![]() ![]() Related: Turkish Mad Max Is The Best (& Least Accurate) Rip-off Ever MadeĮven though its body count is far lower, Mad Max is much tonally darker than its sequels and this, along with its deliberate pacing, makes the original movie more grounded and bleaker than the rest of the franchise. ![]() Grim, violent, and deeply depressing, the dark revenge thriller was a sleeper hit that made Mad Max ’s leading man Mel Gibson into a Hollywood star. The simple story of the title character, a young police officer who is sent on a violent vengeance quest by a ruthless biker gang, Mad Max doesn’t feel much like 2015’s campier Fury Road. In contrast, Fury Road’s heroine hopes to save the Citadel, an admirable goal in a bleak world where survivors often look out for themselves.Shot for a mere $350,000, Mad Max went on to become a global phenomenon when the low-budget Australian movie secured a worldwide release. Max has no hope of “fixing” or improving his surroundings, being motivated solely by anger and vengeance. ![]() Although the driving force of Max and Furiosa's stories is the same and both are willing to sacrifice their humanity - and even their lives - to kill the monsters they are fighting, Max doesn’t turn to violence until it has already been meted out on his family.įuriosa on the other hand stands up for women she isn’t directly related to whose oppression she could technically ignore or remain complicit in. He has to abandon the law he swore to uphold to achieve some semblance of justice. Where Furiosa is taking revenge on behalf of Immortan Joe’s enslaved wives, Max is taking revenge for a personal attack and despite hoping to maintain law and order early in the story, has no hopes of improving the conditions of the world he lives in. The difference between Mad Max and Fury Road comes down to the source of motivation that drives each movie’s main character. They are also the central targets for revenge for Max and Furiosa respectively. These two depictions of evil may diverge in their details (Toecutter being an overpowered crook and Immortan Joe being a former army general gone mad with power), but the essence of how both maintain power in the lawless land of Mad Max is notably consistent. Immortan Joe may be a much more successful gang leader, but Fury Road makes it clear his status in the world doesn’t make him any less of a boorish, dangerous savage who will turn to violence to achieve his goals, much like the less powerful but equally ruthless Toecutter of Mad Max. Both baddies realistically maintain control, like real despots and cult leaders, by swerving between support and savagery, leaving their followers uncertain what's coming next. Immortan Joe and Toecutter share more than actor Hugh Keays-Byrn in common, with both being monstrous villains having a soft spot for the young men they employ, and acting as an alternately terrifying or tender father figure to their gang. The big difference is that Mad Max himself isn’t the central character of Fury Road, and as such, he’s not the one who undergoes a pivotal shift in perspective during the movie’s action. Fury Road essentially retells the original Mad Max’s story of a disillusioned agent of law and order breaking away from the system and indulging in vigilante justice to take down the threat posed by unruly, psychotic racers. However, as unlikely as it may seem given their wildly different styles and tones, the original Mad Max’s revenge plot is largely is mirrored in Fury Road’s narrative. Related: Why The Original Mad Max & Fury Road Have Almost No Dialogue ![]() The actor replaced by Tom Hardy, and the Mad Max movies were firmly back in high-concept sci-fi territory in terms of genre. Fury Road famously spent over a decade in development hell, with Gibson - who was set to return in the early 2000s - eventually aging out of the role. By 1981’s The Road Warrior, Max was already a hardened post-apocalyptic scavenger, while by the time part three Beyond Thunderdome arrived four years later, the wanderer was almost unrecognizable from the first film’s unhinged city cop. ![]()
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