Taipan wrote:Having said all that I'm wondering if extending the Mad Max franchise with Tom Hardy was the right thing to do. By now we've all figured out I hope what the template for a Mad Max movie is. So at this point I'm really curious as to what The Wasteland will be about, if again it'll be Max letting someone die and then he runs away into the wasteland, which - if I'm correct it's a prequel to Fury Road - we pretty much know already what's going to happen.
We do, and right now that's a good thing. The only thing selling big right now is existing IP and if it comes with a degree of formula then it's even easier to sell. We know what's going to happen yet, as you say, we're still fascinated by what's to come. However, there's really two ways you can go with existing IP; you can take the hard road and strip it back to its routes, or you can take the easy road and build fantasy. The most dangerous kind of thinking is that which starts
"wouldn't it be cool if..."
This is why I say everything after RoadWarrior is more or less fan-fiction. Beyond The Thunderdome is more like a rip-off of a Mad Max film than an actual Mad Max film. That was proof that you could even use the same actor and end up with a completely different protagonist. I'm starting to think that We Don't Need Another Hero was some sort of collective subconscious realisation by the sequel's creators.
The truth is that another artist's take on existing art is usually, while cheap and ultimately unfulfilling, pretty compelling. What blindsides us with Mad Max is the continuation of the director. We foolishly believe there's some sort of a deep lineage just because of Miller's involvement. And we'll fall for it again with The Wasteland. We'll welcome its familiarity, whoop at it's action, applaud its fantasy, ignore its shortcomings and then eventually feel a little cheated.
My guess is, if it is a prequel, we'll see the Interceptor featuring significantly. It will appear the same but behave differently. The actual movie car may even be faster and the footage more daring with bigger and better stunts. However, it will go too far, grow tiresome, and leave us thrilled rather than chilled.
Taipan wrote:Maybe Brendan McCarthy had the right idea for ending Max's journey in the Wasteland, after all it was him who said that he would be an old road warrior still in his leather, in his 50's and still not made his peace with the past. That's pretty pathological at that point if you think about it. I guess there's this much suspension of disbelief before the formula runs dry. Maybe it's why Miller wanted to shift the story to Furiosa, who - although her story is somewhat similar to Max's in that she seeks redemption, her character offers much more options for development, whereas Max is stuck in limbo.
I'm going to be blunt here. While I deeply admire McCarthy's talent, he's spent too long doodling fantasy vehicles and characters and not enough time figuring out Max. There is a part of Max seeking redemption but he cannot find it within an inhumane world. As long as that's kept alive, there is a rich tapestry of stories available, especially to a journey man. What Max is searching for is a world in which his redemption would have any value. His purpose is to serve and protect society, but that makes him worthless in a wasteland where civilisation has resorted to everyone serving and protecting themselves. He's a sherif with no jailhouse. He needs to protect everyone but lives with the knowledge that, in this new world, he cannot even protect the people closest to him. Max himself isn't mad, he is a sane man in a mad society, and thus appears crazy to those who've lost their bearings. That's a feeling, particularly in the current political climate, I'm sure many of us can relate to.
When the world has healed, Max can heal. Until then, he has to keep moving and remain alone. If there was no chance of him making peace with his past then he'd simply end his own existence.
This ultimately means that, within the scope of the first two films, Max portrays life affirming values.
This is continued in Beyond The Thunderdome where Max is effectively interjected back into a new society but as the complete opposite of his aspirations. He enters under suspicion and moves through a metaphorical jail and trial. This results in him being deemed unfit for the community and ejected from it. All this after being the victim of theft and seeing the perpetrator still at large. However, by the end of the movie, we are told what Max's real role has now become as the last words said to him are
"goodbye soldier".
So, as disjointed as Beyond The Thunderdome felt, it did provide a path toward redemption for Max. When a society reforms into something corrupt, you need an army to fight for what's right.
Personally I believe this was more than a thread left hanging. I think there was a plan here to have further sequels that saw a wasteland war forming. I think this is where Fury Road got a lot of its ideas from.
There's also this from Savannah's final passage;
Still and all, every night we does the Tell so that we 'member who we was and where we came from. But most of all we 'members the man who finded us. Him that came the salvage. And we lights the city. Not just for him but for all of them that are still out there. 'Cause we knows there'll come a night when they sees the distant light and they'll be coming home.
While this may be about bringing people back to the cities, it may also be a call to arms. She may be referencing all those like Max who need to come back and unite against a growing evil.
Fury Road shows a lot of evidence that those putting together the story found Max's real character within the characters of others. This is why I think Max feels so tacked on, irrelevant, and somewhat unlikable. My view is that this is a classic case of the tail wagging the dog and happened so late into development, everyone ran with it rather than rethinking where they'd gotten to. Furiousa is Max. She is his character. There are elements of Max in the Five Wives and Nux and the Vuvalini too. Basically, you could take fourteen characters and boil them down to two. That's pretty amateurish story building and as a result Max suffers. He's incredibly selfish, irrational, and dysfunctional. He is not Max. He is not a hero. He just swings around dodging bullets. We don't admire anything he does.
Instead, everything that's life affirming is poured into the other characters. Furiosa is seen as leader who, unable to find an opposing army, can release the plight from what already exists. Nux is seen as a man who has faith in an afterlife for those who die for the right reasons. Even Immortan Joe cherishes something we can admire. His death is almost tragic and this guy's supposed to be the villain.
So now we're left more interested in these characters than the central one. We are in a piss-poor fan-fiction jerk-circle now. Anything goes and Max no longer matters.
Taipan wrote:I guess it'll all boil down to what we're going to see in the next movie. If it's going to be the same formula once again with a truck chase at the end, then we should start to worry as to how long Max's adventures will be captivating on a story level. Because I'm sure the world building and all that stuff will be on point, but it's got to be wrapped around something. Maybe Miller needs to shift the tone of the franchise once again, like he took the 'myth' approach for MM2 from the regular storytelling of the first movie.
The only way Max can be saved, and I know I bleat on about this, is via TV. We need a Main Force Patrol series set in Australia, preferably in late 70's. It needs to be a full reset with the first series building towards Max's loss and second next series focusing on his downfall and journey further into the wasteland. There's plenty to tell about his story.
