Samtemdo8 said:
Its mostly because Max is the most purest example of a wooden actor and worse a wooden actor that barely has screentime of his own. Same with the rest of the "good guy" cast. I am most certain that Mel Gibson was a way better Max than whoever this guy was. And the plot felt like a Story where Mad Max was shoehorned in, not a story about Mad Max. You can remove Max and the movie would have been almost the same.
But then again, Max Rockatansky has never been the star of any of the movies. Max is the quintessential type of Australian typecast of a central protagonist that
suffers their world and is often left without any answers to address it. You could remove Max from the first movie, world still falls to the hypothetical 'societal collapse theory', nothing gets better, nothing is seen to improve, that was big in Australia during the 60s and 70s about 'cultural degradation'.
George Miller was a conservative of Australian political dialogue of the 70s that believed without a strong cultural heritage (art, political conscience, etc) that Australia was destined to 'cultural annihilation' inthe age of the culture wars of the Cold War. That Australia was threatened as if by the idea of a dissolution of a desire to pull forward as one new society, to overcome and achieve a unified national image of itself.
Basically all the progressives of Australian politics of the 70s were; "More art funding, but the young'uns are alright and need more native entertainment."
Conservatives were like; "More art funding
'cos young'uns aren't alright and need civilizing."
And George Miller being a doctor who saw the ridiculous road death tolls from drinking, recreational drug use, and then driving (and racing), wasn't exactly hung up on the idea Australian youth being okay. Having seen two of his friends die in a motor vehicle accident when he himself was young and a lot more rough and tumble, drinking and getting into fights himself.
Max Rockatansky, much like Australian characters of the time, were swallowed up by the world that confronted them.
They couldn't be traditional heroes, nor have traditional heroic typecast tales about them. The key themes of many Australian films at the time that separate them from other Western media, is the individual is largely nothing compared to the social forces that threaten them. Threaten them with insanity, barbarism and in a sense
hopelessness unless there is a
guiding hand. A unified desire to
rise ourselves up collectively.
If you want to see an active example of this, I suggest
Wake in Fright. Probably the best piece of surrealist horror where cultural degradation itself is the primary motivator of the protagonist's fall from grace.
Wake in Fright is just
amazing. Like easily one of the best horror films ever made, which is 'horror' in terms of something
very real could happen, but from the basis of an already
maddening world where people do not collectively hold themselves to 'higher values of civilization'.
It's hard to explain why it's so good without watching it. It's brilliant, and also sums up a lot of fears politicians had as to the conditions of their still
very recent nationhood. Watch Wake in Fright, and you
get Max Rockatansky. There is a reason why even during the Cold War, the first Mad Max has
fuck all to do with nuclear war. Because that wan't actually the biggest fears Australian politicians had. That was an addition of
later films.
There is also why there was a big push during the 60s and 70s to show Australian actions during both World Wars. Because definitively these were moments which the Australian government could point to and construct the narrative as to the
possibilities of a nation pulling towards some idea of universal 'greatness'. Also why roughly at this same time you had a whole lot of politicians pushing the idea that Australian independence was born not on 1901, but in
1915 ... as Australia firmly entered the world stage and shaped world geopolitics.
Speaking of the problems ofthe film I found, however ...
The core of it is how Fury Road is shot.
In Mad Max 2, you had stunts that were long shots and were
incredibly dangerous. And the stunt doubles knew it. You saw them wobble. You see active fear of; "Don't fuck this up or I die." So there is a palpable fear when leaping onto vehicles, and there were long shots that followed the entire event of boarding the truck.
In Fury Road, the sheer number of action-schlock jump cuts diminishes this given the natural idea of showing
real fear of the stunt doubles doing what they're doing has been ixnayed for simply
the act of doing it, as if to highlight as if some
inhuman like insanity makes it seem shot in a way that is schizophrenic.
Though arguably you can't get away with the same stuff you used to concerning basic health and safety...
