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Food
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
342 Posts |
 Posted - 12/19/2007 : 10:10:41 PM
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I watched all three Mad Max movies on a rainy Monday. I had only seen bits and pieces of the first, I’d seen the second several times but not since the mid-80s, and I’d never seen the third at all.
Intro 1: Meg Libson
The Mad Max franchise is my own best example of the virtue of not getting too fanboyish about a particular actor. You see, aside from this franchise, I’ve only seen two other Mel Gibson movies: Bravelung, which I saw over a decade ago and remember almost nothing about except that I recognized that it was a good epic movie; and The Patriot, which was required viewing by a community college history professor for a one-day lecture on Hollywood’s use and abuse of history. Other than that, I know nothing about Mel Gibson as an actor or a director. I’m aware that his devout Catholicism and occasional lapses of judgment keep tabloids happy and film professors screaming, but I’m not interested in any of that because it’s too mundane to care about.
To me, Mel Gibson will always be Max.
And that’s the way I like it. When I watch a movie, I want to be able to forget everything else about the actors, and notice only the characters. The more you know about the actor, the more difficult that is. Mad Max and The Road Warrior make that additionally easy by having no big-name actors aside from Gibson, who himself wasn’t a big name yet. Beyond Thunderdome will, with one exception, hold true to that.
Intro 2: Apocalypse
I hate that word. It just sounds stupid. Say it out loud five times, with a two-second interval between each enunciation, and tell me you don’t think it sounds silly. It’s got a paw, and it’s got lips. It’s a friendly pooch. I prefer Armageddon myself. It’s got an arm and it’s got a done. Perfect! I know that The Road Warrior set the standard post-Armageddon movies, but now that I think of it, I realize that I’ve seen very few of them. Unless you count Planet of the Apes and The Omega Man. There may be some that I’m forgetting, but that’s all I can think of at the moment.
Even when it comes to literature, my reading of intra-* and post-Armageddon is limited to King’s The Stand, McCammon’s Swan Song, Sarrantonio’s delightful Skeletons, and Fire by some guy whose name I forget. There was also a short story by Arthur C. Clarke depicting the most comic Armageddon I’ve ever read, hilarious by Clarke’s standards, but for the life of me I can’t remember the title of it.
[* - “Intra-Armageddon” or “Intrapocalypse” is proper terminology. The prefix “intra-,“ which means “within” in the spatial sense, also means “during” in the chronological sense. As in “intraoperative.” So the original Mad Max would be correctly identified as Intrapocalyptic rather than the post-Apocalyptic label that it usually gets. No less than three M.D.s pondered this linguistic mystery with me. One of them was the same one who gave me the info about cavum septum pellucidum for the Rocky V dissection. They all prolly think I’m nuts.]
Here we go.
Right off the bat, we know something’s going to be different because for the first time in the franchise, we get a pop song. It’s a jaunty uber-80s radio rock song, drum machine and all. After enjoying the charming B-grade overbombast of the first movie’s soundtrack, and not being able to recall a thing about the second movie’s soundtrack*, it’s very very jarring to hear Tina Turner’s “One of the Living” to open III. Even after seeing Turner at second billing behind Mel Gibson himself.
[* - It’s not a bad mark on the soundtrack that I can’t remember anything about it. Hall-of-Fame umpire Bill Klem said, “An umpire knows he’s done his job if nobody notices him.” Same principle: If I can’t remember the soundtrack, that means that it’s must’ve been nicely appropriate. Not stellar certainly, but not detracting from the finished product, either.]
The credits unfold over the song. Gibson and Turner get their own, then there are a dozen folks paired off with “as <character’s name>.” Unusual for so many “as” in an opening credits. Also unusual is the dual Directed By credit. I’d never seen that before. On the DVD extras, it’s said that George Miller and Ben Oglivie had to share duties on the first scene filmed, liked working with each other, and decided to buddy up for the whole movie. While Wikipedia (goddamn cesspool of useless junk) states that George Miller was set to direct it himself, dropped out when a friend of his was killed in a chopper accident during location scouting, and later agreed to do only the action scenes.
Hey Brad and Greenhornet, if I die in a chopper accident during location scouting for a future dissection, will the two of you co-dissect it?
Credits over, we open with a hiiiigh aerial view of the now-familiar Australian desert. Beautiful. A teeny puff of smoke on the surface tells us that someone must be motoring away down there. The aerial POV approaches steadily, and I’m impressed that it tracks all the way in in one continuous shot, because it starts what looks like literally a mile away. Eventually we see that the smoke is coming not from an automobile, but from a wagon being pulled by camels. The smoke is obviously stage smoke and not dust being kicked up from the wheels, but that’s no biggie. How’d someone get camels in post-Apoc. Australia? Maybe they got freed from a zoo during the Apoc, someone recognized their value, kept ‘em, bred ‘em, and now here they are. Or maybe they migrate like coconuts.
The POV approaches and knocks the wagon driver off his perch. Cut to inside the rickety plane whose POV we’ve been watching. The Gyro Captain from The Road Warrior exults, “Bullseye!” His 10-or-so-year-old son* yells, “You betcha, Dad!” This tells us that it’s been a decade or so since the events of the previous movie. Unless Gyro Captain already had a kid back then, but if so there was no indication of it, so I’m going with the kid (along with Max’s long hair) being a shorthand expression of the passage of time. At the conclusion of The Road Warrior, the narration says that Gyro Captain became the leader of the people who fled to paradise, and eventually Feral Kid became the leader, too. Seeing Gyro here, I was thinking the movie would feature those people. It doesn’t. Gyro and his son will be seen later to be apparently living by their lonesome. So I guess Gyro got voted out of office. Imagine the election-season campaign between Gyro and Feral Kid. I imagine Feral Kid gave some kick-ass stump speeches, and the debates must’ve been a kick as well.
[* - I thought the kid was his daughter until late in the movie, when he addresses him as “Son.”]
The presence of this kid will also prove to be a hamburger of things to come: Not just in terms of an abundance of kids in this movie, but also that this movie will be a bit more cutesy than its predecessors. Granted, not quite as cutesy as this particular kid. The other kids in the movie won’t be as Movie Kid-ish as this one, but still.
Gyro tells his son to head for home, drops himself onto the now-driverless wagon, and gleefully steers his stolen booty away. In the back of the wagon, a cute little monkey chucks stuff overboard. Does Australia have any simian wildlife aside from human people? If not, then I gotta ask how monkeys got to post-Apoc Australia. **shrug** They followed the camels, I guess. The wagoneer gives what chase he can, but is quickly left in the dust. He collects the items the monkey chucked out the back, including a pair of boots and a bosun’s whistle. Close-up of the whistle being brought to his lips, and we see that the wagoneer is Max, looking about the same as he did before, although he’s turbaned so we can only see his face. He blows into the whistle, making that distinctive sound that I absolutely HATED during my Navy duty. I understand where the tradition comes from, but I don’t understand why the tradition is continued. Why not just announce whatever the whistle is supposed to mean? Much less annoying that way.
I thought Max was using the whistle to summon something or signal to something. As it is, he does it simply to introduce a plot device that’ll come into play in a bit. And incidentally, neither Gyro Pilot nor Max is aware that they’ve just crossed paths again. Fade out.
Cut in to a pair of cowboy boots trudging across the desert. Pan up to reveal Max, attired in leather pants, a black makeshift cloak, and hair grown well below his shoulders. This is a classic Western-style device. That’s no surprise. George Miller says that it wasn’t until after the success of Mad Max that he realized that that movie pretty much reinvents the Western. He had idea that he was tapping into just about everything that makes Westerns popular. It holds true in The Road Warrior, and it’ll hold true here too. From the back, we see Max approach a distant….something with a lot of smoke coming out of it and many people trekking their way in.
Cut to inside the city. A sign out front reads “BARTERTOWN,” and “Building a better tomorrow.” That’s probably supposed to be ironic, but as it turns out, it’s not really that ironic at all in a bizarre way. What I did find bizarre was the sudden shift to an Oriental motif. The soundtrack plays a odd-time-signatured riff with Chinese bells in front, several of the townsfolk are wearing those kinda flat-pyramid hats (what’s the word for those, somebody?), and a couple poles with Japanese theater masks are seen. Apparel remains post-Apoc standard, though: Rags, a few turbans, football pads, bare chests and legs here and there.
Max brushes off a water-seller after his handy Geiger counter reveals it to be fully irradiated. I only mention that because it’s the first explicit hint in the series that Armageddon was nuke-induced. In the opening montage of The Road Warrior, it’s mentioned that there was a huge war, but nothing about nukes it ever mentioned; and the footage we see is pre-nuke, even the civil disorder bits.
Cut to a cave in the rock wall which people are lined up to get into. The hulky bald dude behind the desk wears a loupe and tells a man in front of him that he can have either a sack of grain or a woman for two hours (Take the chick, dude! Eating is overrated!). The lucky man plops something on the desk, and does the whole spit-in-hand-and-shake thing that I’ve never seen anybody do in real life. So this is a bartering pit. I don’t see how the overhead fan is working, though. It’s a cave they’re in.
Max is next in line. He asks about his stolen camels, but is told that this place is for trade, not a Lost-and-Found. Max gets edgy and tries to get rough, until a security guard with a Mohawk headdress and nunchukas starts showboating with the things. Without changing his serious expression, Max whips out his sawed-off shotgun and….I’m not sure what he did, but it was damn impressive. It seems that the shot has both blown off the Mohawk piece and severed the cord that holds the nunchukas together. The guard wasn’t wielding the things over his head, so I don’t see how Max did that. Anyway, the guard is sufficiently impressed, and takes it in implausible stride. Serious, he spits out feathers and turns away with a look that says, “Damn! This guy’s good!” Not one to hold a grudge, I guess.
Max then draws a pistol on the…clerk, I guess,…and asks for one hour inside Bartertown to look for the man who stole his camels. Unknown whether Max knows that it was Gyro. The clerk counteroffers that if Max will donate “24 hours of your life,” then “you’ll get back what was stolen.” Max accepts the deal, but Clerk warns that it’s not much of a bargain. Clerk invites Max to come along, and they and the guards leave, presumably leaving the other people in line to get in hanging.
There’s a mildly comic bit here where Max is asked to remove his weapons before entering Bartertown, and he calmly hands over enough weaponry to start a whole new Apocalypse should the current one not take. Reaction shots are mild, but I gotta wonder how Max was able to walk very far in the desert with all that stuff on his person. That s**t ain’t light!
Into Bartertown they go.
I’ll continue in a couple days, unless I’m suckin’, etc.
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Edited by - Food on 12/19/2007 10:13:28 PM
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BradH812
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1294 Posts |
Posted - 12/20/2007 : 06:09:02 AM
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I always thought that Bruce Spence was playing a different character from the one he played in Road Warrior. His character here is named "Jebediah". Also, if memory serves, the Gyro pilot had pretty gross dental work, which we don't see here. Now, why they'd get the same man to play different parts is a question we could ask the directors, but that would explain why Max and Jebediah don't recognize one another.
Also, not to nitpick, but the co-director's name was George Ogilvie, not Ben Ogilvie. Other than that, you're doin' good so far. *g* |
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Greenhornet
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
1791 Posts |
Posted - 12/20/2007 : 5:14:29 PM
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quote:
Or maybe they migrate like coconuts.
You had my full attention with that line.
"The Queen is testing poisons." CLEOPATRA, 1935 |
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Gristle McThornbody
Preeminent Apostolic Prelate of the Discipleship of Jabootu
Germany
186 Posts |
Posted - 12/21/2007 : 08:53:34 AM
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quote:
I’ll continue in a couple days, unless I’m suckin’, etc.
No sucking. The opposite, in fact, which makes me want to say (in my best Judge Smails voice), "Well??? We're waiting!"
"Hi, I'm Bob Evil!" |
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Food
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
342 Posts |
Posted - 12/21/2007 : 11:39:07 PM
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Thank you kindly, folks! :)
Thanks for the correction, Brad. “Ben Oglivie.” He was an outfielder for the Milwaukee Brewers during the 80s (i.e. when they were good). That’s the second time I’ve bonered a name that soon after seeing it in the opening credits. I sucque s**t at this.
Bruce Spence as a different character, though,...**shrug**…I guess he might be, as he’s never given a name in the second movie (he’s never addressed by name in this one, either). But I find it too unlikely that the makers would have the only aircraft pilot in this movie be played by the same guy who played the only aircraft pilot in the second movie and have him be a different character. As for the teeth, I noticed that in the next shot of him, and yeah: Post-Apoc orthodontistry is implausibly impressive.
Still, I’m sticking with him being the same guy. Especially cuz I like imagining the negative campaign ads he must’ve run against Feral Boy before losing the leadership of the tribe: “My opponent is dishonest….loooooww.”
-------------------------------
Inside Bartertown, more Apocofolks mill about. A lady breastfeeds an infant, an Apocojock gets his head shaved, merchandising booths are set up. We even see a drinking hole with a neon sign reading “Atomic Café.” So Bartertown lives up to its name. Commerce happens here, and folks seem to be...maybe not thrilled but at least they’re doing okay. Don’t know what that guy on stilts is for, though. As Max is led through the throng, we get a close-up of Gyro Pilot, who smiles, apparently recognizing Max either from having just stolen his camels and/or from the events of The Road Warrior.
On a stage, a character flamboyantly auctions off a set of camels. This character, later identified as Dr. Dealgood, is a fancy dresser with black cloak, staff, and shoulder accessories underneath the cloak that make him look almost hunchbacked. This guy is either Dracula’s wussier brother or Igor’s brother who made good of himself in the world. Max, recognizing his stolen wheels, demands to know where these animals came from, but his escorts steer him away from the auction.
They lead him to a rickety makeshift elevator that carries them way up into what looks like five-year-old Bizarro’s model kit of the Space Needle, only it’s about five stories high. That doesn’t look too safe to me. Careful up there, fellas.
Inside, shaded drapes give the place a soft purple tone as a saxy sexphone lick plays. I really didn’t care for the sax because I figured the soundtrack was being too playful and obvious in announcing the imminent appearance of Tina Turner. I was correct, but it turns out the sax is being played by a character in the room, an oriental guy with a tattoo covering almost his whole back, and he’s wearing a diaper for some reason. Aside from the diaper, this tones down the goofiness a bit. In a post-Apoc world, having a functioning brass instrument around must be a godsend for someone who can actually play it and has heard nothing but makeshift kazoos or whatever for the past few years.
Guard announces that someone is here who lost everything and is looking for a deal. Turna Tiner, as Auntie, gets a mildly dramatic entrance as we see her silhouetted behind the drapes for a moment before she passes through and into clear view. I give her credit: She is damn good-lookin’, wearing a chain-mail one-piece slip complete with fashionable see-though football shoulder pads. She also wearing Princess Leia’s cinnamon buns are earrings. There’s are cord around her forehead that I’m guessing holds the entire prosthetic hairpiece, as the hairline of her flowing white mane is waaaay up near the top of her head. She looks believably like a lady who commands respect. I like it!
Auntie struts around like a lady who’s comfortable with being in a position of power, seems amused at Max, and beckons him hither in a don’t-be-afraid manner. After learning that Max has gone from “cock of the walk to feather duster,” she asks the saxophonist to play something tragic. Good thing she said that, or I’d’ve had no idea it was supposed to be tragic. It sounds like a natural second passage to what was being played when Max and Co. first entered. Auntie explains that “Do you know who I was? Nobody. Except on the day after, I was still alive. This nobody had a chance to be somebody.” This is probably a benefit of Armageddon. The survivors, freed from any social responsibility, can now be whoever they want to be. Granted, that ain’t much of a trade-off, but I guess you take whatever pleasures you can find. Certainly Lord Humungus and his men were in the same spirit.
Auntie offers Max to eat from a plate of fruit, and grabs a pear herself. What happens next is kinda dorky and filmed entirely in almost-quick-cut. Auntie takes a dramatic bite of her pear. Upon this sign, one of the guards activates his…spikey brass knuckles, I guess. Hearing the ch-chick sound, Max flings the tray into his chest like Ursa did to Splendidman with the manhole cover. This despite that the tray was pretty solidly laden with fruit and that the chest is not the ideal place to aim, especially as the guard is rather stockily built. A mohawked guard fires a wrist arrow that misses Max and strikes the saxophone (It ain’t Cal-Stanford, but it’ll do). Max flips him over his shoulder in a stunt that requires cooperation. Then there’s a shot of what I guess is the end of the metal table striking another Mohawk guy under the jaw.
The heavy guy who Max bargained with to get in here in the first place swings an ax. As the ax is too heavy for him to wield with any effectiveness, it lodges harmlessly in the floor. Max kicks the shaft upward, driving the handle right into the dude’s nuts (and for some reason, he’s still wearing the loupe). The only way that could work is if the handle was already positioned subtesticularly (try using THAT word in casual conversation!) before and during the swing.
Then someone who I thought was the sax player but is actually a totally different character named Ironbar loops a….noose at the end of a broomstick, I guess…around Max’s neck. Max draws a stiletto dagger, cuts the noose, and then rams the stick repeatedly into Ironbar’s face. And to cap off this totally dumbass scene, he then swings the stick, flinging Ironbar out the window. This despite Ironbar needing only let go of the stick to avoid the humiliation.
Why is this so off-putting to me? For the same reason Charles Bronson’s martial prowess in Death Wish 3 was: This was an attribute that was never even hinted at in the first two movies. Max’s bad-ass factor doesn’t skyrocket until he’s behind the wheel of something. He ain’t no brawler. Hell, even the one punch he makes in The Road Warrior is laughable. Suddenly, he comes out on top after being outnumbered four to one and doesn’t even break a sweat.
Anal blood. Or since we’re in Austrialia, oynal blood.
Whirling to face Auntie, he sees that she’s already pointing a crossbow pistol at him. She congratulates him at being “the first to survive the audition.” Damn. If the ax is used at every audition, I’m surprised this structure is still standing. Auntie begins to spell out a proposal to Max as Ironbar, who must’ve grabbed onto something instead of plummeting to his death, pulls himself back inside. The first movie would’ve let him die.
Auntie looks out over the town and gets an interesting bit. Here’s how it goes:
“Look around. All this I built. Up to my armpits in blood and crap. Where there was desert, now there’s a town. Where there was robbery, there’s trade. Where there was despair, now there’s hope. It’s civilization. And I’ll do anything to protect it.”
While she never explains how she managed to do this or convince others to help out, it still provides a believable motivation for her actions in the film. Sure, she may enjoy her newfound freedom of personality, but that doesn’t mean that she wants civilization to stay buried, especially as it ain’t gonna dig itself up. She’s got a good thing going here. And as crude as it is, it’s a start, and she’s not gonna let it fail. So she’s already got more internal heroism that Max displays in the entirety of The Road Warrior. I like this lady.
I'll continue Saturday evening. |
Edited by - Food on 12/21/2007 11:45:57 PM |
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Greenhornet
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
1791 Posts |
Posted - 12/22/2007 : 12:31:26 PM
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While I approve of someone rebuilding civilazation, wouldn't the "audition" get her boys KILLED one day? What if Max, in the heat of battle, ignored her toy bow and rammed his knife into her gut?
That's one of the gripes I have about action movies; the "let's find out just how tough he is" scene.
"The Queen is testing poisons." CLEOPATRA, 1935 |
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Food
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
342 Posts |
Posted - 12/22/2007 : 6:47:39 PM
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Auntie tells Max that she wants him to kill somebody for her. In exchange, she’ll equip him with “Vehicles, animals. Fuel if you want.” Max understandably asks why him and not one of her many guards who obey her every order. She explains that the target is “almost family,” to which Max sarcastically replies, “I see. Real civilized.” That line seems out of character to me. Max seems to have adapted to the post-Apoc world as well as or better than most everyone else. I can’t imagine him caring enough about propriety to fault her here; and since he’s here for an existential reason (to get his survival gear back) and she can make it happen, I think he’d be holding his tongue here even if he did have a problem with not-literal fratricide.
Loupe Guy tells Max that: 1) no one must know Max is working for Auntie. (Believable), 2) it’s a fair fight (Huh?), 3) it’s to the death (yeah, you’d think). Why does it need to be a fair fight? So we can have a neato fight scene to pad out the movie instead of a brief assassination.
Auntie takes Max to a periscope that allows her to spy on goings-on in what she calls Underworld, where Bartertown gets its energy. Waitaminit, her throne room is a couple stories above the surface. Silly. We see an unpleasant-looking underground chamber where pigs are milling about as best they can in the cramped conditions. Max doesn’t believe that pigs are providing the energy to power Bartertown. This leads to a well-judged little exchange:
Max: Bullsh*t.
Auntie: Pigsh*t.
I got a giggle out of that. Turner delivers the line in a perfect matter-of-fact voice, as if she’s has this conversation before. Although it is kinda embarrassing for me to hear, because for years I’ve been using “pigsh*t” as a substitute for “bullsh*t” in casual conversation cuz I think it has more bite. But now I’m wondering if everyone who’s ever heard me say it isn’t wondering if I’m not just quoting a line from an ‘80s movie.
Loupe Guy exposits that “the lights, the motors, the vehicles…[are] all run by a high-powered gas called methane. Methane comes from pigsh*t.” This is not far-fetched. See?
http://environment.about.com/od/renewableenergy/a/animalwaste.htm
Although it wouldn’t have to be pigs providing the methane. Any mammal would do, including humans.
Through the periscope, Max gets his first look at his target, a huge hulking guy wearing what looks like a 50s-style underwater helmet and carrying a grey-haired dwarf on his shoulders. The dwarf is Master, whom Loupe Guy describes as some kind of super-genius. This is an Informed Attribute, as we never see Master demonstrate his mental prowess. The huge guy is Blaster, a…**shrug**…huge guy. Together, they go by “Master-Blaster.” Max wants to get into Underworld to scout out Blaster for the pending attack.
Cut to Underworld, where pigs are milling about, workers are chained at the neck and doing the lowest of menial labor, and Max is shoveling sh*t. The soundtrack decides to get cute with us by playing the Chinese bells from earlier, only with drums, keyboards, and a sax in front. It’s not the riff I dislike. In fact, I love it! It’s a fun rockin’ melody, and in 7/4 time no less! I love 7/4 time, it’s criminally underused, so I’m thrilled to hear it here, and in such a catchy fun riff, too. The problem is that it’s deliberately ironic. The first two movies didn’t use the soundtrack for ironic purposes, and I generally dislike it when any movie does. This made me wonder where on earth this movie is going. What is this, a Tarantino film?
We and Max get introduced to Pigkiller, an inmate who is serving a life sentence for killing a pig to feed his family. He takes his fate in unbelievably good cheer. He says that “down here, life’s two or three years.” Only question I have is why “PIGKILLER” is…branded or tattooed on him when he’s already serving a life sentence. The purpose of having one’s crime put on your person is to shame the convicted when he appears in public. Serving a life sentence, he ain’t going in public, so what’s the point?
Cut to elsewhere in the Underworld. A loin-garbed mechanic slides out from underneath a vehicle and says that there are twelve pounds of explosive set to explode. Towering over the mechanic (his name is Blackfinger, for what it’s worth), Master-Blaster* commands him to disarm. Almost all of his lines are in as few words as possible, in this case, “You expert. Disarm.”
[* - Blaster doesn’t say a word in the whole movie, so whenever I type Master-Blaster saying something, it’s Master speaking from atop Blaster’s shoulders.]
The mechanic goes into Comic Fidgety Mode as he wonders out loud what to do, mentioning and discarding several potential courses of action. This isn’t post-Apoc madness, this is playing to the kids in the audience. Robocop 3: Beyond Thunderdome.
Max finally does something heroic by rescuing us from this rubbish. He tells Blackfinger that disconnecting the battery ain’t a good idea. This shuts him up. Hurrah. Then we get this exchange:
Master-Blaster: Who you?
Max: Me Max.
M-B: You smart.
Max: That’s my vehicle.
M-B: Disarm!
Max: How much?
M-B: No trade. Do!
Jesus Christ, we’re watching the Teletubbies here.
Max turns away, but Blaster grabs him by the throat and hoists him off his feet. It’s unlikely enough that Max would be able to speak at all since he’s hanging by his neck a few inches off the floor; but given Max’s purpose down here (to find out about Blaster before killing him), the smart-ass tone Max now takes with Blaster’s fingers around his throat is impossible to believe. Check this out:
M-B: Me order! Me Master! Me run Bartertown!
Max: Sure, that’s why you live in sh*t.
M-B: Not crap! Energy!
Max: Call it what you like, it smells like crap to me.
M-B: Not sh*t! Energy! No energy, no town! Me king Arab!
Max: Sure. Me fairy princess.
Max is channeling Will Smith or something here. He wasn’t half as sarcastic to Gyro Pilot, and he had Gyro Pilot in chains and at gunpoint, for cryin’ out loud. This is suckin’!!!
Master-Blaster ain’t too pleased, neither. He declares, “Embargo on!” And the lights went out in Bartertown. Auntie then calls on the Apocophone to gripe about it. Master-Blaster turns on the city-wide intercom and gets her to tell the citizens that “Master-Blaster runs Bartertown.” Satisfied, Master-Blaster lifts the embargo. There’s no reason for Max to care if M-B wants to embargo, nor is there much reason for M-B to go antagonizing Auntie like this. He doesn’t know that Max is down there because of her.
So the only reason I can think of for this bit is to explain to the audience why Auntie wants Blaster killed. She wants to consolidate power, simple as that. Without Blaster, Master will be a slave, so to speak. Like we couldn’t’ve figured that out without the embargo.
The lights come back on, and there are shots of folks looking up at the lights.
Back in Underworld, Blaster again has Max by the throat. Croaking out his acquiescence, Max is released to disarm his vehicle. This makes the preceding scene all the more pointless. Max was all sarcastic the first time Blaster had him by the throat, so why is he suddenly all please-don’t-hurt-me now? **shrug**
Max sets to work on the disarm job. He triggers a shrill alarm that causes Blaster to cover his ears and stagger in pain (Plot point!) Lingering shot of Max with a look of realization on his face. He fishes out the bosun’s whistle from before and blows into it, causing Blaster to reel some more. Mmm…I’m skeptical of that. Bosun’s whistles are loud, but they’re not THAT loud (Sure, when they’re piped over the 1MC when you’re trying to get 15 minutes of sleep between knocking off work and going on watch, then they’re loud, but not here).
I guess he must’ve disabled the explosives, because we then cut to him leaving as Pigkiller says something about the revolution be near, brutha.
Back in Auntie’s throne room, Max and Auntie do the spit-and-shake thing again, and Max says, “You said a fair fight. What do you mean by that?” Hey Max, shouldn’t you have asked that BEFORE shaking on a deal? Thunderdome! Auntie gestures out the window, and we look at a giant birdcage that doesn’t look anywhere near structurally sound enough to resist collapsing from the strains of what we’re gonna see go on in there. No jury, no appeal, no parole! And all you have to do to get in there is pick a fight!
Everybody with me…..TWO MEN ENTAH, ONE MAN LEAVES!
I’ll continue tomorrow or Monday
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Edited by - Food on 12/22/2007 6:55:46 PM |
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Neville
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Spain
1590 Posts |
Posted - 12/23/2007 : 08:15:27 AM
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You know, this bit (Max disarming the explosives in the vehicle) always annoyed me. Is it supposed to ve the V8 interceptor he lost in part two? It sure looks like that one, but then it was blown up precisely by those explosives.
Is it the new vehicle he loses at the beginning of the movie? If it is, it looks very different to me. |
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BradH812
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1294 Posts |
Posted - 12/23/2007 : 08:22:08 AM
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| When I first saw this movie, I absolutely loved it. At the time, i hadn't seen the first two, so I didn't have any reference to go on, nor did I know of any continuity problems between movies (such as the Gryo Pilot making a return appearance). I oughtta go ahead and do what Food did, renting all three and spending an afternoon watching 'em. I suspect I'll still like Beyond Thunderdome a good bit, but I'll also find plenty of problems, especially in the second half. Joe Bob Briggs showed this movie on his show once. It's not near as bad as he said it was, but he had a good point about how disjointed it became. He chalked that up to the movie having two directors, and he may have been right. |
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Food
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
342 Posts |
Posted - 12/23/2007 : 10:40:16 PM
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Cut to that night. Bartertown is a city-wide party as tired workers unwind and tank up. That rockin’ 7/4 sax riff is back, only this time it’s totally appropriate. So I’m rockin’ out with the revelers. This is great! M-B rides through the crowd on what looks like a jeep, encouraging everybody to have a good time and getting props from the crowd. Max intercepts M-B and demands that this vehicle be returned to him*, the rightful owner. M-B is amused and is prepared to break Max’s neck, but suddenly a dozen mohawked men appear out of nowhere and surround the vehicle, aiming their rifles at M-B. These are Auntie’s police force, I suppose. They demand that M-B “listen to the law!” Auntie then steps onto her patio overlooking the throng to hear the complaint. M-B doesn’t make much of a complaint other than to request Thunderdome. Auntie says sure, let’s do it. She never asks Max if he accepts the challenge of Thunderdome. I find that odd. Auntie knows that Max wants to get Blaster into Thunderdome so he can kill him, but nobody in this crowd knows that, nor does she want the crowd to know that. And I can’t see a dispute-setting arena being any good as a justice method if only one party’s consent is required to get a match on. **shrug**
[* - It was here that I first noticed that whenever a throng of people needs to fall silent so one character can be heard clearly, they all shut up in unison. This will be so throughout the movie. If this wasn’t a Mad Max movie, I'd think there was a message of some kind in that.]
Cut to moments before the event. The townsfolks are literally climbing all over the dome, which again looks like it wouldn’t be able to bear the weight, but whatever. The soundtrack blasts a gladiatorial fanfare as Auntie swoops down to raucous applause and kicks off the ceremonies. Then the soundtrack goes into Genghis-Khan-On-The-March mode, complete with cymbal crashes on every upstroke. I hate that. It only makes it seem stupid.
Then Dr. Dealgood (the hunchback dude) gets an interesting little bit as he gives a soft monologue as emcee of the event. Here it is:
“This is the truth of it. Fighting leads to killing, and killing gets to warring. And that was damn near the death of us all. Look at us now, busted up and everyone talking about hard rain. But we’ve learned by the dust of them all. Bartertown’s learned. Now when men get to fighting, it happens here. And it finishes here! Two men enter, one man leaves.”
This isn’t bad stuff at all. What he’s iterating is the same rationale that kept dueling legal for centuries. For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t be opposed to its re-legalization. Two men in a dispute that looks to turn deadly. Both men agree to take it somewhere where it can be settled for all time. One man dies, and the dispute dies with him. No collateral damage, no escalation of hostilities, no innocent victims. I like this.
During my Navy duty, we had the Bosun’s Locker: A storage room where two miffed sailors would go to punch each other out to settle a dispute. It was an understood that after they enter the room, a third guy would lock the door from the outside, and the door would not be opened again until the racket died down. When the men came back out, the grudge stayed in. I got in it once, and I got splattered all over Creation. But when he and I came out, the grudge was over. That night, we went out bar-hopping together, got blitzed to Kingdom Come, and went halfsies on a hooker. Dispute resolution has never been so much fun!
Granted, the people of Bartertown treat these competitions as entertainment. They likely don’t give a crap about dispute resolution. But from Auntie’s perspective, that’s not a problem, and it shouldn’t be. Swift conflict resolution coupled with a bone thrown to keep the masses happy? Why not? They seem to dig it, and they seem to dig Auntie for it. So I’d say she’s doin’ all right.
Brief shots of a sledgehammer and a chainsaw being hoisted into place near the top of the dome, and Max and Blaster being buckled into their harnesses. We also see Gyro Pilot in the audience hanging all over the outside of the dome, although his presence here doesn’t enter into anything. These harnesses are where this fight scene gets is reputation for originality. And it does indeed make for an interesting variation on a gladiator duel, although the flow of events is pretty standard, so I’ll keep it brief.
FIGHT SCENE
Blaster pounds Max into jelly with punches and moves like what you see in WWE matches. He grabs Max, runs to one end of the dome, and uses the elasticity of the harness to slingshot Max into the far wall of the dome. Blaster jumps up and down on Max, gets him in a bear hug, and piledrives him into the wall. During all this, Max is trying to use his bosun’s whistle, but Blaster’s attack keep distracting him from it. Eventually, Max loses the whistle altogether.
Blaster boooiiinnngggs up to the ceiling of the dome and grabs a scythe. Blaster fails to run Max through, skewering an unseen spectator in the process. Fans of auto racing can sympathize. Max boooiiinnngggs up and grabs a chainsaw. Blaster is terrified when the chain saw whirrs to life, but resumes his attack when it promptly dies before Max can do anything with it. After a bit of running and boinging around, Max gets a scythe of his own and severe the Blaster’s boing straps, leaving him with only two-dimensional mobility. Max takes advantage of this by boinging around to evade Blaster. He grabs the sledge hammer from its lodge in the ceiling, but Blaster cuts his boing straps before he can swing it.
But wait! Max spots the bosun’s whistle lying nearby! He scampers after it, grabs it, and blows it. This incapacitates Blaster, which allows Max to sledge-hammer Blaster into near-unconsciousness and dislodging his diving mask.[/b]
This fight scene is over five and a half minutes long, and overall I like it. In addition to the novelty of adding the third dimension to a hand-to-hand combat (which is made even more exciting when Max starts consciously making use of it, rather than just bouncing around and being tossed by Blaster), this scene takes its time in getting to the point. Max fumbles with the bosun’s whistle for a fair while before losing it; and once he relocates it, he has to scamper out of Blaster’s reach for a fair while before actually grabbing it. This was a way cool fight scene!
There are a couple quibbles, though, albeit minor. First, if I wasn’t buying the martial utility of the bosun’s whistle before, I’m doubly doubtful now. Thunderdome has an audience hanging all over the thing, and they’re making a racket almost non-stop. The idea of Blaster being incapacitated by a bosun’s whistle when there’s already the roar of the crowd in his ears is ridiculous. Again, bosun’s whistles aren’t THAT loud.
Second, more on the aesthetic side, the crowd’s chant of “two men entah, one man leaves” makes sense before the fight starts, but for them to chant it during the fight is kinda dippy. I would think more of a WWE-style I-don’t-care-who-wins,-I-just-wanna-see-a-good-fight” style of crowd noise would’ve been more fitting.
With Blaster laid out and his diving mask dislodged, Max approaches to land the killing blow. But as he raises the hammer high above his head, he sees Blaster’s face. And he recognizes that Blaster is…
This cliffhanger is brought to you by Christmas, which forces me to vacate the computer room because the guests who are using the room need to crash for the night. I’ll continue either tomorrow or Christmas.
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Edited by - Food on 12/23/2007 10:41:15 PM |
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Greenhornet
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
1791 Posts |
Posted - 12/24/2007 : 09:42:18 AM
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You. Are. EEEVIL!
"The Queen is testing poisons." CLEOPATRA, 1935 |
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Food
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
342 Posts |
Posted - 12/24/2007 : 7:52:14 PM
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Max raises the hammer high above his head, but then he sees the face of his opponent. He freezes, a stunned look on his face, the bosun’s whistle falling from his mouth. With the crowd chanting “Kill him! Kill him!” Max drops the hammer. Blaster smiles up at him then, and that’s when I was able to tell what Max’s problem was: Blaster is mentally retarded. Rewinding it now, I can see how Max would’ve recognized it, yeah, but at first I couldn’t tell. But when Blaster smiles, then I can tell (and FWIW, his teeth are even worse than Gyro Pilot’s were in the last movie).
I figured that Blaster might be Max’s retarded brother-in-law from the first movie, but a look at the credits show that this is a different actor. No. Max simply can’t bring himself to slay a retarded man. Violins indicate that Max has had a watershed moment, although after this scene, it won’t enter into anything for the rest of the movie. In fact, this entire fight scene has nothing to do with anything from here on out.
Loupe Guy and Auntie yell that this is Thunderdome, so Max must kill him. Master enters Thunderdome (presumably small enough to squeeze through the metal grid). He pleads for Blaster’s life, saying, “Look at his face! He has the mind of a child! It’s not his fault!” I’m guessing that bit is there for the sake of folks like me who aren’t quite sure what the deal is. He kneels over Blaster, saying “Blaster, I’m sorry.” Uh, shoulda thought of that before you volunteered him for Thunderdome without asking him how HE felt about it. Master also speaks proper English here, and it’s the only time he does so, so I figure he was probably dumbing down his speech earlier for Blaster’s benefit.
Max turns to Auntie and says that killing a retarded man wasn’t part of the deal. Master is furious that his buddy and main source of power was almost killed over an illicit deal, and demands an explanation. When none is given, he declares “No more methane! This place finished!” **shrug** Maybe he figures he needs to dumb down his speech for everybody.
Somebody unseen says no way, and a few hand-crossbows bolts are shot into Blaster, killing him for real. I have no idea who the bolts came from. I suppose it could’ve been Auntie’s police force, but a medium shot of Auntie shows her wearing a horrified Oh-my-God look on her face. **shrug**
While Master grieves over Blaster’s corpse, Max makes to leave Thunderdome. The guard at the door is uncertain, though, and doesn’t open the door. Pigkiller, with obvious anarchist’s delight, reminds the crowd of the law: Two men entah, one man leave! The crowd takes up the chant, including Gyro Pilot. This more than anything convinces me that this is the same pilot from The Road Warrior. Because that Gyro Pilot would want Max to live, remembering their adventures from earlier. But this movie’s Gyro Pilot, who seemed to recognize Max earlier, should be wanting Max to die if he’s a different character. If this is a different guy, he should be terrified of the possibility of Max recognizing him as the man who stole his camels.
The crowd chants away, with Auntie getting more and more irritated by it. From her perspective, Max has blown everything by mentioning their deal in public; because now everybody knows that Blaster was killed because Auntie wanted him killed. And it’s all because blabbermouth Max couldn’t keep his mouth shut or finish the job that they had agreed he would do.
Auntie leaps onto the floor of Thunderdome and angrily reminds everybody that she above everyone else knows the law, as she’s the one who wrote it. She adds that “Right or wrong, we had a deal. And the law says, ‘Bust a deal, face the wheel.’” The crowd immediately warms up to the idea and takes up the chant. Bust a deal, face the wheel! I’m skeptical of the crowd going along with it that easily. During the party in the streets, the crowd seemed to love Master-Blaster. They’ve all just heard that he was killed because of a deal Max had with Auntie. So I can’t believe that there wouldn’t be plenty of people in the audience who aren’t more interested in finding out what this deal was that Max allegedly broke. As it is, the crowd instantly picks up the chant.
Cut to said wheel, which one is legally obligated to face in the event that one fractures a mutual agreement. It’s a miniature Wheel of Fortune wheel, with the wedges labeled, “Life Imprisonment,” “Death,” “Forfeit Goods,” “Spin Again,” “Auntie’s Choice,” “Amputation,” “Gulag,” “Underworld,” and “Acquittal.” Dr. Dealgood gives another of his speeches: “Ain’t it the truth? You take your chances with the law. Justice is only a roll of the dice…a flip of the coin…a turn of the wheel.” I suppose if the folks were sick and tired of the pre-Apoc justice system, this makes sense. Folks might’ve figured that by having a simple wheel that you spin, there’s no more bellyaching about some being able to afford the best lawyers and others not. With the wheel, all that is done away with. This listens, I suppose.
For the sake of being artistic, the movie creates a continuity goof. When Max spins the wheel, there’s a low shot of his face. The light flickers on and off his face, indicating that the light comes from beneath the wheel and shines out from the gaps between the wedges. Ooo, artsy. But when we see close-ups of the wheel itself, we can see that there’s no light beneath there. **shrug** Dorks.
The wheel stops with its needle pointing at “Gulag.” Everyone chants “Gulag, gulag” as Auntie has a pleased look on her face. Cut to a desert rock formation. Seemingly the whole town has shown up to see Max off to the gulag. He sits backwards on a black horse (nice symbolism all around), his hands tied behind his back. The horse is equipped with a long pole at the end of which is a flask of water. I guess this is Bartertown’s way of giving the condemned at least a ghost of a chance. Ironbar places a giant silly-lookin’ funhouse-like mask on Max’s head and whip the horse. The horse gallops off into the unending desert.
Cut to that evening. The power goes out all over Bartertown. In Underworld, Ironbar tells Master to fix it. Master says do it yourself, so Ironbar lowers Master by rope into the pigs’ digs. Master is terrified. Naturally enough, a midget among pigs may well get trampled. There’s no tension at all in the scene though, because the actor playing Master seems frightened only in the sense that I was “frightened" of getting tickled by older brother when I was 6. The pig who sticks his face right into the camera and sniffs at it at 41:36 doesn’t help, either. Auntie enters, tells Ironbar to knock it off because Bartertown needs Master to fix the energy machines, Ironbar hoists him back up, Auntie tells him to obey, Master is sufficiently cowed into submission, end scene.
Elsewhere in Underworld, Pigkiller sends his pet monkey, equipped with water canteen that’s half as big as the monkey itself, out into the night. Fade to the monkey dragging the canteen across the desert.
Hold everything.
I can see Pigkiller wanting to help out Max, but I can’t see Pigkiller being able to tell the monkey which direction to set off in, or what exactly the monkey is to look for. On top of that, Max has at least half a day’s headstart, and on horseback no less! So how in the world is this tiny little monkey dragging a canteen supposed to shamble through the desert heat long enough to catch up without saying the simian equivalent of “F**k this s**t!” I ain’t buyin’ it!
Okay. Everything we’ve seen about Bartertown up to this point? Did you like it? Good! Because almost none of it has anything to do with anything that happens in the rest of the movie. Thunderdome, Auntie’s motivation, the wheel, Dr. Dealgood, stolen camels, none of it is relevant from her on in. Sure, it’ll reappear later, but pretty much just to serve as bad guys for the action to come. Only Master and Pigkiller have any purpose aside from that.
But as it turns out, that’s not entirely a bad thing. Because this movie is about to take a 90-degree turn on a dime, and this new direction is much more interesting.
I’ll continue either tomorrow or Wednesday evening. If I don’t continue tomorrow, Merry Christmas to you and your families. Cheers!
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Edited by - Food on 12/24/2007 7:59:02 PM |
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BradH812
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1294 Posts |
Posted - 12/24/2007 : 9:01:58 PM
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All things considered, I'm surprised Aunty Entity isn't better remembered as a character. She's one of the better villains I've seen in a long while. Let's see.... she's a cold-blooded killer, but she has reasons for doing the stuff she does. She an imposing figure, seems to be a skilled leader. She's physically very strong (as Tina Turner had to be; that chain mail dress of hers weighed over 70 pounds). She can play politics and is (in this movie's world) a pretty good spin doctor. And Tina Turner plays the part very well. I don't know how capable Turner is as an actress, but at the worst, she's competent, and she has charisma and screen presence to spare. One wishes she'd had more shots at acting. Unless it was her conscious choice not to act, it's a crime she didn't get more parts after this.
Excellent job so far, Food. Personally, I still like this movie quite a lot, but it's a little embarrassing having all its flaws pointed out like this. Hee hee hee. Merry Christmas! |
Edited by - BradH812 on 12/24/2007 9:02:40 PM |
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Sardu
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
1126 Posts |
Posted - 12/24/2007 : 10:02:56 PM
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Wow, I have to see this again. It's actually sounding much better than I remember. Good job, Mr. Food!
"Meeting you makes me want to be a real noodle cook"
--Tampopo |
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Food
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
342 Posts |
Posted - 12/26/2007 : 6:05:59 PM
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Fade to at least one day later. The horse staggers and collapses from heat and exhaustion. I know nothing about horses, because I’m scared to death of the things. This movie treated the horse humanely, though, I know that much. Because the horse doesn’t really collapse, it just has itself a seat on the sand. Max struggles to free his hands.
Fade to the monkey, who doesn’t seem to mind to trek at all despite covering ground at a slower pace than a strolling human. Okay, maybe it’s a desert monkey that can stand the punishment of such a trek (I don’t know if there’s even such a thing as a desert monkey). But I still can’t buy him wanting to do so, especially as there’s no way he could know what he’s supposed to be looking for. I’m serious, this is more distracting to me than it probably should be.
Cut back to the horse, which is now worm-poop. Max’s horse has died. Max’s horse isn’t alive any more. Max has freed himself from his bonds (we never see how, but it’s no biggie), and he sees that the water flask that would’ve given him a chance at surviving this desert has spilled its contents onto the sand, lost forever. Before Max can start sobbing or sucking the horse’s dead dick for urine to drink, the sand starts giving way! Sinkhole! Or quicksand! Or some phenomenon that I’m not aware of, because neither sinkholes nor quicksand work in anything like the manner we see here! The horse is consumed by the sand, and Max frantically scrambles up the dune to safety. Nice to see Max do something frantic for a change.
At the crest of the dune, the movie tries to give us a cheap shock by having the monkey pop up from other side of the dune, but the monkey is far too adorable to be shocking. Mm…I’ll be generous and say that the horse was lying there dead for a long enough time for the monkey to catch up. Still, that’d have to have been quite a while. Little tiny thing pulling a canteen behind him can’t cover too much ground quickly. I know I shouldn’t be beating a dead horse, because the sand already took care of that, but still. I just. Ain’t. Buying it.
The monkey paws a little at the canteen’s cap, presumably saying, “This is for you. Drink!” Max grabs and opens the canteen, lies back on the sand, and takes a biiig old gulp of the clear cool water, spilling a s**tload of it in the process.
Movie? Eat my ass. Here, you can use my silverware if you need to.
First, the monkey pawing at the canteen as if imploring Max to use this indicates that it knows that the canteen holds water (Even if not, the sloshing as he drug it across the desert would’ve clued the little fella in, I’d imagine). That being the case, it’s hard to imagine the monkey not drinking the contents himself during its journey. So on top of the implausibilities of the monkey being both able and willing to make this trek to save Max, now we have the even greater implausibility of the monkey doing so without downing the water that it’s carrying. Monkeys may be integillent, but I don’t think they understand the ideas of conservation or self-denial, especially self-denial for the sake of another entity.
Second, look at how Max drinks from the canteen. MaxMaxMAX!!! What’re ya doin’?!? I guess monkeys ain’t the only animals who ain’t into conservation. I can understand a huge gulp of water after days without (and I like the realism of him swishing it in his mouth before swallowing, that’s a nice touch!), but no matter how parched Max is, he’s lived in the desert long enough to know that you’ve gotta conserve. He’d be more careful than to let the water spill down his cheeks like that. It might feel refreshing for a couple seconds, but after that, it’s gone. So if Max dies of thirst, I can’t feel sorry for him. He’s bringing it on himself.
Third, all of these implausibilities were unnecessary. All the script needed to do was have the water flask that came with the horse be still unopen when Max freed himself. Maybe…**shrug**...Max grabs the full flask moments before the sand pulls it down along with the horse, and then barely escapes alive. There. That was easy. All the drama with 50% less fat.
Still, I do gotta give the movie credit for at least touching on the issue of water scarcity in the desert. In the Star Wars movies, the aridity of the desert never becomes an issue. No one ever dies of thirst. In Star Wars itself, we see a skeleton of some large creature, but that’s the closest we get to seeing dehydration become an issue; and for that matter, for all we know, maybe it died of something else entirely. In the Dune novels and movies, the Fremen wear stillsuits that recycle body moisture, but we never see what happens if one of them malfunctions or if someone is stranded in the open sands without one. Liet-Kynes suffers that fate, but he is ultimately killed by a spice blow, not dehydration. So the stillsuits essentially function as a way to avoid the topic of dehydration in a desert story. At least Mad Max, for this one scene anyway, is making something of a stab at thirst as an issue.
Fade to Max trudging over dune after dune. The sun beats down, the wind howls, etc. Max is carrying something in one arm but we don’t get a good look at it. My guess was that it was the monkey. Eventually, Max succumbs to the punishing desert and collapses face-first onto the sand. If that was the monkey, grab your Aunt Buttersworth, cuz it’s a pancake now.
Time passes, indicated by Max being half-buried by the blowing sand.
Fade to morning or evening, can’t tell which. The wind is still, and the sand has those neato wavy ridges, like an ocean when God hits the pause button. A slender figure appears. It approaches the camera. Clad in aboriginal leathers, s/he discovers the near-buried body of Max. There’s a brief and nice Exotic Majesty riff on the soundtrack, although it sound more Indian than Australian. Maybe somebody looted the Temple of Doom files. **shrug** It’s cool, though. Fade to daytime, the figure pulls Max’s unconscious form by towed gurney. The music gets more dramatic as the now-clearly-female approaches the camera, looking at something behind it, and shouts “Ahhh-AAAAAAAAHHH!!!” Another angle shows that she is at the lip of a broad greenery-filled canyon. I didn’t know that desert ended and greenery started that abruptly.
Cut to a close-up of one of those desert lizards who face-fins stick out when it wants to seem menacing. It hisses, and the camera pans to a 10-ish boy who hisses back. Then he hears the Max-finder’s call. He rushes to the lip of the canyon and repeats the call really shrill. It’s irritating. Pan down to a river valley that I suspect is just a set. A dozen or so kids all in loincloths and such scamper into action as Innocent Primitives music plays.
Back at the Max-finder, a very little kid, maybe 6 or so, runs into her arms, identifying her as “Savannah!” as she does. Savannah happily and awestrickenly tells her that “I finded him! It’s Captain Walker!” Mistaken identity hijinks. Now we’re closing in on Monty Python territory.
Cut to the village. Max has been laid out with loving care by the all-child tribe. For some reason, his face and clothes are floury white rather than gritty sandish (This is where I first started worrying that the movie is going to turn into a religious statement; but as it turns out, not really, and even then it’s an ambiguous message). The children wonder amongst themselves if “Captain Walker” is dead, sleeping, or listening to them. They try spinning a vinyl record on a twig above his head, but it does no good. I found that bit charming. Most if not all of these kids look young enough to have been born post-Apoc, so while they may have an idea that vinyl records produce sound, they don’t know exactly how to make that happen. We’ll be seeing plenty of this.
I'll continue tomorrow or Friday. |
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Food
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
342 Posts |
Posted - 12/28/2007 : 8:20:46 PM
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Watching all this from a ledge is a skinny kid with a natural Mohawk and what looks like shaving cream on his head and his face made up raccoon-like, i.e. blackened eyes and whitened face. This character gets a fair amount of screentime but never says a word through the movie. He seems to be representative of something, but damned if I can figure out what. Here, he grabs an old Bugs Bunny doll, pulls the string a couple times to make it talk, then holds the thing close in anticipation of something. He never gets a name, so I’ll call him Raccoon.
Brief shot of Savannah grooming Max and cutting his flowing locks with a knife. A younger kid pets the monkey that I guessed survived both the desert trek and being squished by Max. Tough s.o.b., isn’t he?
I also noticed something here that made me feel weird for a bit. Call me nuts if you want, but I think the lady playing Savannah is angelically beautiful. I don’t know why. She looks like a very young Helen Mirren: Not ugly at all, but not objectively gorgeous, either; at least not THAT much. When I run down the list of all the qualities that I’ve gotta see to deem somebody beautiful, this girl has pretty much none of them other than nice shapely legs. But I can’t deny that I can’t f**kin’ concentrate when her face is on the screen. She makes me melt. For a while, I was freaked out that I’d be so charmed by a teenager, but a little bit o’ googlin’ reveals that she was actually 23 when this movie was made, so I’m safe from any charges of theoretical pedophilia.
Fade to later. Max is coming around. While Savannah did a top-notch job on his hair (it woulda be trendy and hip even before the Apoc!), she didn’t pay much attention to his face. In the close-up, he looks like he lost an epic battle with the counterperson at a post-Apoc Starbucks.
Whatever was keeping Max unconscious for so long must’ve gone away instantly, because Max sits bolt upright, terrifying everybody. Terrified himself (though I don’t see why), he staggers backwards out of this makeshift hospital. Turns out that the hospital is many feet above the…river or pond or whatever. Max falls, but it caught by the bungee cord around his ankle. Uh,…kids? What was the point of that?
Max ingloriously sways by his ankle, not knowing what in the world is happening. The kids shout at him to "Fly, Wahkah, fly!" as mildly dramatic music plays. The camera gets playful by showing us an upside-down Max-POV. Reminds me of the Kirk-POV in the opening scene of Star Trek V. In fact, every upside-down POV reminds me of Kirk-POV now.
A kid severs the bungee cord, Max plunges into the water, and the dramatic music comically stops. This could be a religious parallel for baptism, but I don’t believe so, because Max has already shown a sign of being a "changed man," i.e. not killing the retarded Blaster when he had everything to gain by doing so.
Max slogs out of the water to find that the kids collectively mimic everything he says. He shouts, "Who are you?" and they all chant "Who are you? Who are you?" This cycles through "Quiet!," "Shut up!," and "Enough!" This could be a dig at religious piety, but if so, then piety is too broad of a target for the message to be effective without being hypocritical.
A well-built teenaged kid, later identified as First Tracker, Tarzans in amongst the kids, causing them all to instantly fall silent (there’s another one!). He tells Max that the tribe has been waiting for Max (who they still think is Captain Walker) to arrive to take them to greener pastures. When Max seems put off by this mistaken-identity crap, First Tracker misinterprets that Captain Walker is unsatisfied with his tribe. So First Tracker arranges a demonstration of how well the tribe has kept their records. This provides a believable avenue to give the audience a bunch of exposition about what these kids are doing here. First Tracker bashes a large circular automotive component that serves as a gong, and Mass begins.
First Tracker explains that he usually does "The Tell," but since Savannah found Captain Walker, she’s gonna do it this time. Savannah appears wearing a ceremonial feathered headdress (really just a dead vulture or something) and recites "the story of us all."
Minus all the future-dialect she makes, the story is thus: When Apocalypse happened, a bunch of folks got on a plane piloted by Captain Walker. The plane crashed, and the survivors found their way to this oasis in the desert and decided to make it their home. Captain Walker gathered "those of an age," meaning adults, and set out to return to whatever remained of civilization to see what could be salvaged. As he left the oasis, he turned back and shouted, "Wait, one of us will come!" The tribe now believes that Max is Captain Walker, fulfilling the promise that this tribe now takes as prophecy.
The actress playing Savannah does well with this bit. She seems excited to be telling this tale to her Messiah figure, and she delivers the dialect ("Mr. Dead" for death, "the video" for television/movies, "the sonic" for radios and record players etc., "’Member" for remember, "Pox-Eclipse" for Apocalypse) with believable unselfconsciousness. Throughout the sermon, she holds….it looks like a makeshift picture frame on a stick; and she holds the frame in front of some wall murals of a mushroom cloud, a jet plane, a jet plane torn in half, and Captain Walker (who does look enough like Max that I can seen the tribe mistaking him for them. Still, the coincidence is a bit too on-the-nose, especially with the accompanying monkey in the mural). I’m guessing that this is something passed down as a collective memory of TV.
Then First Tracker shoves a Viewmaster in front of Max’s eyes, and shows him images. With each image, he shouts, "’Member this?" and the kids all shout what the image is, despite them not being the ones looking at the image. **shrug** Maybe when First Tracker said "every night we does The Tell," he meant it literally, and the kids are so used to it that they’ve got the order of the Viewmaster images memorized. That’d get pretty boring after a while, you’d think. Anyway, the images are of Tomorrow-Morrow Land*, The River of Light,* Skyraft (their word for aircraft), Captain Walker (semi-shadowed so it’s believable that the kids mistake Max for him), and a exotic dancer who the kids identify as Mrs. Walker (presumably just for a giggle).
[* - By movie’s end, it’s never said what exactly Tomorrow-Morrow Land is. It might simply means civilization, but I couldn’t shrug the feeling that it’s the name of a Disneyland exhibit or something. If anyone can clarify, I’d appreciate it. As for the River of Light, it looks like a photo of a highway with the lens open for hours, so it really does look like a river of light.
This all calls to mind the matter of breeding. We can grant that if this plane was fleeing the Pox-Eclipse, it must’ve been loaded with as many people as it could carry, and it’s fair to guess that there might’ve been a surplus of kids aboard, like when the British evacuated kids from London before the Luftwaffe attacked. Savannah says that some of the passengers "was jumped by Mr. Dead," meaning killed. We see about two dozen kids in this tribe, and no signs on inbreeding or obvious siblings in sight. Since none of these kids looks to be older than teenage (except maaaaybe Savannah), we can conclude that none of them were born when Captain Walker and Co. found the oasis. So there must’ve been a pretty fair number of survivors left to breed and create these kids. **shrug** Must’ve been an ace landing by the good Captain Walker.
There’s an even bigger implausibility, though: What happened to all the adults afterwards? Savannah says that Capt. Walker took adults with him when he left the oasis, but he couldn’t’ve taken all of them, could he?
Savannah ends The Tell by expressing gratitude to the not-really-hero for saving them and coming back to them, and places a pilot’s cap adorned with a dead bird on his head. She and First Tracker then implore Max to “take us home.”
Again, the actress playing Savannah sells her moment well. Now it’s Mel Gibson’s turn.
With the entire tribe staring at him in rapturous expectation, Max haltingly explains that he’s not who they think he is, that the things they describe did exist but no longer, and that what they were hoping for just isn’t going to happen and they might as well get used to being where they are. To me, this is the best acting Gibson does in the entire trilogy. Granted, there’s not a whole lot of acting to do in the trilogy; but Gibson is totally believable as a guy who finds this mistaken hero worship ridiculous while simultaneously not enjoying breaking the collective heart of the tribe like this.
He ends his speech by tossing the pilot’s cap straight up into the air. At first, I found the gesture of hurling the cap straight up to be a bit too aggressive of a gesture to cap off the more resigned tone of the speech. I would’ve thought that simply looking at the thing and dropping it or flicking it away a la Tiger Woods would’ve been more in keeping. But there’s a reason for hurling it: As a minor contrivance to set up a bigger contrivance.
I’ll continue either tomorrow or Sunday.
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Edited by - Food on 12/28/2007 8:21:50 PM |
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Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)
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