2.8 KiB
[RT] The Pilot Light of Civilization (Mad Max, short)
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Author: u/cthulhuraejepsen Fruit flies like a banana*
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Score: 21
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Created: 2016-01-06T15:40:45
Post:
Comments:
u/None [+6] (2 hours later)
[deleted]
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+8] Fruit flies like a banana (8 hours later)
I was doing my due diligence and watching the movies again (fanfic is serious business) and realized that theme of it, which I don't think is unintentional on George Miller's part. Max starts the series as something close to a police officer and just gets more and more feral as the series goes on.
Every movie is basically him killing a bunch of people and then moving on to travel the wasteland, alone and haunted by his past. And with every movie, the world has gotten worse, more degraded, so taken together they're about this slow, agonizing collapse of civilization and a man who's undergoing that same process, mostly because he can't break out of this backwards-looking cycle.
But I like the films anyway, even with that unexpectedly bleak message.
u/None [+2] (11 hours later)
Yeah Max is this quixotic avenger who, if you take your view, is really a roadblock to future civilization. I was blown away by Fury Road when I saw it-- my favorite movie of the year, maybe my favorite ever. The film is gorgeous, insanely fast-paced, and so exciting.
It also had maybe 3 pages of actual dialogue, so it relied on facial expressions and body language to convey stuff which I liked.
u/Wireless-Wizard [+1] The Foundation (6 days later)
I disagree that the series as a whole presents society collapsing more and more over time.
For one thing, the films are not meant to be in strict chronological order.
For another thing, even if they were, Beyond Thunderdome portrays a society much more sophisticated than that of The Road Warrior. In The Road Warrior we have an outpost of sports gear wearing survivalists scarcely different to Lord Humongous' barbarians. In Beyond Thunderdome, we have an actual town with laws and traditions.
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+5] Fruit flies like a banana (a minute later)
This contains no spoilers for the series beyond the first movie and is only loosely canonical to the movies (which are themselves only loosely intertwined).
u/EliezerYudkowsky [+3] Godric Gryffindor (4 days later)
Gosh, that was good and I was not expecting it to be good.
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+3] Fruit flies like a banana (4 days later)
Thanks! That means a lot to me.
u/MoralRelativity [+3] (11 hours later)
Thanks. Well done. You steered my view of the Mad Max movies and made it do a U-turn. Thanks for the shiny work.