-Hero in cinema.
The next in this series - The Road Warrior and then Beyond Thunderdome!
@@CousinCreepy Seconded.
I will always remember my brother’s descriptive summary of Blade. ‘That movie where Wesley Snipes walks like he had a carrot up his ar$e…”
Cool fact: the actor who plays the villain Toecutter in this film plays Immortan Joe in “Mad Max: Fury Road.”
Cool he did that and did the same recasting the actors playing Gyrocopter Pilot in 2 & 3 and Benno 1 & 2 (old ladies son near beach/holiday house)
gyrocopter guy plays the mouth of sauron In lotr
@@ikedewinter1213 who??
@@gunlean7738 the dude that gets his head cut of by aragorn at the end
@@ikedewinter1213 oh right..i'm not that familiar with lotr's. I looked it up tho, all u could see is dirty sharp teeth...lol
The Mad Max series shows the fall of civilization. This one shows the world just before the final collapse. The Road Warrior (Mad Max 2) shows the world a few years after the collapse, Beyond Thunder Dome (Mad Max 3) shows the bleakness and insanity as humans fall back into tribes. So worth watching all three of the original trilogy.
'The Road Warrior' is soooo good. Thunderdome is kinda goofy..
@@CapteinRiggs Beyond Thunderdome is off balance cause while location hunting, George Miller's good friend and producer Byron Kennedy died in a helicopter crash as he was also a pilot. By that stage, Miller had lost interest in the project and a second director was brought in by Warner Bros to finish the film with him. Miller did the action scenes, while Ogelville did the drama, hence the off balance.
In between the road warrior and thunder dome a nuclear war happens. It's referenced a few times in the thunderdome. Also in one of the scenes when max first gets to bartertown theyres a water merchant and max pulls his gieger counter out and it goes insane with the amount of rads the water has
One things for sure, all 3 beat the hell out of the new one.
That's the way I see these films. Mad Max is the fall, Road Warrior is the bottom, and Thunderdom is the crawling back to civilization by the end.
This ending is the OG Saw. I'm pretty sure the writers of Saw thought "Love this scene! What if we made a whole movie of this?"
This was George Millers first film. He got the high speed motorcycle footage by sitting on the back of another motorcycle, no helmet, camera in hand following the action. He directed all the Mad Max films as well as Happy Feet.
I love that the guy who made mad max also made happy feet!
And Babe
You definitely have to watch The Road Warrior, they did groundbreaking stunts that no one at the time had ever dared to do.
I think you mean Mad Max 2.
@@LoneWolf_Cub_Ogami_Itto Bloody Oath!
Plus the aesthetic is soooo influential to the apocalypse genre, Road Warrior and A Boy and his Dog
@@LoneWolf_Cub_Ogami_Itto It was released in U.S. theatres as The Road Warrior. The first release of Mad Max didn't gross very well in America, so Mad Max 2 was renamed here.
@@chn71 oh I know, it's the first thing you say to someone who brings up either The Road Warrior or Mad Max 2
A fact I always thought was interesting, is that the Director and creator of Mad Max was actually a paramedic. He had first hand experience on the kinds of accidents, collisions, wipeouts, and injuries depicted in the film. Which only adds to the gritty reality because literally everything is 100% practical effects. Not a single green screen.
ya taking the engines out of the cars for some of the crashes was genius stunt direction
That is an interesting fact: I don't know if its true, but I read somewhere he got the idea for the film while working in ER and seeing all the traffic accident victims!
Really? In retrospect it makes sense.
He was a Doctor covering accident and emergency
@@rrmenton8016 Miller's initial concept was for Max to be a journalist reporting on accident scenes and losing it from the horrors he saw. It was also going to be set in the modern day, but they could't afford to film in heavily populated areas, so the near/post apocalyptic aspect was from necessirty to explain the empty streets and busted industrial sets.
Fun fact: The stunts in this film were so impressive at the time, when the film made it's U.S. release, Hollywood stuntmen were jealous about how well the stunts were done. They spread a rumor that a couple of stuntmen died in the making of the film in order to give the film a bad rap.
To be fair, one guy did almost die in the sequel, "the road warrior". When you see the guy go cartwheeling off the bridge, that was totally not planned, he caught his foot and went spiraling.
A stuntman did die. One of the bikers on the bridge. Because of Australian laws at the time, they could still use the footage.
@@rrmenton8016 And he was the stun co-ordinator, so the guy who was in charge of the safety of the stunts. The cartwheeling might have been planned, but missing the boxes to break his fall definately wasn't.
@@Carandini This isn't true. It's a debunked myth and has been for many years. The stuntman for that scene had already come out to say that he didn't die from it.
@@Carandini No he wasn't. The stuntman you are referring to who did the stunt is Guy Norris. At the time he was just another stuntman, be it assistant to the coordinator who in this film was Max Aspin, though he too suffered an accident that sent him to the hospital. Guy would become stunt coordinator on Fury Road some 30 odd years later.
This I would say is the definition of “Ozploitation”, Guerilla style filmmaking, shoestring budget all based on really bizarre, chaotic almost satirical look at all the craziness of rural Australia in the 70s. Some of the actors where even payed in cases of beer by the director.
I think the director even used his own car in one of the car wreck scenes.
Have you seen Not Quite Hollywood? It’s a 2008 documentary about the history of Ozploitation films. The stuff that was being put out was just bonkers.
That was a super fun and awesome documentary. Makes me feel jealous of that time of absolute guerilla film making.
Nothing much has changed either. Except we have Facebook and TH-cam!
@@TearDownGenesis Yeah it was the Van in the first chase.
The days when Mel had an Australian accent! Even in these early films you can see the camera loves Mel and he had ‘it’. You need to see the sequel (Mad Max 2) it is a masterpiece.
Fun fact James. When this film was first shown in the US( mostly in drive-ins) the distributor didn't think American audiences would be able to understand the Australian accents so they had the film dubbed by voice over actors for North America. It was a number of years until the film was available with the original dialouge. The "experimental" thing you are seeing is actually an old techniques from early westerns. The filming was done at real world speeds and sped up to make the chase scenes look faster.
It's called fast motion!!
That blue van that gets destroyed in the opening chase was George millers own van. He sacrificed his own car for the sake of shooting that stunt. What a legend. He really had a lot of faith in his film as he should.
No it wasn't. It was a shell they got from the wreckers. It was originally white and they painted it blue to match George's who he himself said they could not afford to crash his van cause he was using it still as production and crew transport from scene to scene. The drive up before the Crash is George's van, then the impact is just the shell. The give away is when the crash happens and you see the doors fly open, you can still see the while of the interior of the van, where as if you see production shots of George's Van, it was factory blue in and out.
@@gutz1981 exactly, you can literally see it in the shot
@@gutz1981 I think your right I watched that clip ten times over now and it looks like a different shade of blue on the van. Also I forgot cars just don’t disintegrate like that. Thanks for pointing that out. Man cinefix lied to me.
@@nightking0130 You can tell the van is a shell by how quickly it snaps round after being hit, due to the lack of an engine.
I saw this film on the Sci Fi Channel in 2000 and it was pretty insane! Then 2 years later, I watched Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior on the now defunct UPN network. Mad Max 2 is now considered to be the best action movie ever made.
Terminator 2: am i a joke to you?
@@brennomachado855 cheesey trash ball dick movie 1st terminator is way better
The Road Warrior is certainly one of the best post apocalyptic action movies ever..in my top 3 of best of all time.
I love T2, but its got the benefit of cgi. Road warrior is all practical and in my opinion, one of the most Bad *ss things ever committed to celluloid.
Not bad idea. But James already mentioned good point ,with current rate of gas prizes = Mad Max !
i´m glad you choose the original Australia dub version.
'The steering in on the other side!' it's set in Australia bro :)
This is an all time aussie classic. They had actual zero money (300k) so the crashes are all 1 takes, the crew/extras were paid in slabs of beer, and they just asked a real biker gang to be in the movie.
40+ years later it's still a blast :)
Yeah that was hilarious hahaha. I hope James knows about right side driving.
The blue van at the start was the directors personal vehicle that he sacrificed for the cause.
I really have a special attachment to this film. When I saw it for the first time, it was a few years before the release of "Fury Road" (I didn't even know they were going to make a Mad Max 4). At that time, I was 14 years old and my father absolutely wanted to show me this, he told me : "when I was a teenager, this movie came out and we fucking loved it !!!!" 😂😂. It was so cool to be able to see it with my dad, it's unforgettable ^^
"How one director's idea is this and how another director's idea is this." Yeaaaah, I know you like not doing much research on these, but the same director literally directed all of the Mad Max films. And yes, this is indeed the first one. Made with a shoestring budget.
I came in to see if someone else pointed this out. It makes sense to avoid spoilers and such, but knowing the fundamental background is usually justified (I'd argue even desirable) so one knows how to evaluate what they're seeing.
Whether it's knowing that a film was done by the same director as another, or whether it's the first in the series.
Maybe not so much Thunderdome. As I heard, he kinda took a step back and allowed assistant director a lot more freedom due to personal circumstances. Not throwing rocks at anyone, but this might explain differences in writing and atmosphere with the rest of the series
@@deptusmechanikus7362 Ahhh, very interesting. I had never heard about that before. Thanks for mentioning it. I agree that it would make sense with how different Thunderdome feels from the rest.
When this movie came out theatrically and originally on cable, the voices including Mel Gibson was horribly dubbed into American sounding English. The Road Warrior is incredible, it’s Fury Road 30 years earlier
Mel Gibsons voice was not dubbed, but other actors were. The dubbed version is the one I grew up with, and I am shocked at how terrible these voices sound in this version he is watching! My jaw is on the floor with just how bad this sounds lol. Give me the gritty-sounding dubbed voices any day of the week. These voices sound like weak kindergarten teachers. Totally ruined the gritty 70s movie immersion for me here.
I remembering seeing that! It was horrible! As if "Australian" was a foreign language! 😆
@@rrmenton8016 Heavy accents Americans have problems understanding. Even though it is English.
It wasn't an issue of understanding the accents. It's been documented that it was because the music drowned out the voices in crucial scenes. They were proud of Brian May's "Hitchcock-esque" soundtrack and they cranked it. The American distributors didn't want to send it out like that. Unfortunately once you've replaced a few lines with American voices you have to replace them all.
The thing about Americans "not understanding Australian accents" is somebody's assumption run wild. It's never been true.
Hey man...thanks for watching another absolute classic. Somthing to remember is that these aren't meant to be a chronological account of max, but rather the telling of the legends of "MAX" in the post apocalyptic world. Keep watching the max movies, they're all bangers.
A valid point you make. I always here people talk about plot holes in the chronology, or same actors playing multiple parts. But I take it like the legend of Robin Hood, or Samurai legends; there not meant to be "true" so much as multiple stories about a mythical character. The (unreliable) narrator from road warrior and the storyteller from thunderdome make me think, this is not canonical storytelling, but legends from the apocalypse. Max may not even be a real person, but just a legend about the future dark ages. I love that. Cuz you can do anything with the character, like Conan the Barbarian, or the Lone Ranger.
They were ALWAYS chronological. This lame, nonsensical argument was only invented in c. 2016 to justify to completely disjointed Fury Road. It was always so chronological Max would have injuries in second and third the sustained in earlier ones, even damage on his costume. Have you ever seen these films? Or just Fury Road.
Well, I guess, if you wanna, you can have an argument about what's "true" in some fictional movie. But its all just a story, so any one way of thinking about is as valid as any other. To me, mad max is a "legend", no continuity required.
@@rrmenton8016 Yeah, no fanbase ever benefited from relativisation, and neither shall we. Miller went out of his way to show the continuity (the montage, the age, missing sleeve and hurt knee in Road Warrior, damaged eye in Thunderdome etc.) and it was like that for 35 years until fans of Fury Road, a sloppy, pointless yet perfectly timed cash grab with a fantastic marketing, decided to invent themselves a more preferable history of the movie where their favourite film would not be just Miller's half hearted attempt to milk the cash and long overdue recognition for himself and the legendary franchise/character he's made (and then humiliated)
I m a fan and I benefited from 4 movies I enjoy. Im not stressed about caring about continuity. I enjoy these films exactly how i wanna. So its all good man. You do you.
I love the myth.
Road Warrior is by far and away my favorite of the Mad Max Films. Looking forward to your reaction to it.
I think this is the grittiest and most visceral of the Mad Max movies.AS the movies progress and we venture further from the event that ended traditional society,the movies are more fantastical.This movie still shows towns still trying to enforce and protect the increasing rebellious and hostile people running rampant along the roads.
The best of them all
A cool fact: The villain - 'Toecutter' - in this original "Mad Max" film was portrayed by actor Hugh Keays-Byrne. They brought him back to play the villain - 'Immortan Joe' - in the recent "Mad Max - Fury Road" film!
And next, The Road Warrior. The original Mad Max wasn't released in the states until after The Road Warrior so the second movie was my first introduction to this world and it did not disappoint. In fact it's top 5 movies ever for me.
Who told you that? Mad Max was released in the U.S. on 1st Feb, 1980, Mad Max 2 was released in the U.S. on 6th May 1982.
@@nickfatsis9607 you're right, Mad Max had just hardly been seen by anyone thus the title The Road Warrior rather than Mad Max 2. But, I swear I heard in a commentary or someplace the original wasn't released in the U.S. until after the sequel gained popularity. Guess I was mistaken.
@@johnfriday5169 you're correct about not many people seeing it in the U.S. I have seen newspaper clippings from the U.S. advertising Mad Max and calling it "Mad Max 1" the tag line was something like "Max had a job, a wife, a family" along those lines, I'm not sure if that helped with promoting the movie.
@@nickfatsis9607 I've never seen it but apparently it had a terrible dub for american audiences that didn't help either.
@@johnfriday5169 Yes, the American distributors felt that the American audience would have a hard time understanding our accents, I have a copy of a DVD that was released and has both the Australian and American audio, the dub does sound pretty bad!
George Miller got the idea for Mad Max from his time as a doctor. When he was doing his residency he worked on a lot of victims of car accidents. You should check out some other movies from the Aussie New Wave. Just off the top of my head: Wake in Fright, Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Last Wave, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Breaker Morant, Gallipoli and The Year of Living Dangerously.
Stone is also AWESOME Hugh Keays-Byrne is in that too as the Grave diggers bikie gang leader. Also the actor who played the Nightrider (Vince Gil) was in it too.
Miller was originally going to make the Max character a journalist covering the road carnage but decided he would make him a cop instead.
@@TheWaynos73 Miller changed Max to a cop because it would have been too costly to get the permits to close the streets off in Melbourne.
George Miller is one of the nicest blokes from the film industry that I ever had the pleasure to speak with. He showed up at the post-production party for Croc Hunter, my wife was a stand-in for one of the other characters in the movie. His made-for-TV movies that he produced with George Kennedy in the 1980s here in Oz were similarly fantastic, if different in theme than Max’s world.
This is the most “Australian” film ever. The slang, the terminology, the environments used.
Makes you proud to be an Aussie.
I first saw this on videotape in the very early eighties. One of those movies that has a vibe all its own.
"My life fades. The vision dims. All that remains are memories. I remember a time of chaos, ruined dreams, this wasted land. But most of all, I remember the road warrior, the man we called Max." Get Ready for the next adventure
This was a low budget movie so many decisions were made for practical budgetary reasons, I'm sure that also greatly effected the world building we got here. But this actually worked in its favor. Instead of a full post-apocalyptic world we see in most movies (and indeed in all later Mad Max movies) here we get this in between world where society is still trying to hang on but there are these big ugly cracks. Just one of those things that make this movie still interesting after all those years. Now, on to The Road Warrior!
I love this and The Road Warrior.I love the fact that both are basically Westerns in futuristic garb.
It's funny how you mentioned that what you see in the film is "what's gonna be happening soon" with gas prices going the way they are. The USA and the rest of the world were in a similar situation in the late 1970s when Mad Max first came out. The entire world was going through an energy crisis and a gasoline shortage due to a combination of wars and crises in the Middle East and OPEC shutting down production and distribution, causing gasoline prices to soar and lines at gas stations forming for miles. Mad Max was a reflection of the direction the world seemed to be going in 1979, in a dystopian setting of a collapsing infrastructure and urban decay. The sequel, The Road Warrior, was practically an entirely different movie, depicting a post-apocalyptic world in the wake of a nuclear holocaust.
I watched the gas shortage turn into a crisis, along with the Iran hostage event. Iran invaded the American embassy after the then Shah of Iran was ousted and exiled himself once the revolution took hold by the muslims. They took all American civilians as hostage and I believe killed military staff, too. It got so bad that you were only allowed to gas up on even or odd days based on the last number of your license plate. Lines stretched for miles and miles at every station and some were abandoned in line cause they were out of gas. This was all under President Carter. Stations constantly depleted supply, which exacerbated the issue. I was 16 in 1979. We lived down the street in full view of a nearby gas station.
@@jjkhawaiian I was nine years old. I remember that.
as I understand it, the actor who played the lead villain from 1979's Mad Max returned to play Immortan Joe in Fury Road.
He certainly did
What I love about the Mad Max movies is that each one is it's own thing with it's own vibe.
The girl in the flashbacks in Fury Road is not his daughter, but a girl named Glory. Glory and her mother are characters from the Mad Max comic series. Max saves them only to watch them die from being run over by a tribe called The Buzzards. They are one of many he couldn't save.
One thing I love about this first one, is there's just a vibe of the landscape that feels so recognisable as an Australia, like it could of been filmed around the corner from my old place, those two land country roads, particularly during the intro.
I visited lots of the filming locales used in Mad Max every few years, some look exactly the same, some are gone forever!
I was born and currently live in rural Central Victoria where a lot of this was filmed. Feels just like home to me when I watch it.
This IS the original Mad Max, the second one is The Road Warrior which was my introduction to the franchise during my college years as a film student. I then went back to see this one to understand the back-story of the title character. The third one is Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. It was a lot more "commercial" whereas the first two had more of an independent film motif. I'll be here to enjoy all of them with you. I love this franchise.
Love this movie. This is the first one. This one and Road Warrior the second movie are my favorite. But i love them all. And the one with Tom Hardy is really great to and so cool.
@@accordgolfer same
The late Hugh Keays-Byrne returned to the Mad Max series to play Fury Road's primary villain Immortan Joe, decades after he played the original Mad Max's antagonist, Toecutter.
Hugh Keays-Byrne, the guy who played Toecutter in this movie, (the main villain) also played Immortan Joe, the main villain in Mad Max Fury Road.
Thank you for using the Aussie version and not the US overdubbed... ruins the experience... Especially given I am an Aussie lol... thanks for your content... you need to watch MadMax 2 and 3 now... worth it. Cheers
Fun Fact: The Grease Monkey who Max drops the car on is Nick Lathuris. A fellow Greek Australian like George Miller and Co-Writer of Fury Road.
"Said they were headin' north............maybe"
Saw this in Australia back when I was 4-5 in 1985. Saw the tv cut and we recorded it and I would watch it over and over again. It became my obsession and the movie that helped kick start my channel with that one video about the car and its history.
Fury Road is after the collapse of society but this one is as society is collapsing. This movie was also originally released in the US with the dialog dubbed with American accents.
The writer/director was inspired by the wounds he saw from fights at gas lines while he was working in the ER.
This movie is authentic and real. I saw it in High School. I had no idea that the future of movie making would be so pathetic. . . . and RIP Jim Goose and long live the KZ 1000 Kwaka!
The first 3 movies, Mad Max, Road Warrior, Thunderdome were all in chronological order, with the newest being a spiritual sequel in the spirit of the Clint Eastwood "man with no name trilogies". All canon from my view.
I just got SO excited to see you reviewed this movie! I love it so much! The piece itself is filmed in such a different way: visually, auditory, and storytelling wise. I also think the energy created from being filmed in such an anamorphic format goes crazy, too. It’s perpetually captivating! Loved your commentary as well, definitely laughed along with you ✨
You should watch Mad Max 2 soon to keep this one fresh in your mind and to see the massive contrast and the progression Miller had for Fury Road.
Man, I go back and forth all the time about whether road warrior is the greatest action movie ever made! Certainly a classic, and if not the best, easily in the top 3 or 4. I love fury road, but with road warrior, it feels like I got sandy grit from australia's dead heart grinding in my teeth!
The interceptor Max had at the beginning of Fury Road was not the same one he set out with, he spent the better part of 15 years rebuilding it from scratch.
The interceptor was destroyed in MM2: The Road Warrior
@@jjkhawaiian SPOILER ALERT!
My favorite gag in this movie is when you see his happy home with the romantic sax playing, setting the mood, then you realize, damn, thats actually his old lady, playing the sax! Makes me laugh everytime!
$400k to make this movie.
The movie made $100,000,000.00.
pretty much speaks for itself.
Great reaction. BTW, the way the director directed the car chases was inspired by Vanishing point which he likes a lot. A movie you should see!
Vanishing point is awesome! I hate using words like "existentialism" cuz it always sounds snobby, but damn, that movie asks deep questions, through the filter of a baddass vehicle movie!
Absolutely.
without doubt there was also some influence from Peter Weir's "The Cars that ate Paris"
Also, in response to your question about the audio, this might help explain some of it. From wikipedia: "According to Miller, his interest while writing Mad Max was 'a silent movie with sound', employing highly kinetic images reminiscent of Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd while the narrative itself was basic and simple. Miller believed that audiences would find his violent story more believable if set in a bleak dystopian future."
For a first time filmmaker, Mad Max is definitely something special. It really grinds to a halt when he and Jess first leave after Goose's death, but beyond that it's got great pacing and incredible stunts, plus a very young Mel Gibson giving an awesome performance
It took me a few years to rate the original Mad Max. It wasn’t as post apocalyptic as I liked and I preferred 2. The more I read, the more I learned to more I appreciated the genius of this film!
Mad Max is brutal. Road Warrior, the violence and insanity is the default but in mad max iit's a world starting to eat itself
This was the first film I ever watched, based on where I was living at the time I had to have been 5 years old. I'd go to the library with my mom and she said to pick out a movie, I grabbed this one cause the cover looked cool. I watched this everyday and return it to rent it again, I was hooked.
Now, you MUST watch The Road Warrior.
Also, the guy who played Toecutter in this one played Immortan Joe in Fury Road.
This is Max's origin story, the other movies show some of his adventures. He's a myth....
I grew up watching The Road Warrior as a kid never knowing there was a Mad Max1. Makes it feel like a Prequel to me, I love it.
We see how he hurt his leg, why he likes a little music here and there, why he has a soft spot for a little boy, where he got that car, why he might like to have a pet, and the answer to the question "what happened to you Max?"
This film was a big influence on 80s action cinema. Also, you gotta give a shout out to the awesome work of the stunt team.
Miller loved Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange and the bizarre future dystopian culture from the film and decided with Max he would fuse that with Australian’s almost religious car culture of the 70s - with Fury Road the car culture religion is ramped up to the point where Joe’s V8 cult worships cars like deities.
Regarding the sound quality: the film was edited (to include sound) using a small, home-built "studio" inside a friend's apartment, over the span of seven months. So it's very possible (probable, even) that the odd mixing choices you picked up on are just a result of the "amateurish" post-production methods. George Miller did also say that his initial vision for the film was "a silent movie with sound", so it could also be a conscious decision to minimize the importance of dialog to the overall product.
It's been documented that they cranked the music because they were so proud that they'd captured the essence of a Hitchcock movie soundtrack. The music drowing out dialogue was the whole reason American distributors dubbed it. The thing about "not understanding Australian accents" was always BS.
You really have to check out the documentary of the making of this film. It will blow your mind. It was made on an extremely cheap budget, one take multiple shots and they had to be quick since the filming was done in Australia, they had to shoot the scenes, pack up and move to another spot before the law enforcement caught up with them. In a few scenes, stunt men actually had fatal accidents and they left some of it in the film.
That's a myth, the stuntman you're talking about, his name is Dale Bensch, he's alive and well, he's on Facebook.
My favorite of all the Mad Max films. This one just seems more unhinged and real. The very real stunt driving helps. I also like where it takes place in the timeline, right before the world collapses and is overrun by mohawked leather daddies. I don't believe there's a movie before this one, but if you could count a prequel, it would be the 70s Aussie movie STONE, which has some of the same actors (Toecutter/Night Rider). It's a pretty cool film with a dope soundtrack.
The cars were Australian Ford Falcons, Night Riders Holden Monaro, and a Chevy Impala (orange with flames). Max's panel van is a GM Holden Sandman panel van. The bikes were Kawasaki KZ-750 and KZ- 1000.
All these years later and I still want Max's car more than anything! 🚔
I've heard that the character of Max is meant to be a like that of a folktale of the wasteland, someone that people tell tales about around the campfire. His deeds and adventures are talked about across the wasteland and that the movies are just some of these tales. Like a folk hero.
At the end of Road Warrior, the survivors speak of that persona. The third one goes deeper into the tale and legend.
Gorge Miller has a wild filmography. Mad max, to Happy feet and back to mad max 40 years later. Plus the actor who played Toe Cutter played Imorten Joe.
I was waiting for someone to mention that.
Mad Max 2 (The Road Warrior) is where Mad Max as we think of it begins. In Mad Max1, society is on the edge of collapse. In 2 it's full on post apocalypse.. and in 3, societies are reforming... then theres the bleak insanity of Fury Road.
I love at the end when hes setting that trap for Johnny, you can see Max have a face like hes almost regretting what hes doing, then his next face is like hes actually becoming insane, really great call back to how he feels like hes losing his soul on the road, loved watching your reaction!
Mad Max 2 was my first introduction to the franchise. I was about 12 when I first saw it and loved it. Shortly after, Mad Max 1 was on TV and I remember being bored by it, thinking there wasn't enough action and there was too much talking, lol. Nowadays, as an adult, I have a lot more respect for that first film and appreciate how it laid the ground work for such an influential series.
There is a great film from New Zealand called The Quiet Earth, from 1985. It was NZ's first completely produced Sci-fi film to be released world wide. You should check it out.
Mad Max: the Road Warrior is a great sequel and you should check it out too! It is one of those great sequels, like T2 and Empire Strikes Back.
It is one of the great Last Man on Earth films if not the greatest.
@@jonathanross149 Yeah, I put it at the top of my "last man on Earth" film list.
I think you'll love the other films in the series. Road Warrior and Thunderdome are incredible. Yes, I love Thunderdome too.
Fun fact - The end scene with the car blowing up and the hacksaw in MadMax is credited by the writers of the movies SAW as the original idea of their movie 🍿🍿🍿🎥🎥
Keep up the good work James, always great to watch you 👍👍👍👍
Fun Fact: the actor who played the gang leader Toe Cutter (Hugh Keas-Byrne) played the lead villain in "Mad Max Fury Road", Immortan Joe.
Personally I think these movies get better as they go. The world building they do in each one is amazing.
Always great analysis. thanks ..It is a prequel in the time-line. This was when the world was descending into chaos, but before the apocalyptic wars. The next movie in the series seems to be after the wars.
Was looking for someone to do a reaction to the first mad max but everyone was doing fury road and my man you pulled through 🤙🏻 that’s why you’re the best 👏🏻👏🏻
Hope to see you watch "The Road Warrior (A.K.A. Mad Max 2)" and Mad Max 3 "Beyond Thunderdome". The Road Warrior is my favorite and it really shows what the world was changing into.
That end scene is basically the premise for the Saw movies. 😁
I love Mad Max, one of my favorites franchises and the game is 🔥 too, underrated masterpiece.
This first Mad Max was shot with a limited budget which is why the audio probably sounded bad at times. This low budget accidentally inspired Mad Max is post apocalyptic aesthetic. The locations they could afford were very cheap, they mostly shot in am abandoned and run down Australian town. Also at the time there was a gas shortage that was all over the news, and Mad Max sort asks what would happen if this gas shortage was led chaos and destruction of society. These elements he later expounded on Mad Max 2, where the post apocalyptic Mad Max aesthetic we know was established. It wasn't even intended to be post apocalyptic at first, just a revenge cop movie, but the location and news events inspired what Mad Max became in pop culture.
Also Mad Max isn't exactly a sequel movie, they're all related, but the stories are inconsistent. Some details remain the same between movies, others change, but they all are sort of stand alone movies. George Miller said he likes to think of Mad Max as a legend that gets retold over and over again in this post apocalyptic society, it's the story of a great Road Warrior, who's a tortured sole and saves people he comes across in his travel. I like to think of the original mad max as what actually happened, each movie is a distortion of the simpler true, the story gets more fantastical and further from the original truth each time it's retold, and as society deteriorates more and more and forgets what the world use to be like the legend becomes that much more epic.
Are you talking about the town the bikers come to to pick up the Nightrider?
Something I appreciate about the sequels: So when he gets shot, it busts his kneecap.
He is wearing a leg brace on that leg in all the following movies.
another great aussie film you should watch, which is the complete opposite of madmax is "the year my voice broke" its based in the 60s in rural australia and its a coming of age story, its an extremely poetic film visually and captures that period its based upon beautifully, watch with an open mind and prepare to be hit on levels you wont expect ;)
Excellent movie that one!!
I've always been amazed with the various reactors watching the most recent without watching the ones that led up to it. To me, you're missing most of the story and reasons behind things
Edit: The steering wheel is on the opposite side of the car because these are Australian films.
The blue van that gets destroyed in the opening chase was director Miller's van.
Also alot of the "chase" scenes were filmed by a camera man on the back of a motorcycle with a hand held. And yes, they were going that fast. Most shots are not sped up.
this movie made me fall in love with Motorcycles...im 45 now, still riding every day
stay safe dude ✌
It’s weird to think this film got so much heat for the violence in it when it came out. The film was even banned inNew Zealand and only released a few years later after the success of mad max 2 but only on condition it be given the dreaded R18 rating (similar to an nc17 in the U.S) but watching it again recently virtually all of the violence takes place off screen and we only see the aftermath
This has always been my favorite of the Mad Max films.
With respect to timeline, I would recommend Max be viewed through the eyes of “myth” as one would say view “Robin Hood.” Don’t take the timeline too literally.
Nice James. So glad you didn't skip this one and go straight to "Road Warrior". I love this movie. really interesting camera angles and shot selection.
Road Warrior was the best for many years until Miller made Fury Road. This one is mostly impressive because it was made for like a million bucks.
More like A$400,000 at most (which is probably one million in today’s dollars).
So in case you didn't know, Fury Road was meant to be the same continuity as the original 3 films, but after a decade of delays George Miller decided to tweak the script and make it like a soft reboot instead. I believe he said that Fury Road is like the exaggerated myth of Max while this first film is the reality. I can't think of another franchise where the director took a fresh look at their own creation (and have it work so well).
As a yank who moved to regional AUS to do biology, I've had a lot of fun finding the places they filmed for Mad Max. I really love how this film captures the scenery that is common in Victoria and parts of South Australia. Max's house reminds me strongly of a shack I stayed in for a few nights on Kangaroo Island a couple of years ago.
I've visited lots of the filming locales many times over the years, it's still a great experience every time!
In the opening chase and the Nightrider started to break down, you asked what is up with this guy. He finally met his match and he realised it, when Max first drove at him they were playing chicken and Max won, the Nightrider swerved first and he knew then he was outclassed
Fun fact: The guy that played Toecutter (the bad guy) also played Imortan Joe in Fury Road.
Coolest thing is the guy who plays Toecutter in this was the guy they had play Immortan Joe in Fury Road
Thanks for dropping this reaction, I always did like these films
Fun fact: the actor who plays the bad guy in this movie went on to play the bad guy in “Mad Max: Fury Road”.
Its interesting how you get to go back, like walking into the movie in the middle.
Another cool note, the actor that plays Toecutter also plays Imortan Joe in Fury Road
The scene where Max drives through the bikers on the bridge: A local motorcycle club was recruited for the stunts. They were supposed to ride down to the bridge and lay their bikes down. They kept daring each other to go faster and egging each other on, so the lay down was a lot more violent than planned. Also, one of the bilers was wearing the helmet of the actor he was doubling for, and it was much too big. That's why when he gets knocked in the back of head by the other bike, it looks like his neck gets broken.
At first I thought Mad Max was a postapocalyptic movie, but then I realized that was just Australia.
No in camera audio, there are photos on the net of portable audio recorders and boom mics, the original release was in mono, then years later the audio was remixed in 5.1, it sounds so much better!