Young Australian doctor George Miller found the idea for his feature-length film debut during long shifts in the emergency room. He had seen so many patients, injuries, wounds and deaths from car and motorcycle accidents that it had taken a toll on him. He later showed much of what he saw in “Mad Max.” As a great fan of silent cinema, he decided that he wanted as little dialogue as possible in the film (in his opinion, it slowed down the action) and showed Australia in the near future, catastrophic for humanity. He believed that it would be easier for viewers to believe in the brutal plot if the action was set in a dystopian future.
“Mad Max” was ahead of its time. It’s hard to watch “Furiosa” without being terrified
In the first part of the cult series, the world is just descending into chaos: Australia is facing a breakdown of civil order, mainly due to widespread oil shortages and ecocide. This means that, as a rule, there is no fuel or very little of it, and due to the climate catastrophe, water and food are slowly becoming scarce. There are fewer and fewer policemen, but there are more and more street gangs that do not respect the rules of social coexistence. It is the members of such an exceptionally brutal group that the title character fights against and, through a spiral of violence, accidents and deaths, he must avenge the death of his loved ones, just like in a classic Western. This involves numerous chases, duels, explosions and casualties of people and equipment.
Interestingly, when the first “Mad Max” debuted on American screens, the production was advertised not with the name of the then little-known Mel Gibson, but with fast cars and spectacular crashes. Which at the end of the 1970s was justified because productions such as “The Steering Wheel Master Runs”, “Vanishing Point”, “Road Duel” and “The Last American Hero” were popular. Indeed, even in “Blues Brothers” from 1980, most of the fun consisted in the fact that the main characters, very sympathetic from the audience’s perspective, escape from the police in a car to play a concert, and they do it so spectacularly that piles of derailments pile up on the roads in an extremely spectacular way of police cars. No one was surprised that dozens of different cars were scrapped to make one film.
Mad Max, 1979, official movie poster mat. promotional film
In 1978, Peter Weaver wrote with some indignation that the average price of a car, according to data from the National Automobile Dealers Association, was $5,780, while in 1970 a new car cost about $3,430. Therefore, in the late 1970s, an average employee had to work 635 hours a year to be able to afford a new car. It was also estimated that you would need to spend $375 on gasoline per year, which allowed you to travel about 10,000 miles. miles (or approximately 16,000 km).
Shortly thereafter, Americans were hit hard by the increase in fuel prices. Iran’s Islamic revolution led to a decline in fuel production and an energy crisis – the price of fuel more than doubled in 12 months. In the 1980s, the Iran-Iraq war caused a decline in oil production in both countries, which resulted in an economic recession around the world. “Mad Max” and its subsequent parts developed a vision of how the world could become wild when such strategic raw materials run out, but these films still seemed to be exaggerated fantasy for effect, and perhaps they also helped to come to terms with fears.
“Furiosa” is no longer such a dystopian western
In the case of the latest film “Mad Max: Furiosa”, the pattern of events is similar to the original. This time we learn the story of the heroine who was so delighted with after the premiere of the six-Oscar-winning film “Mad Max: Fury Road” from 2015. Here, Miller explains how Imperator Furiosa’s life path was shaped before Mad Max runs into her somewhere in the desert. This time, the rejuvenated heroine is played by , who with admirable dedication runs through the Australian wilderness in a thick leather costume.
In short, “Mad Max: Furiosa” is a story about paradise lost, about revenge as the main motivation for survival, and a largely long sequence of chase scenes. Here, the world is already in chaos, and most of Australia is a wasteland devastated by nuclear war, where water and food are so difficult to obtain that they are more valuable than fuel, which is also extremely difficult to obtain there. Shortages in food supplies mean that average life expectancy is reduced by half. Of course, the fight for basic food products is so fierce that man is man to man and the basic organizational units are hostile gangs roaming the desert in search of valuable raw materials.
Mad Max: Fury Road Photo press materials
Meanwhile, little Furiosa was born in one of the few places where there are forests, fruit trees and plenty of drinking water (they also have horses there). The inhabitants of this enclave are well-nourished, much healthier and, as a result, live longer than those wandering in the desert – they are even called long-lived. It’s natural that the local population wants to keep the existence of their oasis a secret from brutal gang looters. So when Furiosa is kidnapped from there, she stubbornly refuses to reveal for years how to reach this paradise on earth.
Because life in the desert is cruel, it is easier to find cars and motorcycles there than to find food. Whoever has access to it has power and rules – most often in an absolutely dictatorial and extremely bloody way. The problem with everything that Miller shows here is that the sociological and ecological aspects of life in a world devastated by nuclear war are no longer so unrealistic, and in fact, more and more likely. We already have a climate crisis, we are already dealing with the effects of drought and shortages of various products and raw materials. Apart from the cost of fuel, you don’t have to be an economics expert to notice that prices of almost everything are rising everywhere. However, we don’t ride loud Harley Davidsons in spectacular costumes, we instead choose hiking, public transport and bicycles.
A still from the Mad Max movie: ‘Furiosa’ photo: Warner Bros/YouTube
When Alert RCB warns about thunderstorms and hail, it’s easy to forget that climate is not a reflection of what the weather looks like locally. And when you watch such spectacular chases in souped-up cars and on devilish motorcycles, you can also forget for a moment how hot and sweaty a person can be in a leather jacket and pants. These are the outfits worn by heroes from the world of “Mad Max” who live in desert wastelands. They look very impressive, it is known that leather is also a durable material, but extremely impractical in the heat. In fact, all these people should have died of dehydration and heat stroke. The special filtering suits that appear in “” (a great blockbuster of recent years) that turn body fluids into water and insulate you from the heat make more sense – the problem is that they don’t really exist.
To feel like in “Mad Max”, we don’t even have to fly to Australia. Just take a trip to Egypt, for example. There they have a desert and cars that are in their fifth or sixth year of life, as well as absolutely terrifying road traffic. Meanwhile, the cosmic world of “Dune” with a desert planet, a galactic empire, scheming nuns and huge worms is still a fantasy that can only be seen on the screen. Let’s hope George Miller doesn’t turn out to be a clairvoyant.
Source: Gazeta
Bruce is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment . He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.
