I have a question about Mad Max.

[CTF]

So, I watched Mad Max for the first time in years (still a great movie, by the way), but I'm a little confused about the setting... is it meant to be a post-apocalyptic wasteland? Or a dystopian future? As a kid, I always thought it was the latter, but the sequels (which I can't stand) turned it into the former (and did a bit of retcon on the original).

Am I wrong?

 

[Treadwell]

this thread discusses exactly that:
http://www.therpf.com/showthread.php?t=72906

 

[CTF]

Ha, least I'm not the only one!

 

[pennausamike]

The post from the previous thread that most succinctly answered this one:

My understanding of the continuity is this:

Pre-Mad Max 1 -- war starts, oil crisis kicks in. Australia begins to descend into anarchy, trans-continental highway is built. In response to road gangs (usually bikers) messing with trans-continental commerce via the highway, the Main Force Patrol is created. Max Rockatansky (yes, that's his name), is a hotshot young cop working on the force who distinguishes himself early on.

Mad Max 1 -- society has continued to degrade. The MFP continues to increase its brutality in response to increased brutality by the gangs ("So long as the paperwork's clean, you can do what you like out there."). Fifi McAffee (Max's boss) wants to turn things around, but he's holding on to a world that is slowly disintegrating. Taht said, it's not at total post-apocalyptic wasteland yet. Max can still go to the shore with his wife and son. And then things go very very wrong. By the end of it, Max has abandoned being a cop and is a lone vigilante who has stepped out of society altogether...

Mad Max 2/The Road Warrior -- ....which doesn't really matter much because society pretty much goes down the tubes somewhere between MM1 and MM2. At some point, there are nuclear exchanges and oil basically disappears. Papagallo, an oil engineer, realizes this and forms a community around a refinery. Their plan is to travel to the coast (coastal regions in Australia have always been more easily inhabited). They now fight even more brutal scavenger gangs, whose ranks appear to include ex cops (possibly even ex-MFP). Max wanders into the midst of this (and eventually wanders out).

MM3/Beyond Thunderdome -- Society is just starting to rebuild in the form of Bartertown (and probably other settlements like it). the timeline is hazy as to how long after MM1 and MM2 the third film takes place, but there's a sense that the kids in the "Crack of the Earth" have been there for perhaps a generation (bearing in mind that, without the strictures of society, teenagers could've been getting pregnant and having babies). Oral history of the "pockyclipse" has been passed down and it's unlikely anyone alive among the kids actually remembers it first hand. At the end of the film, there's a sense that the kids have re-formed society in the ruins of the old cities (which were themselves apparently destroyed completely).


Anyway, that's my rough understanding of the timeline. MM3 is a far weaker film than the first two. The first one is a stunt spectacular and a slow burn of a revenge film. It's not very "sci fi" at all. More just dystopian future. The second one is far more "post apocalyptic" and is arguably THE film that created that genre, or if not created, set the standard for. Every "post apocalyptic" film since then owes its heritage to MM2. MM3 is, as has been stated, kind of just a big-budget remake of MM2 but really plays fast and loose with an already hazy continuity. It's also watered down for violence and kiddied up for We Are the World appeal. Tina Turner, however, never looked sexier.

 

[pennausamike]

And this transcript of the Road Warrior intro:

As for the catyclism, the opening MM2 narration is from the point of view of the Feral Kid grown up (as we find out at the end), and so the story is not first-hand. He probably doesn't even know what a nuke is.

A transcription found on the web:

My life fades
the vision dims.
All that remains are memories.
I remember a time of chaos
ruined dreams this wasted land.
But most of all, I remember the Road Warrior
the man we called Max.
To understand who he was, you have to go back to another time
when the world was powered by the black fuel
and the deserts sprouted great cities of pipe and steel.
Gone now swept away.
For reasons long forgotten, two mighty warrior tribes went to war
and touched off a blaze which engulfed them all.
Without fuel they were nothing. They'd built a house of straw.
The thundering machines sputtered and stopped.
Their leaders talked and talked and talked
but nothing could stem the avalanche.
Their world crumbled the cities exploded.
A whirlwind of looting
a firestorm of fear.
Men began to feed on men.
On the roads it was a white-line nightmare.
Only those mobile enough to scavenge
brutal enough to pillage would survive.
The gangs took over the highways
ready to wage war for a tank of juice.
And in this maelstrom of decay
ordinary men were battered and smashed.
Men like Max
the warrior Max.
In the roar of an engine, he lost everything
and became a shell of a man
a burnt out, desolate man
a man haunted by the demons of his past.
A man who wandered out into the wasteland.
And it was here in this blighted place
that he learned to live again.

(the shooting script version is longer, but this is how it is in the film)

 

[Laffo]

"dystopian future"
Somebody got a new "Word a Day Calendar" for Christmas.
And this from the awesome Texan twang dub I saw in the Theatre as a Kid,
"Noooooo Duck! He was so full of living!"
That there is dialog.
Laffo.