![]() ![]() This adds fuel to the idea that the stories of Mad Max that we see on screen are not intended to be the hard and fast truth, but pieces of a larger mythological tapestry. After the survivors Max helps escape from Bartertown find the ruins of Sydney and establish a small society, Savannah, the leader, recites the story of their journey and the stranger who saved them, while at the same time, Max is still out there, wandering the desert. The quote at the end of Fury Road comes from the First History Man, one in a line of similar record keepers.īefore the film came out, Miller said Fury Road is the story of the Road Wars and "is based on the Word Burgers of the History Men and eyewitness accounts of those who survived." We’ve seen history kept alive in this manner before in the saga, specifically at the end of Beyond Thunderdome. What we have here is a society based on the oral tradition, one that is essentially made up of stories and tales passed from one person to another. In this wrecked future, there aren’t history books or news broadcasts or Wikipedia, nothing is written down, or at least nothing is written down and mass-produced for public consumption. This idea is given some credence by the very nature of how this information is disseminated. For example, the popular notion of Billy the Kid is much, much different than the reality, and it’s difficult to separate the actual person from the tales of the frontier outlaw. Bits and pieces may be true, but the implication is that Max is larger than just a man, he’s a fable, a folk tale. Miller’s point is that, perhaps, not all of these adventures actually happened in this universe as we see them in the movies. Again, hearkening back to westerns, tales get passed along from person to person, with fuzzy details remembered and replaced, until it’s damn near impossible to differentiate between what is real and what is fabricated. and likely be a reluctant hero once again.ĭiscussing the continuity of the Mad Max franchise, George Miller has often stated that Max, in whatever form he takes, is a mythic figure, more legend than man. With Immortan Joe toppled, with a good and just and strong leader like Furiosa installed at the Citadel, and the wives safe, his job, for lack of a better word, is done, and he’s free to ride off. He may not go looking to play the hero, or just to help as is the case in Fury Road, but in a world full of trouble and strife, he has the opportunity to step into that role. The lasting impression and legacy of his family (though in Fury Road he flashes back to a little girl, not his son, which potentially indicates further loss and trauma, and there are some interesting fan theories floating around about that particular tidbit), his wife’s belief that he is still a good man, is what drives him forward. He wants to get away, to be left alone with his pain and his memories, but at the same time he can’t stand aside and not help when he’s needed. But on the other, as we see in Fury Road, as well as the earlier films, the flame of who he once was still burns inside of him-he was a cop, a husband, a father, a good man-which is the part of him that won’t let him walk away from trouble. On one hand, he floats through this desolate existence, just surviving. ![]() In a ruined world already tearing itself apart, this was the last thing tethering Max to the remnants of civilization, and severing that final tie set him adrift, which we subsequently saw in The Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome. In 1979’s Mad Max, Max, played by Mel Gibson, loses his wife and infant son to a vicious motorcycle gang headed by Toecutter (Hugh Keays-Byrne, who also plays the villain Immortan Joe in Fury Road). Mad is both on a quest to find himself, his better self, and outrun his past. This character type is also one with a past, and as you see, haunted by horrific visions, Max is certainly carrying around some rather hefty baggage with him as he wanders the sun-scorched wastes. Hardy’s Max is certainly a throwback to this archetype, only this time around they’ve taken the whole strong-but-silent thing to crazy-ass extremes, and swapped out horses for customized battlewagons and war rigs. Just as often, he’s a reluctant hero, one who doesn’t want to get involved initially, who only wants to look out for number one, but is moved by forces greater than himself to intervene. Post-apocalyptic movies, including the Mad Max family of films, often take their cues from the western genre, stories where the grim, stoic man-of-action arrives on the troubled scene and takes measures, usually violent, to rectify the situation. ![]()
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