A few questions

[Road Warrioress]

Hi, I am new here

I've been a long time fan of MM movies, sometime that has always puzzled me is why the V8 Interceptor didn't get more screen time.
When you think of in the context of shows like Knights Rider, A-Team, Dukes of Hazzard, batmobile, the hero car becomes one of the characters of the show, we really only get to see the Interceptor for a few minutes of the show and then in my opinion destroyed, brushed aside.

[Taipan]

Hey!

It's difficult to compare TV shows with a movie because TV shows are basically designed to have those cars as characters whereas with Mad Max movies the car serves a different purpose and the fact it's been elevated to a cult status is somewhat of a side-effect.

The V8 Interceptor is Max's trusty steed but not in his adventures, it serves its purpose as the vehicle for Max's change. Notice that in every Mad Max movie (except the 1st one) Max loses and destroys the car. He needs to do that in order to detach himself from the past and move on, complete his character arc for each of the movies - from a person stuck in the past attached to his belongings to a person who values human relations more. That is the main function of his vehicles, and despite completing that arc each time, Max in a typical Campbellian hero fashion is seen in another installment with his car again. That's the way Max is designed as a character - to be in perpetual limbo between being a loner and regaining his humanity through helping someone in a story.

So yeah I think the V8 Interceptor became iconic because it showed up twice already to serve its purpose, but it's there to be stolen and trashed. In MMBT the Interceptor was replaced with Max's Camel Wagon which BTW was a very subtle nod to Max's past either way - the cab of the car is from a Ford Falcon XB Sedan, the same type of car he was driving in the beginning of the very first Mad Max, the yellow Interceptor.

So eventually we end up with a strange situation where people recognize the car thinking it's iconic but Miller treats it in a completely different way, just as a plot device and the car will never get any more screen time than what people might think, that's why I think the comparisons to TV shows with cars that are essentially written as characters (down to the mourning of their loss) don't really work.

[Road Warrioress]

you make some really good points and I suppose once it is pointed out to you it seems obvious, be it a different way of thinking, looking at things,
I don't think I am alone in the hero statue of the Interceptor, to many fans it is the hero of the movie with Mad Max.

[MWFV8]

Here's the thing. The Mad Max story really finished at the end of Road Warrior. Those two movies summed up Max's journey and the Interceptor played a pivotal role.

Everything after Road Warrior is more or less fan-fiction. There is nothing familiar about their feel and nothing new about their story.

If you just take the first two movies, the Interceptor makes perfect sense and gets the screentime it deserves. It's also some of the bravest treatment of a hero car within film. It is not unbeatable, it is not indestructible. It is in essence just as human and vulnerable as Max himself. It has a streak of madness (it's supercharger) which works in tandem with Max's madness, and like Max, there is a tank which can run empty. It is a piece from here and a piece from there just like Max is a warrior made up from his shattered past.

In relation to the real Mad Max story, the Interceptor gets its fair share of exposure. Maybe the final chase before its crash is too short and too one sided. In the first film it goes from unicorn to righteous monster. In the second film it goes from survivor to legend.

The use of or references to the Interceptor in the subsequent movies are part homage and part exploitation. There is the danger we'll see it used in a prequel where, just like how Max is portrayed in Fury Road, it's so superior and durable it moves into the realm of complete fantasy.

[Turbofurball]

In the filming of The Dukes Of Hazzard it's estimated that around 200 '68-'70 Dodge Chargers were destroyed, they had a rolling mechanical project where parts of destroyed cars would be used to fix up better ones, until there was literally nothing left ... that was done so that all the stunts could occur and yet the Duke boys would always be able to outrun the law in their trusty car.

I felt that could maybe add a little context to what the guys above mentioned

In Mad Max I've always felt like my love of the vehicles stemmed from them being like the monsters in a horror movie - namely, the less they're shown the more your imagination can fill in the blanks, making them better/badder than anything that could have been filmed in real life

[MWFV8]

One of my favourite tales from TV hero cars has to be the Fall Guy truck. To avoid the situation and costs seen in Dukes of Hazard they built a special mid-engined jump truck which they could reuse for the big stunts.

[Turbofurball]

That is indeed a very cool little fact! Crumbs, it's been a long time since I've thought about The Fall Guy, lol

[Taipan]

Here's the thing. The Mad Max story really finished at the end of Road Warrior. Those two movies summed up Max's journey and the Interceptor played a pivotal role.

Everything after Road Warrior is more or less fan-fiction. There is nothing familiar about their feel and nothing new about their story.

If you just take the first two movies, the Interceptor makes perfect sense and gets the screentime it deserves. It's also some of the bravest treatment of a hero car within film. It is not unbeatable, it is not indestructible. It is in essence just as human and vulnerable as Max himself. It has a streak of madness (it's supercharger) which works in tandem with Max's madness, and like Max, there is a tank which can run empty. It is a piece from here and a piece from there just like Max is a warrior made up from his shattered past.

In relation to the real Mad Max story, the Interceptor gets its fair share of exposure. Maybe the final chase before its crash is too short and too one sided. In the first film it goes from unicorn to righteous monster. In the second film it goes from survivor to legend.

The use of or references to the Interceptor in the subsequent movies are part homage and part exploitation. There is the danger we'll see it used in a prequel where, just like how Max is portrayed in Fury Road, it's so superior and durable it moves into the realm of complete fantasy.

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. 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 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.

[AquaCola]

My guess is Wasteland will be a mix of the comic and game story where Max tries to rescue Glory from Buzzards(or a similar faction) but she end's up getting killed. A lot of it could be on foot and underground with Max being chased in his interceptor at the end. We may get to see the buried City or even Gastown. Or Wasteland could be a completely different script set even further back. George has said this new Max has a great back story he wants to tell someday. We were also told that Wasteland is going to be very bleak.

We know the Furiosa one spans several years so we will presumably get to see her life in The Green Place, been taken by Joe's forces(or maybe another faction altogether), if she was a wife, its a reasonable guess to assume she was unable to conceive and somehow went from wife to being a high up Imperator driving the War Rig. Also how she lost her arm, all we know is it was a gigantic road war. We could get to see what happened in the Citadel and surrounding areas afterwards, the MM part 2 comic gives us a glimpse of what happened at the end. George also said we would see the Doof Warrior's origin story in the next film so that would line up time wise with Furiosa's rise through Joe's ranks.

We have a lot of concrete info on both films and we can speculate things based what we've heard through interviews, the comics and the game.

[Road Warrioress]

In the filming of The Dukes Of Hazzard it's estimated that around 200 '68-'70 Dodge Chargers were destroyed, they had a rolling mechanical project where parts of destroyed cars would be used to fix up better ones, until there was literally nothing left ... that was done so that all the stunts could occur and yet the Duke boys would always be able to outrun the law in their trusty car.

I felt that could maybe add a little context to what the guys above mentioned

In Mad Max I've always felt like my love of the vehicles stemmed from them being like the monsters in a horror movie - namely, the less they're shown the more your imagination can fill in the blanks, making them better/badder than anything that could have been filmed in real life

I heard, not sure if it is true but how in the final season of Dukes, they had to resort to using large scale model care for the jumps scenes rather than real cars