And yet they still have their distinctive characters, especially the paraplegic Mechanic in his harness (Steven J Spears, one of Australia’s best known modern playwrights) and the amazonian Warrior Woman (Virgina Hey, who went on to star in cult sci-fi hit Farscape the following decade). In contrast to the black leathers of the raiders, their clothes are white fabric: more functional, less individual. Vez (Vernon Wells) with his beloved Golden Youth (Jerry O’Sullivan)Īgainst them are the settlers, led by Pappagallo (Mike Preston). The feathers on the shoulders of lead raider Vez, the sinister hockey mask of Lord Humungus, and the badge-festooned fur clothes of “the Toadie”: each of these speaks to the character of the men and the individuality of the raider tribe while still giving them a distinct group identity. The costumes designed by Norma Moriceau blend repurposed sporting equipment with tribal-style ornamentation and scavenged trinkets. The greatest achievement of the movie is in capturing the feel of its post apocalyptic world – from the repurposed bits and pieces of technology (an armoured schoolbus being used as a compound gate) to the ornamented armour of its raiders. The action is top notch, of course, and the additional budget is on show in some of the best practical effects of the time. Long stretches go by without any dialog at all, punctuated by either emotional over the top speeches or uniquely Australian humour. The film itself has a unique mixture of a laconic style with touches of melodrama. Like Heracles or Fionn Mac Cumhaill, the shape of the character remains the same but the stories vary from teller to teller.Ī tense moment between Max (Mel Gibson) and the Sky Captain (Bruce Spence). This sets up a conceit of the Mad Max series that has helped it handle different styles, retcons, and even recasting the main character: the idea that this is not a single unified story but rather that it’s a collection of myths about the same legendary hero. Mad Max 2 establishes both its tone and its setting right out of the gate, with a collage of images showing the collapse of society while a voiceover recounts it as if it was folk history. Naturally, it also led to a sequel two years later. It launched multiple careers as well as a new craze for films combining high speed car chases with dystopian lawlessness. The film was an unexpected smash hit, turning a budget of four hundred thousand dollars into a global box office take of millions of dollars. The collapse of his world with the destruction of his family is a mirror of the fragility of society as a whole. Max Rockatansky, a police officer played by then-unknown Mel Gibson, gets caught in an escalating feud with one of those gangs that ends in the death of his wife and child followed by Max wreaking bloody revenge on the gang. The world has not yet ended, but it’s on the way out. The brainchild of director George Miller and producer Byron Kennedy (who co-wrote the script), it was set in a world of out-of-control gangs, resource shortages, and the crumbling of society. Instead it was an “if this goes on” five-minutes-into-the-future dystopia. The first Mad Max film took place in 1979 and was not a post-apocalyptic film. One inspiration for “Mad Max 2” was the Harlan Ellison short story “A Boy And His Dog” – part of why Max now has a canine companion. It was from this fear that a film which would become the new template for post-apocalyptic fiction was born: Mad Max 2. The oil crises of 19 made people aware of how fragile some aspects of their society were. As cold war fear began to fade in the 1980s, new worries took its place. The dawning of the nuclear age at the end of World War 2 led to a resurgence of the genre, lent an air of spice by the fact that society could be ended by World War 3. Mary Shelley wrote The Last Man about the struggles of a world devastated by plague, while HG Wells has his protagonist in The Time Machine travel to a future where our civilisation is no more. A thousand years later writers looked at the fall of the Roman empire and considered that their world, too, must fall. It has its roots in the “Dark Ages” of European history, after the Western Roman Empire had fallen and left its former subjects wandering around the ruins of buildings they could not recreate. The post-apocalyptic genre is older than you might think.
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