Best Mad Max movie that is not Fury Road

i suspect a lot of people's opinions about these are shaded by seeing them when they were kids. like i see complaints about the kids in thunderdome, which feels like someone who loved road warrior when they were a kid but they saw thunderdome when they were a preteen or teen and didn't want any "kid stuff."

here are my thoughts on them as an adult who just watched them all for the first time (bits of thunderdome seemed familiar but i had definitely never watched the whole movie):

mad max - i'm a sucker for low-budget gonzo filmmaking and for movies with stripped-down plots. the action scenes in this are amazing even before considering the budgetary and technical restrictions. toecutter is easily the best villain in the original trilogy and i love his gang of weirdos too, everyone has their own distinct psychotic personality. lots of other fun supporting characters too like goose and fifi. the end does get into generic revenge thriller mode but that's only like 15 minutes of the movie.

road warrior - my feelings on this were probably tinged by watching it through TNT which has a pretty shitty print of the movie. solid world-building, though it's just desert and then the oil village. i like the gyro captain. the villagers are fine. the feral child is a worse "cute kid" violation than the tribe in thunderdome. my biggest problem with it is lord humongous who is a snooze of a villain. no personality, doesn't really do anything cool, boring. the mohawk henchman has more personality but is also dumb. great action as always.

thunderdome - amazing world-building and sets in this. it looks fantastic and the whole thing is just fun. bartertown/thunderdome is sick obviously. i had heard the complaints about the kid tribe but i found them not particularly cutesy and actually effectively creepy when max first wakes up and they're following him around repeating everything he says, and then the recitation of the captain walker legend is great too. the train action sequence is cartoony but still rips.

fwiw I saw all of these after I turned 30

the feral child is a worse "cute kid" violation than the tribe in thunderdome

no way, he was badass!

totally domed a dude with a boomerang

The thing that I never see remarked upon about the original Mad Max is the dark queer undertone within the biker gang; I remember reading in Hunter Thompson's Hell's Angels about how the bikers he hung around with would occasionally make out with each other just as one more way to freak out normal people in the street, and I feel like there's some of that there, but there's also Toecutter seemingly keeping Johnny as some kind of pet, making Bubba jealous in the process. This shows up again in Road Warrior, when Wez (the red-mohawked lead henchman) has a boyfriend (who gets boomeranged to death), but it's not at all present in the third or fourth movies.

Anyway, my ranking is 1 > 2 > first half of 3 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Fury Road (which I don't even like, really, mostly because Tom Hardy is such a meat paperweight weighing down the whole thing) >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> everything with those goddamn annoying kids

lol whoa now

Insane

say what you will abt fury road, i would not describe that movie as "weighed down" by anything

i do recall the Fury Road thread being rather harsh towards Hardy despite loving the movie when it first came out, but I feel like people came around on him. I always liked his performance. it's Furiosa's arc though.

Hardy’s weird line readings stuck out like a sore thumb on first viewing, but on subsequent viewings they seemed perfect. Max is a loner who barely ever speaks to anyone. He's not gonna be the most fluid conversationalist.

btw these are all on HBO Max right now, except the first one which is on netflix

oh awesome! I have them all on blu-ray somewhere but I have no idea where.

Hardy (likely by design) works to Fury Road's advantage, because you enter the movie thinking it's going to be his movie but then leave realizing it was Theron's. Definitely not a coincidence that the first thing the movie does is put Hardy in his iconic Dodge Charger and the second thing they do is destroy it.

I like the inanity of the villains in Road Warrior a lot, perhaps *because* of their pointless cartoon nihilism. Like, it doesn't matter what their motives or morals are, they're just outright lunatics, and for that reason alone the people at the gas pump know they've got to go somewhere else.

Hardy struggled badly with director instruction throughout and was very unhappy with his performance and what he was allowed do until he saw the movie, in which his max is exactly as miller wished

Something I've always wondered: "Master" (of Master Blaster fame) from Thunderdome: was he supposed to be the hulking simpleton from the first Mad Max movie?

voting for babe: pig in the city

it's a mad max movie

xpost You mean Blaster, the big guy? There's a line in Thunderdome after he's revealed about him just being a child.

Oh yeah, meant Blaster. I thought the "just a child" remark alluded to his mind state. I recall hulking dude in first movie to be very childlike. And of course I really wanted that Easter egg.

Yeah, they probably meant mental state. Either way, there's no real timeline at work here. Each movie features just a few faint echos of the one that came before.

the first thing the movie does is put Hardy in his iconic Dodge Charger

his iconic fuckin' what

um yes WTF

iirc it was a 1991 Cutlass Ciera

I thought it was a Charger?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pursuit_Special

Ah, thanks. There's a dude down the street with a black Charger he is always revving, and whenever I see him zip past I think of Mad Max.

creating extra accounts to FP Josh for racism over again

also for being very confused about what "iconic" means

Wait, I got the car wrong, but how is the black muscle car not iconic? It's the car associated with Mad Max?

put some respect on the XB Falcon, son

We be awesome if instead of a dog Max had an iconic muscle cat. Which, lol, apparently exist.

https://s8.favim.com/orig/151011/cat-cats-mad-max-mad-cat-Favim.com-3419305.jpg

Sometimes
I think it's a sin
When u don't know what car
Max is drivin in

Today I learned that car was uniquely Australian! I didn't even know that country had cars back then, at least cars that didn't eat people.

>:(

:)

I thought the whole point of the Mad Max series was that it's futuristic because they have cars.

I didn't even know that country had cars back then

as opposed to the thriving industry today


Wait, I got the car wrong, but how is the black muscle car not iconic? It's the car associated with Mad Max?

the clue is in the questions tbh

Aren't the cars that eat people or at least Paris some of the same ones used in this film. Remember reading that several years ago.

Once lived on the same street as a bloke that had a Pursuit Special replica in MFP livery. Always parked it on the street.

Anyway, I voted 2.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

i watched Bacurau last week and it has a good Beyond Thunderdome reference near the end

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Yes

Does it go through to face Fury Road?

Be like the last page of black beauty being a description of the rendering process.

Let it be

Think u've misremembered the lyrix

decided to follow this up with something a bit different

best movie directed by George Miller

TS: "Just walk away" vs "MEDIOCRE!"

Man, the shot beginning at 1:22 here is one of the coolest ever. How'd they time that so well?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNzfgl_H5vA

First class editing.

the kids in Thunderdome were great. ... I am generally not a fan of movies with kids

too early to say where Furiosa fits in here, going to see it again tomorrow.

but as of right now....

Fury Road > 2 > 1 ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................Thunderdome

well now I have to see Thunderdome

Watched the road warrior with my boys, they laughed at humungus

Bruce Spence, for all of his comedy, really does some nice dramatic facial acting while watching the depravity of Wez and company on their poor victims

xp they wouldn't be laughing if he was laying siege to their desert compound

idk why people hate thunderdome so much, some p amazing stuff in there

it has a markedly different vibe than the first two movies and feels way more like a Big Movie

there are parts I enjoy but i can feel the shift of being largely, mostly George/less in spirit, or at least being at a remove from a lot of the decisions surrounding movie for the majority of the production

it’s not a crap movie in the sphere of movies in general

but to me not a good mad max movie

just play me the song & give me the Frank Thring clips and i’m good

I've always been a defender of "Thunderdome," and still am, even the stuff with the tribe of kids. But last night was the first time ever that it just wasn't clicking with me, or perhaps maybe mostly the stuff with the kids. I still really like how this movie starts, and I really like how it ends, and I think Tina Turner was inspired casting, but there are a few long stretches that are just kinda eh. Nonetheless, ridiculously packed with cool ideas and weird little details, from Thunderdome itself to the mask Ironbar wears on his back (or Ironbar himself, for that matter), or elements of the kid village, despite their innate corniness. Some funny gags and good dialogue throughout the movie; to paraphrase Dave Kehr on "Big Trouble in Little China," a "loopy originality" ... that bears "no resemblance to any known form of human expression," lol.

Til Roger Ebert not only gave it four stars and not only called it the best of the three, but he also called it one of the best of the year:

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/mad-max-beyond-thunderdome-1985