Retronauts - 621: Mad Max

Episode Date: July 1, 2024

When an Australian emergency room doctor set out to make a humble little car chase movie in the late '70s, he had no idea it would turn into an incredibly long-lived franchise that would light our minds on fire and cause us all to drive just a little bit faster. And now that nearly 50 years have passed, the Mad Max franchise has remained incredibly pure, with only five movies and a whopping two video games to speak of. On this episode of Retronauts, join Bob Mackey, Diamond Feit, and Stuart Gipp as the crew enters a veritable Thunderdome of podcasting to chat about Mad Max. WITNESS US! Retronauts is a completely fan-funded operation. To support the show, and get two full-length exclusive episodes every month, as well as access to 50+ previous bonus episodes, please visit the official Retronauts Patreon at patreon.com/retronauts.

This week on Retronauts, we're serving word burgers. And today we're going to be talking about mid-mix, the five film series we've never discussed on this fine little podcast. And before I go on any further, before me accent slips, I might be cockney at this point. I want to introduce who's on the line here today. And then I can drop this entirely. And an Australian contingent can stop unsubscribing en masse. I think it's happening now. And, okay, I got through it.

I got through it. Okay. Who is joining us from Japan Who's losing their minds currently? Good morning, everyone. And as I've said many times on the record, please do not refer to me is my birth name That was between me and my parents.

I am no longer Sprague. My name is Diamond Fight. Thank you. And yes, we all learn that Sprague means child. It feels insulting. We'll talk more about that soon. Who else do we have on the line today to talk about Mad Max? Hello, I'm Stuart Chip,

and you may have heard of Erz Rockwell. I am receding. as rock. That's the best I could do. There's room for all kinds of bodies and hairstyles in the Mad Max world. You know, I really wanted to sustain that Australian accent, but I couldn't do it for more than about 20 seconds. It's really hard because I tend to drift into New Zealand and then I turn into a British person and then it all goes downhill. Now, maybe Stewart can judge my British accent. That's not very good either.

I mean, at home, I mean, I own way to judge it. I mean, just do as you please and the applaudets will follow. I mean, vowels are shifting everywhere. It's a crazy upside-down land named Australia. And I hope today that we can pin down why this is such a monumental pop culture property and also figure out why there have only been two Mad Max games in the past 45 years. That surprised me. I assumed, oh, there's got to be like 10 Amiga games and a bunch of other little things I never noticed.

But no, there's only two official Mad Max games. So, yeah, this podcast talk about the five movies. We'll talk about the couple games. and hopefully get all of you out there mid-mix peeled because I assume we're all fans of this property having been on the podcast. That was the worst. Maybe I'll stop being Australian at this point. Let's see how this goes. Before I go on any further.

Yeah, I could be drifting into South Africa. I'm all over the map. I'm a globetrotter with this accent. So I think that was a problem on the Simpsons Australia episode. I think they were also hitting the South African accent a lot there too. It's one of several problems, yeah. Yes. Other than that, completely legit, all the facts check out.

Before I go on any further, though, I want to know where we all are sitting with the Mad Max franchise, how we've experienced it, what our take is. Let's start with Diamond. I suspect my history is similar to that of a lot of kids who grew up in the 80s in that Mad Max was just kind of hanging over everything, even though they were very much movies for adults, so I did not watch them. but it's like, you couldn't get away from Mad Max riffs, Mad Max parodies. Like, I'm going to look it up, but I guarantee that Muppet Babies did at least one Mad Max joke.

They must have on Muppet Babies. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah. I mean, I assume Kermit was master, or sorry, Blaster, and Robin was master. Yeah, it's like, it almost certainly happened. So I grew up on this stuff just sort of in the background, like, I don't know what this is, but it seems kind of, it seems pretty intense, you know, for me as a kid. And I don't think I actually got around to watch them until I was, you know, well into my 20s when I started renting them.

And, you know, as we'll talk about each movie, I think each movie kind of hit me in a very different way. And then, you know, when Fury Road came out, I don't know if you know this, but a lot of movies come to Japan pretty late. So Fury Road opened in the West and all my friends kind of went crazy about it. Like Fury Road, it's the best movie I've ever seen. I'm like, wait, it can't be. It can't be. And then it opened here like a few months later. and I watched it, and I remember turning to my friend, like, midway through, like, the first

sequence of the car chase, and I'm like, I've never seen a movie like this in my life, and we just sort of kept going with that same energy. So I think since Fury Road, I've probably gone back and rewatched most of the movies, at least once, and it's pretty impressive how all this stuff fits together and how it just, it doesn't feel like anything else, even though decades of work have been sort of drawing from these pictures and these stories and these characters, you still watch, you know, you go and see Furiosa. Nothing really quite looks like Furiosa except for other Mad Max movies. Like, no one really gets it.

So that to me is amazing, you know. I feel like, you know, we talked a lot about on this podcast, the things that have a lot influences, you know, we did Night of Living Dead, you know, we did Dune. We talked a lot of stuff that's had a big legacy. But Mad Max is weird that, like, no one really gets it right except for George Miller. Yeah, there's a lot of Mad Max Ripoffs out there, too, in terms of movies. that are aspiring to be it. Stewart, how about you and Mad Max?

I wasn't particularly interested in Mad Max for the vast majority of my existence. I don't know why. It just kind of passed over me. I think I heard that Tina Turner song. We don't need another hero. That's a pretty good song. I don't know what a Thunderdome is.

But, you know, she's cool, you know. But then I saw a trailer for Fury Road, and I was just like, well, obviously, I'm going to go and see this because it was one of the best cut trailers of all time, I would say. Fury Road sort of blew my socks off. but for whatever reason I didn't really revisit it

so I figured on the smaller screen it's really not going to have the same level of impact that it does on the biggest possible screen but then not that long ago actually I think just a couple of weeks I did revisit it and I was like oh no that's just as good that was absolutely amazing if not better I'm going to watch the other Mad Max movies

so I kind of sped through them all in about three days then I went to see Furiosa and now I'm here with it all relatively fresh in my mind which is nice yeah as for me like you diamond i grew up in the 80s uh you're a tiny bit older than me but there's some overlap there and just i understood what mad max was but i was so inundated with everything that was inspired by it and for the longest time my mindset was well it's been referenced so much that the original can't have the same appeal and i'm slowly getting over that i'm slowly watching more movies that have been

referenced too much and finding out yes they're great and they outlive the references they're greater than the references so uh weirdly enough i before this podcast i'd only seen the first mad max movie and Fury Road because I was renting a lot of stuff from Netflix I get the first Mad Max movie in the mail I watch it and I thought oh this is Mad Max this is not what I was expecting at all and there's more of these

that's so weird anyway I'll just forget about this and then Fury Road comes out five years later and I'm just surprised oh they're bringing this back they must be desperate or something and then kind of like you Diamond a friend tells me oh you have to see this it's a big deal and then I go see it and

like you Stewart I I'm blown away. It's an incredible experience to the point where I don't want to watch it again. I feel I can't have the same experience. It won't have the same effect. It was such a special magical time in the movies that I will tarnish it if I watch the movie again. But yes, it turns out like Stewart, you can watch it on TV and it's good. It's still good.

And so for this podcast, I've watched them all, including Fury Road and Furiosa. And yeah, I watched Fury Road for the second time in nine years. And I feel very stupid. I could have been watching this annually for the first. a decade? My life could have been improved. And yeah. Oh, God, Stuart. Weekly. Daily. Weekly.

Wake up with free roads. It could have been like every day on the elliptical machine just pounding my way through the movie, aspiring to be as buff as a Morton Joe or something. Whoever the buffest character in that movie is. Probably Rickus, right? That big dude with the weird stuff on his face. I'm working on a rictus body right now. We'll see what happens. But yeah, I didn't play the 2015 game because I assumed it was trash. I didn't play the NES game because I didn't really know what it was

And the cover made it look boring So honestly most of the Mad Max stuff is new to me And I'm you know Seeing them for the first time for the most part And I'm really getting a deeper appreciation for George Miller In fact he didn't direct the movie He had a big hand in it I watched Babe last night and I thought it was delightful

And I've not seen that movie in 30 years So I'm personally having a real George Miller Renaissance In my condo here So speaking of George Miller, we must talk about the man himself. Mad Max. So, yes, this comes from the brain of director George Miller. He's an Australian guy who would later direct two CGI movies about horny penguins. That's how versatile he is.

Yes, he created the Mad Max series, but then he creates the Babe series. And then he's behind Happy Feet. He wins an Oscar for Happy Feet. He's doing it all, folks. George Miller. I keep hearing stories that he was going to do a Justice League movie. And I, you know, it's pointless to speculate about what could have happened. But boy, it sounds like that might have been a lot better than.

the Justice League we got. Yeah, you know, that is true, but it does kind of stink sometimes to see promising directors attached to the Marvel handcuffs, basically, and kind of, I mean, it normally happens to younger people before they can actually make anything truly great, but maybe it would have been one and done with him. Maybe it would have been good, but that's just another what if for George Miller in his very, very long career. A lot of ifs, a lot of ifs for him, actually.

It's kind of amazing, considering how much he's made and how much has been success, there's still like a dozen like oh what if he had done this what if he had done this yeah there are so many potential miller projects and fury road kept being a potential project until he actually made it and his origins are very interesting to the point where they sound made up because he was an emergency room doctor and before he reached full doctor status he pursued an interest in filmmaking so um he met with collaborator byron kennedy at a film workshop in melbourne in 177 at Melbourne University, and basically Mad Max comes from him witnessing firsthand the violence that cars are capable of, what they can do to the human body, how frankly none of us should be driving around in them or walking anywhere near their path. As a pedestrian, I agree. As a car, I'm torn. I don't know what the laws were in Australia in the 70s, but I'm guessing if it was anything like the U.S., like seatbelts were kind of like a suggestion for people. And certainly when you watch these movies, like almost no one has ever belted in a. at all. So I can only imagine the horrors that he would have seen as, you know, people go out

on a Friday night in, you know, in Sydney or whatever, and just like, they're running into anything and like, you know, no one's, no one's belted. They've all got glass in their nose. Like, it's just, it's just a nightmare to nightmare. Yeah, this is around the time when the speed limit is being reeled back in America from 75 on the highway to 55 in a lot of places. So maybe things are more out of control in Australia. Maybe it's, you know, whatever the equivalent is, a thousand kilometers an hour. I don't know. I was not raised to learn that kind of of math. Only the wrong kind of math that applies in one country. So, yeah, he teams up with Byron Kennedy after meeting in this film workshop. He's still, you know, pursuing being a doctor.

He eventually does his residency and becomes a full doctor, however that works. And he and Byron work on a lot of short films in their downtime. They start something called Kennedy Miller Productions in 1972. I'm not sure how much of their early work is available, but one of their shorts, which is called Violence in the Cinema, Part 1 from 1971. This makes a lot of lot of waves and won them some awards. So there's a little buzz happening around this little indie studio. And this could be on one of the Mad Max

special editions, a Blu-ray, a steel book, a 4K, but I was only able to find a summary of this short. Essentially, it's a cheeky black comic short in which a professor is giving a lecture on the effects of violence in movies on film goers.

Three minutes into the speech, someone comes in and shoots him in the head, and he resumes the rest of his speech, holding his bloody head together while committing acts of violence around him. So it's very silly, very dark. It feels almost like a Sam Ramey kind of thing with all the gore effects and things like that. But yeah, that is basically where he starts. I really wanted to watch this.

So I went looking for it in all of the sort of dark corners of the internet where you would normally find anything that you want to see. And apparently the only way to see this is to go and see it in some museum or something. It's not available publicly at all. I think you can only see it through like an academic, if you request to see it or something, which I might end up doing at some points. I'm very curious. Yeah, I could only find stills of it online. So I'm sure given the experience that Miller and Byron had and given the amount of money that they had,

I don't know if it seems like it would look like a snuff film. It probably looks like a cheesy old science fiction movie in terms of the effects and everything in it. If I had to guess, I would say that with him probably it's fair to say he is either made his final film or he's about to make his final film he's I don't remember how old he is it's like say I don't remember it's a lot but I would say this will probably show up at some point if it ever does it will be soon I would say so hopefully we'll be able to watch someone holding the head together soon I hope so and you know I wouldn't count him out too early Stewart because Clint Eastwood is still making movies oh yeah that's true

and they're all so good in his 90s yeah yeah uh making making much more much worse movies, still okay movies compared to George Miller. And then when I see George Miller in recent videos, you know, promoting Furiosa talking with Hideo Kojima, I'm like, this is a spry looking 81 year old. He is tap dancing, he's scatting, he could be president. That's a happy feat for you. If I could elect one 81 year old president, it would be George Miller. Unfortunately, that's illegal in America. I don't like that.

So, yeah, he's making his. his name for himself in independent filmmaking. And it seems like it took him quite a while to scrape together the resources for his first feature because he's only credited on a few shorts between Violence in the Cinema, Part 1, and Mad Max, which debuted eight years later in 1979. And it should be noted that he was also a doctor during this time period. So he had a very full plate. He had to save people's lives and then in what time he had on the side tried to create a feature

film and apparently he was doing extra medical work on the side to fund this getting government funding funding from local investors and things like that it's all it all took a very long time to come together and form the roots of the mad max franchise i mean i feel like if you look at the filmmakers that era who don't you know who don't already have backing of a major studio that tends to be the story right they have they have ideas they have experiments and unless you get an in unless someone already hires you, your only option is just keep doing what you're doing. If you have a job, great. If you don't just start borrowing.

And then, you know, five, six, seven years later, you'll get a movie. You know, I feel like Sam Ramey basically did that with him and his friends. Kevin Smith, of course, many years later, but Kevin Smith was like, you know, he just borrowed everything he could borrow and it took years to make. And then he made a movie. And it's like, I don't know. I wonder if it's easier or harder today in the fact that everyone has access to cameras, but also it's even harder to get the money together that you would actually need to

make one of these things and you have to be, you kind of have to be famous to get a studio interested in your project. So, I don't know. I feel like it's both, it's both typical of the era, and I wonder if it's even possible to do that today as far as, like, build your, build your, build your own career filmmakers. I don't know. I guess because it's so potentially easy to film something and edit it together, um, people may may now devalue that and say, well, uh, anyone can make a movie. Why? can I just make AI do it or just hire anyone to do it. But back in his day

you needed to learn how film worked, how lighting worked, all the very physical properties of filmmaking that aren't as apparent today, aren't as necessary today. Stuart? I was just going to say something similar really, but of course there were a lot of films

or short films or concepts that get made that go viral. I'm going to say back rooms as an example that then of course get picked up by sort of other filmmakers to say hey we want to sort of extrapolate this we want to capitalize on this so I guess it's easier to get your work

out there where it could be seen whereas obviously at this time there's so much more to consider to even be able to go here's a piece of film with something I made on it or we made on it it's just not going to happen unless you put the work in yeah and even for his time Miller didn't

take a traditional route in terms of becoming a filmmaker where if you look at people from his generation like George Lucas and Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola and I think even Scorsese they are all film school graduates there were now these things called film schools you can go to and then

they studied film and they fell in with collaborators and they would go on to maybe direct a few commercials maybe direct an episode of Colombo and then impress people enough to make their own features and go from there Miller and Byron Kennedy completely self-taught and learned on the job

and also learned via just studying movies, they weren't hired by professional productions to learn as they went. They learned by making their own things, and it's stunning that they were able to stay afloat. I guess it just speaks to their natural talent that the original Mad Max, while very scrappy,

is so profound in terms of just a nice piece of guerrilla filmmaking. I feel like a lot of movies in the 70s, especially, you know, I think we took what went into Mad Max and made it happen. Like, there's a lot of movies from the 70s that just have, like, you know, cars. Like, it's the, the cars are the star almost, you know, like, it's, I'm thinking of gone in 60 seconds. I'm thinking of, like, vanishing point. It's these, I don't want to be overreductive, like, those movies have stories and characters in them, but it's like, the cars are almost a centerpiece.

The cars are what get, get people in the studio. Like, hey, we're going to get a lot of cars on the screen, and we're going to be driving all over the place. Come check this out, you guys. And I feel like, it's almost amazing. that he was able to get this done with all these, you know, literal moving parts. He had to think about all the people he had to get

on board for this movie to drive around. You've got to find open areas. You've got to be driving around all the time. You have to have these people who are willing to take huge risks. Like every single car crash in the first movie especially looks like it should be like a headline

headline news. Just like every single one. Even the ones, even if people just get up from, it's like, ah, I'll be fine. I'll be fine. fine. Like, you're not fine. How are you fine? Yeah, it's so dangerous and there's so much impact because of it. You can tell that's just, this is just

cars smashing against one another. I guess he was like saying, don't worry, I'm a doctor. I'll just fix you off if you get, like, horribly you know, maimed. But it's amazing that nobody died. Like, it seems so dangerous this film.

I was going to say the same thing, Stuart. I know people were injured. And I'm sure he was as careful as possible, but a lot of these shots, because I assume so many of the shots in the first movie are stolen shots. They didn't get permission to film anywhere. They had to do it then or not do it at all. We can only have one chance to do the stunt. And also, once we crash the car, the car has been crashed. We won't have that car again. So make sure you do it right. He knows that to have more virulentitude in the film, you need people actually doing these things. I mean, that carries all the way through the Fury Road, which has loads of practical

stunts. Obviously, CGI sort of augmented and much safer and under a much more probably tight sort of studio health safety boundary. But in this movie when you see someone like jump onto the front of a car, they're actually jumping onto the

front of a car that is moving at full speed. And it's really kind of intense to watch still. And before we move on to the movies, I do want to talk about the underlying concepts that inform basically the entire series. And the roots of the first movie come from a real life

occurrence which was the 1973 gas crisis in Australia worldwide there just was a gas crisis and it's very long and boring I won't go into it here just know that gas was very very expensive and people were dealing with that fact for the first time in their life they weren't used to a world in which gas could cost that much the economy was not attuned to that

and in this gas crisis Miller saw the violence people were willing to do to each other when resources forces suddenly became scarce. So that got the wheels turning in his head. Another idea that got the wheels turning in his head was, what if I did a silent movie with sound? And, you know, other Mad Max movies use dialogue to varying degrees, but more than any other filmmaker, more than any other film series, Mad Max tells through showing, I feel. And then that will fully pay off in Fury Road, which is nearly a nonstop chase for two hours. But the roots of that,

kind of basic concept are here in the first Mad Max film? It's sort of the two george's speech there's a talent really that in a first feature I mean yeah there have been some shorts but a feature is a totally different sort of all together it's got so much flair already

it's got so much directorial skill and he clearly knows what he's doing and knows where to point the camera, he knows how to do everything really and you get the impression he must have been watching one hell of a lot of movies before he got into this because one of the most confident first features I can think of in terms of, I mean, it is kind of scrappy, but it's also amazing how unscrappy it actually is considering everything. Yeah, absolutely.

And the third concept I wanted to roll back to informing everything is the idea of the Mad Max stories as folktales. I mean, that does not really apply to the first movie because that's where it begins and that it's more of a modern setting. but as the movies roll on, we see the character is sort of like Lincoln, the Legend of Zelda. He's just a very mythic figure, and the timelines don't really line up in the way they should, and there's not a lot of continuity between movies except for the last two, of course. But it's building upon that, you know, Wasteland Warrior character that could potentially spin off into so many different stories, but they've been very economical, and so far there have been five. You know what I think about is the way the very first movie opens with the title card.

It just says a few years from now. And I feel like that's probably taking a little bit from Star Wars as far as like a long time ago. It's just a little nugget to say, hey, I know this looks like the world you know, but it's not really where we live. It's kind of, you know, just use your imagination a little bit. And I feel like each movie kind of gets farther and farther from, you know, our reality. and then you have the storyteller aspect sort of leaning into it but even this movie

that doesn't really have a narrator per se it does have that opening title card that I feel like sort of sets the audience up like hey we're just it's a story right we're just telling a story here you know don't worry you'll be safe if you drive home today

you'll be okay yeah it does it feels a bit like maybe a cheeky riff on Star Wars which was obviously very popular in 1979 when the film came out and also maybe a sly wink to let you know we can't afford to depict the post apocalypse

it's pretty expensive wait till the next movie we can film in the desert then and build little settlements and stuff. And this one, it's just going to be you at home thinking, is Australia okay? What's going on in Australia? If you understand Mad Max, in the way that we all understand it,

the first movie can be very confusing. So let's talk about it. 1979, the first Mad Max. It takes place, like you said, Diamond, a few years from now, now meaning whenever they filmed it. And it depicts this near post-apocalypse where things are at their tipping point. Society is largely functional, but, you know, roving gangs are now a problem. And, you know, there are certain things that don't exist in other Mad Max films. Like, hey, you can live in a nice house with your wife and go on vacation.

But don't leave her alone because bad things might happen. So still, there are still things in society that are functioning in a way that aren't functioning in the more dire future movies. So don't expect, if you go into the first bad max, like I did, thinking, well, this is what people are watching, what's going on here? Know that it becomes the thing you know a little bit later. But then there are so many elements here that are later in the thing you know. Yeah, the world of first bad max, like the government exists. Obviously, you know, most of the characters are, you know, police officers. in a sense, even though, you know, the way they act and the way they behave is kind of, you know, not in line with any police officers that we can think of.

But, like, there's money, there's electricity. People have houses, even though you can see, you know, there clearly a lot of people have taken upon themselves to drive around the country in, you know, exceedingly, you know, custom vehicles. I think about, you know, characters are like, you don't have lines. Like, there's a scene where Max and Goose are just talking to a couple, and it's like, they have their own little, like, motorcycle and side. car and it's like a lady in like a bubble in the side car and it's like these people have no lines whatsoever and then just drive away and they're like who are these people driving around Australia and like a side car with a bubble like are they just are they roaming free do they are they going back to the home like did they build up molyshackle themselves like a lot of like one-off

characters this movie you really want to know what where the hell they're going and where they came from but you don't it you don't get that and I feel like it it only helps the movie in that like all the little people in the picture in the background seem like they're coming from somewhere and they're going to go somewhere else. It really gives everything a lived in feel. Like all these people are real. You're just, you're getting a glimpse of their lives and then they're going to go back, you know, unless they die.

Yeah, that's true of this film. And then with the later films, when they can afford to dress the characters up in more elaborate and cartoonish ways, you're even more intrigued like, ooh, who's this person? And later at the end, when you see the credits, you're like, oh, that was their name. and then the next time you watch it you kind of keep an eye on what they're doing because there's so many wild characters and you have to know that George Miller probably has a story Bible where he's written out their entire biography

and where they came from and how they feel about other characters in the world and things like that. But you know, more than the other Mad Max films, this does feel like a product of the decade it came out in because if you watch a lot of movies from the 70s, like you were saying Diamond, I think car chases are a big thing in movies from that era.

We have, like, Smoky and the Bandit and Gone in 60 Seconds and Vanishing Point. On TV, we have things like the Dukes of Hazard, where the most popular character in that show is the car. I mean, there's the Duke Boys, but you're tuning in to see the car, and it's lovely flag on the roof. But, yeah, we're way into car chases. They're just in so many movies. And then, like in a lot of 70s movies, this is also kind of a grimy revenge film. Although, I will say that, unlike a lot of those movies, this one is not fixated. on sexual assault, which is why I think

it's more palatable to go back to this. Well, a lot of those 70s movies, you have to know what you're getting into and know the ugliness they want to depict here. It's mostly violence. The sexual stuff is certainly implied, but it's not really shown and the people, it's actually

the movie gets a lot of mileage, I think, pun intended, out of just people reacting to stuff without actually seeing it, you know? I'm thinking about how, when Max goes to see goose in the hospital, you never see goose, you You just see what Max, you just see Max look at Goose and you see Max's face. I feel like the movie gets, you know, does that to it.

It's advantage. You have a lot of people just react to stuff that they don't actually show. So, you know, like even the big moment where, you know, Max's wife and child die, like, you just see like the, you know, the stereotypical, like, the shoe on the highway kind of thing. You actually see what happens. I mean, it's a nice budget saving technique, but you're not lingering on the death of a child. Someone is just throwing a shoe off of their motorcycle as they're peeling off. and it says all it needs to say, Stuart.

Well, it's an interesting, it's almost, I don't know if I call it the version of the revenge sort of flick, but the actual inciting incident doesn't take place for a lot of this movie. I would say maybe that even like two-thirds of this movie, Max is honestly miffed at best and doesn't really become mad until, you know, the obvious. I think that sequence with the shoe is really quite shocking, considering, I know you don't see much, of it, and almost the kind of, like, yeah, that's just happened.

There's no real sort of crescendo. It's just like, they're there one second, and then although those two characters are just gone, it's kind of interesting in that respect. The stuff with sort of sexual violence, unfortunately, does kind of crop up in the road warrior, which will obviously get to in a more sort of lurid manner. But, yeah, here it is quite reserved in a sort of pleasing way. I really like this one a lot. is one of my favorites, I think,

and I think the fact that it is quite paired back is one of the reasons why. I found it very sort of, you know, well-directed as quite well-paced. It doesn't really sag like some of the other movies do. It's all just a enjoyable, relatively straightforward

with a quite sort of satisfying, if ultimately quite bleak sort of finale. I had a good time watching this one. Yes, Stuart, I wanted to play off what you just said. I think when you go on letterboxed, which we all do probably too much, and you see people react, especially to Mad Max, like almost all the top comments are very muted. And some of them are like, you know, like Bob said, like this is it. Some people are just like, this is boring.

And I'm like, I can't, I cannot abide that because I feel like everything about this movie is clearly built with purpose. And I feel like it's absolutely trying to lull you into feeling like everything's going to be okay. You know, like Max, you know, like Max loses his friend and he's really upset and he tries to quit his job and they're like, ah, you'll be back, you'll be back, don't worry about it. And then you have the sequence where, like, yeah, he and his family are just hanging out, they're going for a drive, they're having some ice cream, she's hanging out by the beach, she's looking incredibly good and she's loving it. And then it's like, but the menace is always there. The menace comes, the menace goes. She gets in trouble. She gets out of trouble.

And then she's just gone and the kid is just gone. And then Max is like, oh, damn. And then you have that ending where it's like, there's some satisfaction because, like, yeah, he kills these people and the people absolutely, you know, probably should be dead because they were, they were bastards. But it's also like there's no, there's no joy, there's no, like, fist pumping, like, oh, hell yeah, he got that dude. It's just kind of like, well, shit, they're dead now. What happens to him? Like, even, you know, and again, we can talk about Mel Gibson as a person if we want. I don't really want to.

But his performance, this movie, I think, is pretty good because he's just kind of like, he's just done especially at the end of the movie he's just sort of he's so done he's like uh you buy the transition from uh as seward said mift max to mad max and no i mean he's a great performer across the board it's sad that he chose to walk certain paths in life that we don't need to dwell upon here you can look it up yourself folks i think it's well publicized by now yeah yeah not a great guy in many respects but yeah he's great in these and i feel like there's a bit of subversion of the 70s revenge film that really plays out in furiosa i think that shows how, oh, revenge is empty, it will get you nothing.

The crowd is still happy to see the explosion at the end, but it means nothing to Max. He's already lost so much, and the loss will continue to haunt him. And it should be pointed out, though, that final scene did inspire the Saw franchise. That singular idea is what spawned a, I don't know, 10 film franchise. So you can either blame or credit Mad Maxx. Each one greater than the lost. Yes.

Diminishing returns. What about increasing returns? Let's try that. and we have to move on I do want to point out this was apparently re-dubbed for an American release I've never seen that version

Yeah don't watch it It sounds bad They they overwrite a lot of the fun Australian slang That I have to look up honestly And it teaches me things like Sprague And apparently not until a limited 2,000 theatrical release Did we actually hear the Australian dub in America

And then the DVD release Restored in full And this also shocked me That until the Blair Witch Project this was the most profitable movie of all time the first Mad Max yeah something like 400,000 Australian dollars budget and then it made back like what over 100 well over 100 million

yeah over 100 million so Blair which I think was maybe like under 100K and then it went that movie went crazy so that is the first Mad Max let's talk about the sequel of the Road Warrior which came out in 1981 this is where it all begins this is where the most

iconic Mad Max stuff comes from this and Beyond Thunderdome. It's what everything has been referencing up until Fury Road. So the American release dropped the Mad Max 2 subtitle. It was just known as the Road Warrior. And yeah, Max, his family

is dead. He's a wandering mercenary. Time has advanced forward a little more. A lot of bad things have happened that are just briefly implied in the intro. But he's survived at all. And he is the kind of tarnish, of gold guy where he's out for survival and seldomly things will move him enough to act in

non-selfish ways and that's when we can get behind him. Yeah, I do think one of the strong points about this film series in general is the fact that most of the movies, I know it's kind of weird, there's only five movies say most of them, but most of the five movies work entirely on their own. Like even if there is a story going on, even you can look at things that connect to each other and there is, you know, there's subtle things over time. almost all these movies just totally work on their own merits and you just tune in and watch them.

Like, if you watch Furio today and you have no idea what these movies are about, that movie, like, in the breadth of it, it will tell you everything you need to know. Road Warrior, the same thing. Like, I think the American people were right to drop the two. And like, just watch this. It doesn't matter if you know who Max is already.

You don't need to know that Max already had a whole movie with his family in it. Like, just watch this movie, and it's incredible. You know, I think probably it's one of the weird things about the most recent one, Furiosa, fact that it is very much couched in, oh, remember that character we saw a few years ago, here she is again, and if you watch this movie, you'll see lots of characters that you already know, and it's like, I think that's what kind of puts me off on it. I think it's still a great

movie, but also it's kind of like, why are we suddenly putting the brakes on this, you know, freewheeling franchise and making sure, oh, don't worry, you're going to find out everything you need to know about the last movie. I just, I just want to see a new movie. I don't know. I feel like this movie, especially the Road Warrior, is a great example of that because, like, it absolutely is a sequel. In most countries it was released to the sequel, certainly here in Japan, it's still called Mad Max, too. But if you don't know it's called Mad Max too, if you don't know who Mad Max is, and you tune in, you get everything. You just see, oh, well, the world is collapsed, people are still alive, they're roaming around, they need water, they need gas, and they will kill each other to get it. That's it.

Yeah, I, um, apart from, I think this is the only one until. obviously Furiosa that even has any footage from one of the previous movies in it. I think there's a very brief sort of shot of the family get in this movie just as a, we don't even need to know it's from another movie. You know, it's just like, this is what happened to him. And it's sort of the first one that really leans into the kind of storytelling aspect. This is the story of this guy, you know. And it's like almost like a fable that's being kind of passed down sort of through time.

And that's the motif that sort of sticks around until you reach Furiosa. where George Miller goes absolutely hog wild on the whole nature of storytelling sort of thing. But this one is, for me personally, just to kind of keep it, you know, breezy. I think it's a great, I think it's kind of a, I don't want to say shit sandwich, that's a bit too harsh, but the beginning I love, the end I love,

and the middle I think kind of weighs it down a bit, goes on a bit, a bit too long, not enough happening. It's not my favorite. I like it better than three. I do have a good time with it There's a lot of great ideas And there is an absolutely outstanding action sequence For the finale with some incredible stuff

That still makes me wonder how they all they did it You know, with like the flying guys and such It's crazy to see it I didn't expect it at all from an 81 movie Something that close to Fury Road You know I had a good time with it I just don't think it's as tight as the first one

I don't think it's as focused as the first one But it is still hugely enjoyable And I think for many people, this is their favorite. So that's just my opinion, you know. Yeah, I mean, even though I don't like Thunderdome more than this, I feel like Miller learned a bit from each production where the wasteland portion of Thunderdome is so tight. It's like the tight condensed version of what was in Mad Max, too. Then it goes off in another direction we can talk about.

But I feel like, oh, he learned how to tighten things up. In this movie, like I said, though, it's where all the iconic stuff comes from. It's Australia is this desert wasteland. gasoline is not called guzzoline Like people are losing language Because we're just so torn apart And and you know Pushed down by this post-apocalypse world

Everyone is wearing you know Wild clothing and S&M gear People are basically like Deciding well I'm a cartoon character now And I mean I don't think we're on the brink of apocalypse right here But I'm seeing a lot of that like on social media It's like I am here I'm now a cartoon everyone I'm not like here's my cartoon avatar

I'm not a V-tuber but just like Oh I can have this wild persona because nothing matters and so here's how I'm coping with it. So I'm now Lord Humongous and check out my cool tweets. Yeah, I feel like oh God, I forget. I think it's Vernon Miller, the guy who

would later on, he would later on show up in Commando and Inner Space he'd do some Hollywood work, but like, not humongous, but the guy under Humongus who's got like the Mohawk and the shoulder pads that just have feathers on them, I feel like his outfit, his outfit alone

created, I think like, I want to say like 55% of anime from the 80s? Like that one look and video games too of course like what is you know

what is two crude dudes you know crude buster but you know a double dragon starring two Werner Millers you know like what is

that's what it is and ultimately the road warriors as well obviously of course yeah pro wrestling of course

how much for wrestling how much per wrestling is drawn from you know either specifically or just sort tangentially from these movies

It's a lot. Yeah. I mean, the entire podcast could just be us reading a list of things this movie inspired, visually, thematically. I just know when I saw Lord Humongus in this film, I remember, like, I know what Lord Humongus is, but then I thought, oh, hey, look, it's the blacksmith from Dragon Quest. It's just, this is what he looks like. He's an S&M guy, a big burly S&M guy. And then we just had our Toriyama podcast not too long ago, and I'm thinking, man, Toriyama must have loved this movie because I'm watching the anime adaptation of Sandland, one of his very late, manga series. And Sandland is just Mad Max. It's just whimsical Mad Max with demons. And I thought,

God, this hit Japan so hard, maybe even harder than it did in the West. Yeah. Also, before I would correct me, I'm sorry, Vernon Wells is the actor. It's named Vernon Wells. My apologies. And yeah, I mean, it's hard to underline the impact of this because I can think of, you know, modern games like Fallout that draw upon Mad Max throughout the entire series. And I did want to point out, though, this struck me as I was taking notes. And this is a movie I saw, saw a few times before I saw any Mad Max movies. A very obscure movie called A Boy and His Dog, based on a Harlan Ellison short story, it is the much uglier version of Mad Max.

It's the much more 70s version of Mad Max, where the main character is essentially a rapist. It's like depicting the wasteland in a much uglier, non-cartoonish way where the author wants to explore, like, what are the ugliest things people will be doing in this post-apocalypse? It also has an underground society of like people living idealistic lifestyle with scary clown robot mimes too So that's part of it as well But a boy and his dog I think even Miller said that inspired me as well

But so much of that movie I feel inspired Mad Max And it's it's a rough watch There's some ugly stuff in that movie But I love just how weird it is And a lot of that movie went into the Fallout games as well Yeah there's got an ending that'll make you want to go and lie down So we've got a dark room yes we should point out it's don johnson who would go on to be in miami vice and other things

and uh his talking dog well he talks telepathically so that's most of the movie it's it's worth a watch but you know buckle up yeah it's like the idea of one thing that bad mac doesn't do that fallout does is the vaults in fallout that that comes from a boy in his dog and it's that the most fun goofy uh freaky stuff in a boy and his dog comes from that but that i did want to point out uh miller said that definitely influenced road warrior uh mad max too and i i'm thinking about i can definitely see how it was a big uh it was standing in the shadow of a boy and his dog a much lesser movie that's not nearly as good And so.

And... ...that... ...of... ...and... ...the... ...and... ...and... ...that...

...and... You know, Yeah, but that is Mad Max 2. We're going to sail on over to Mad Max 3, Beyond Thunderdome, 85 on this one. And I get the feeling based on Letterbox reviews, like you said, Diamond R on Letterbox too much. But Letterbox reviews and podcasts, it feels like a lot of people who weren't me saw this one on TV because it is the sole non-R-rated Mad Max movie, making it very easy to edit and put on broadcast television. I mean, it's the most Hollywood of the first three movies for sure, you know, and I'm so, you know, I'm sorry, compared to the first one, which as we talked about was kind of, you know, A, rough run the edges and B, very Australian to the point that they even reddubbed it for the U.S. Then you have Road Warrior, which is very intense. Like, it's definitely not for kids. You know, like a lot of stuff goes down, like in the first few minutes, like, no, kids should not be watching this. And then you have this movie, which is, you know, obviously big production, big values. You've got stars now.

Like, Tina, I mean, Matt, you know, obviously Mel Gibson by this point is getting, getting famous, not like super famous yet, but he's, he's, he's already a known idea at this point. Peakskill's own, Mel Gibson, by the way, don't forget, he's from Peakskill, New York. Tina Turner, huge star in the movie. So I feel like this one had a lot of push to it, and then that also got it on cable a lot more. So, yeah, like, when I said growing up with, like, this is the kind of movie that would just be on the background. I'm like, yeah, it's that Mad Max movie. I don't know what that's about. I don't know. So, yeah, a lot of things shipped her to that.

Arguably, this is the first Mad Max movie with a true movie star, a true superstar at its helm, and that is Tina Turner. I was looking at what Mel Gibson was doing internationally before this, and he was breaking out, but his true breakout role was lethal weapon in 87. That's when he becomes a sex symbol. That's when he pretends that he's not Australian anymore. He's doing a lot of movies with American accents. And, hell, as a kid, I was full. People would tell me he's Australian. I didn't believe them. but yeah Tina Turner is the draw in this film as the rise of Mel Gibson is happening and so yeah they're going for a broader appeal

they're going for you know a bigger audience because of the PG-13 rating and it does get very Spielbergy in its back half I couldn't put my finger on what was going on with this movie and then I go in a letterbox I listen to the blank check episode everyone is like Amblin Amblin Amblin Amlin! I'm like oh yeah this is basically

some chunk of this feels like a Spielbergian attempt to make a Mad Max film. Well, I mean, at this point, this is 85, so this is post-Twilight zone, which means he's already worked, he's already met and worked with Spielberg to a degree. You know, so Miller has also, like, like everyone involved, I would say, has been sort of touched by the Hollywood machine, if you will, either directly or indirectly. But, yeah, Miller's, you know, done some work for hire. and, you know, he's clearly had some collaboration with Spielberg already. Mel Gibson's branching out.

You've got this star presence on set. The budget is a lot higher. So it's one of the fun things about this movie. It's like, this movie overall, it's, you know, it's success. If you look it up, like, this, the early Mad Mad Max movies in the U.S., each one outgrows is the last one. It's a, it's a trend that goes up. But if you look at Australia, like the first two Mad Max movies are successes. And this one's kind of a downer, which is kind of dramatic, given that you can look at some movie, you can tell how much more it costs.

It's like, this is clearly very expensive. Oh, yeah, there's money in the life of the screen. Yeah. And yet, you know, I don't think it made quite the impression anyone hoped for, which is probably one of the reasons why it took about 30 years to get another Mad Max movie because everyone's like, oh, yeah, people are tired of that movie. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, and it was a time in which a movie could just have three entries and be done. I mean, this is at the time when Star Trek.

and Rocky were pushing beyond that but it wasn't too crazy for a movie to end with three in fact it was pretty rare for a series to make it even that far oh stuart i i i think this one is a bit flabby again i think the first act as has been mentioned is is easily the most interesting i mean the money is all over the screen the sets are absolutely astonishing like it looks flawless you've got and then it just gets really kind of silly and and kiddie after that especially once you know the kids show up. I mean, I think it's kind of wild. Literal children. Yeah. I think it's kind of wild that like George Miller would work on Twilight Zone the movie and then go, I'm going to work with loads of kids next. But then again,

maybe that's why he did it or, you know, because that, you know, that must have been one hell of a jarring experience for him, not to mention for everyone. Um, so I think a lot of what kind of makes Mad Max, Mad Max isn't really here. It feels like it's leaning into a sort of kid friendly a direction. There's a lot of stuff I enjoy, but it's just overall kind of, I found myself kind of thinking, like, when is this going to end? I'm tired of these children. Yeah, I feel like it was a big bait and switch for me because I went into the movie thinking,

I know what the reputation is. I know this was disappointing. And then the first act, I'm like, oh, boy, I'm rubbing my hands together. There's this cool new settlement he's at. He's fighting in the Thunderdome. He's working in the pig poop factory. And there's great characters like, Auntie Entity and Master Blaster and things like that.

And then he ends up in like Goofy Town with the Lost Boys and the movie kills a lot of time. And then the finale feels like a retread of things we saw in Mad Max too, but with a train. And then we have basically a Mad Max equivalent of a pie fight where enemies are getting conked on the head with pots and pans and things like that. It's very silly. Yeah, I would say of all the Mad Max movies that I've seen and pretty much all of them to me have been recent-dish viewings. Like, this is the one that I remember the least about, and I'm the least interested in revisiting it. I will, I promise. But it's kind of, it's funny how all the movies, like, really hit me hard.

And this one's kind of like, huh, okay. I mean, it's not bad, but it's also kind of like, it just kind of went through me. Like, like pig poop, if you will. I think the real reason why this movie is so weird and uneven and totally strange is that Byron Kennedy died in a helicopter crash in 1983. That was Miller's Filmmaking partner They were super close

I'm sure they saw Like a lifetime Of making films together But he dies in helicopter crash Retronauts warning Do not get into a helicopter ever This is a words of advice from Bob Mackey Yeah

I was going to say that's from I was thinking about Robert Evans The other podcast who talks about not being in helicopters Absolutely Do not get the helicopter I'm going to co-opt his advice It's never a good idea I don't care how much faster

It'll get you there stay out of a helicopter so he passes away and according to george miller during the making of the film he is in mourning to the point where he doesn't remember a lot of the making of the movie so that's why he gets a guy named george ogle v to help him direct he worked with george on some tv projects one was called the dismissal which was about the uh... nineteen seventy five australian constitutional crisis so this is the only mad max movie with a co-director because george miller was in a really bad place and that could explain why the movie is so off at times. Yeah, I mean, there is a lot to enjoy there, more than I'd say a lot of sort of more contemporary movies. But I think my absolute favorite thing, sort of in terms of trivia, if I may, about Beyond Thunderdame is that Angelou Rossito, who played Master, the little person writing around on Blaster, he was in Todd Browning's Freaks back in 1932. Wow. Yeah, he's been pretty much the entirety of Hollywood, and he's great, you know.

Yeah, he's delightful, and I was looking him up, Stuart, and apparently he was born in 1909 or something, so he was pretty old. And I love the relationship between Master and Blaster. It's so loving. And I love later where you think, you know, Master, he likes living in the pig shit factory and dressing the way he does. But, no, he cleans up really nicely when he's in the train at the end. He looks very dapper. You know, we said out a lot many times, but we should. I should also just point out that obviously

this movie gives us the NES game Blaster Master. That's just clear where the title came from. Yeah, absolutely. No question. To the point where Master Blaster sounds wrong because I grew up hearing Blastermaster spoken by every child for, I don't know, three or four years and then I want to hear, oh, Master Blaster? Okay. But yeah, there's no way that title didn't come from

this movie. Master Blaster comes from the Stevie Wonder song, Master Blaster for 1980. Wow, so he was singing about a little guy Writing on the back of a big guy Yeah, hang on, let me just check the lyrics They want us to join their fighting But our answer today is that a lot of worries

Let the Breeze throw our fingers slip away Pieces come to Zimbabwe Yeah, it's pretty much exactly the same Yeah, I can see it's just him telling the story of Thunderdome I hope he sued later Wait, wait, now I'm sad because Stevie Wonder has never seen a Mad Max movie Well, they do have

They have versions for the blind where I'm sure a very colorful Australian man will say now he's getting in his car again I don't think I'll do that again during this podcast so don't worry there's really no need he's done quite enough but it's so fun

and I feel like I'm in a safe place where I can do the Australian accent this movie yeah don't worry Bob don't worry Bob we will accept the brunt of the complaints on the monthly community show cancelled for doing Australian face on Retronats

this movie though despite how disappointing it is so much iconic stuff is from this one including Thunderdome not just the iconic can't we get beyond Thunderdome Scatch for Mystery Science Theater the idea of the Thunderdome

the whole two men under one man leaves kind of thing just became a part of the pop culture reference pile the word alone the word alone Thunderdome has been parodied so many times I mean I'm thinking now

I don't even remember what episode it is but I know the Simpsons did beyond Blunderdome And, like, I forget what episode of the day? That was the episode where Mal Gibson turns up and a car drives down. A car drives up on his bottom. Yeah. Honestly, it's a pretty funny episode. But I was thinking of the Rick and Morty episode,

which is just Beyond Thunderdome, to be honest. I don't know if I've seen that one. Is that an earlier season? I think it's like season three. Yeah. But, you know, it's Rick and Morty, so you take to it or you leaves it. It can't be funny.

So, yeah, that is Beyond Thunderdome. I want to move on now to Fury Road from 2015. So at this point, Mad Max is 30 years in the rearview mirror for George Miller and by the 2010s he's obviously known for kids movies like Happy Feet and the Babe films these are movies I couldn't be more different than Mad Max if they tried

although there is an edge to the movies in fact I was reading a lot of reviews of the film Babe last night and a lot of people are saying it's kind of ingest but oh Babe is sort of like a Mad Max movie where this pig is in a world that he doesn't know and it's all about survival. And I'm like,

I can kind of follow you there. He's not making like a cutesy poo, kiddie-shmitty movie that is very stupid. He is putting hard into this, putting a lot of very Australian sentiments into this as well.

So it's not like he's phoning it in with these kids films. And I hear Happy Feet is very twisted. But if you haven't seen it, Bay, pig in the city is kind of fucked. You know, seriously,

there's some insane visuals and some genuinely quite upsetting stuff in it. And I think they wanted to, I think, It was, like, I had trouble even getting the rating it wanted for that reason. But I seriously recommend checking it out because it's really worth it. Yeah, that's next on my agenda, Diamond.

If we're highlighting stuff that George Miller did in between Thunderdome and Fury Road, I also want to point out, the Witches of Eastwick is a really intense, like, wild out there movie about women, three women who get together and they maybe start dating the devil and then things get, like, really crazy. That's a movie that I'm pretty sure did well. It was another one that I heard about for years before I actually saw it when I grew up a little It grew up a little older But that's one I think

It's left out of a lot of the George Mill of retrospectives Because it's absolutely worth watching Yeah, it's great Yeah, Jack Nicholson has the devil Good casting I caught like a bit of it when I was a little kid Just on TV and it scared the shit out of me To be honest

Oh yeah, not for kids Another one, not for kids, yes So unlike what I thought about this movie Not Knowing Anything About it It's not a desperate reboot This is something that Miller wanted to make since the late 80s, and the film actually entered pre-production in the year 2000, with Gibson set the star because he was still of Mad Max age, potentially.

And I don't know if this has been confirmed, but Sigourney Weaver, they had her in mind for Furiosa. She would have been closer to 50, but potentially still could have been a good Furiosa. She was an alien resurrection in, like, 1998. So she was still in action movies at that point. Sure. Yeah, great. You know, still in shape, still looking great.

Why not? But then a lot of things happened, including 9-11, that pushed production down the hill. And a lot of things happened like Mel Gibson melting down and getting canceled like 15 times. So many delays. George Miller has got to make happy feet because he had some agreements in place. And so he's making a few happy feet movies. And, you know, recounting the nightmare of making this film is its own podcast or perhaps podcast series.

I've got the book on my library hold list I think it's called Blood Sweat and Chrome It's about the Making a Fury Road It goes into a lot of the details But yeah I'm looking forward to reading that I suggest our listeners Check that one out as well But despite how long it took for this movie

To come into being This movie The source of it is Miller's idea What if a movie was just one long car chase And you can see how Mad Max 2 is kind of grasping at that But can't quite get to it Because out of necessity there's got to be a few narrative pit stops to explain things.

This, to me, and I'm sure it's not presumptuous to say this, it feels like a new kind of action movie. I dare say it is. Yeah, definitely. Where I would not have the fortitude to sit through a two-hour action movie that kept moving. But Miller is so masterful. And no action movie has this level of momentum. Even great ones like, I know, Terminator 2,

that has some of the most classic set pieces in all of cinema, but there is still, you know, very entertaining still, but there's still downtime to tell the story. I'm talking for a very long time. Stuart, please jump in. I was just going to say Terminator 2, there's just a dumb little kid ruining it. There's no kids in this movie.

This is the lesson you learned from beyond Thunderdome. No children ever. Hey, Mad Max 2 had the feral child, and he didn't ruin things. In fact, he went on to become a very good narrator. Oh, he was okay, yeah. Yeah. He was feral. No, Fury Road Fury Road is just

like the most singular sort of experience and even Furiosa is nothing like Fury Road at all by design, by choice. It can't top it so it doesn't really try. And Fury Road non-stop chase

a little breather, not very long and even that breather is kind of devastating and then it's back to the chasing. And I feel for me what makes it work is even if you just get to a point where you're just kind of like, okay, I get it, big truck, you know, something crazy is going to come into frame and make you go, what the hell is that? And the movie is not going to tell you what it is you just got to roll with it. You're just like, okay, which is what makes it so compelling is the, I don't like using this word, but it makes you think about what's the law here, you know, what's this, what's this guy's deal? The Mad Max Furiosa obviously delves into that a lot more as well as the art book for Mad Max Spurio. road. But you don't need to know any of it. It's all just this

breathless adrenaline rush that just completely works despite having characters that are, I don't want to call them sketches, but they're almost just kind of like singular things. I don't know how to describe it. They're just like Mad Max himself, Max himself in this movie.

But he doesn't, he barely even needs to be there. It's not his movie anymore. That's, I think, probably the biggest surprise. And I'm sure I remember, I remember the internet at the time, it still very, a lot of people, you know, the garbage people of the world are like, oh, it's feminist, they made it woke.

And it's like, no, no, it's just, it's, he's in the movie, but it's not about him. He, and he quickly realizes how much, like, he's just there and he's, he's going to leave. And literally the movie ends with him walking away. I'm like, yeah, I'm done here. And, you know, he does his part, he plays his role, and then he's, then he

walks away, and the movie itself is about other people. I mean, you look at the cast, top to bottom, just totally stacked. I mean, in case you didn't know, Hugh, oh, geez, Hugh Kearney Binds, Hugh B, I can never remember his name, but the actor who plays a toe cutter in the very first Mad Max is here as a Morton Joe, and he's wearing this ridiculous makeup, and he's, this giant mask on, and he is terrifying, but he's, like, even though he's, like, clearly old and decrepit and about to die, he's still terrifying. He's, like,

he's like, he's like, Darth Vinn without any powers, but he's still, like, intimidating as hell. Um, you got Nicholas Holt, who's, uh, The Warboy who we're here in Nux, I think. And he's almost the only one who has like a real arc in the movie. And it's really impressive. And he gives a great performance before I think a lot of people knew who he was. I did not, like, I didn't recognize him in most of their movies. I had to go back and realize, oh, wait, that's Nicholas Holt in that movie with a shaved head.

And talk about his buddies who are basically, you know, tumors on his on his shoulder. Like, it's a, oh, God. I mean, really, really, we could talk about this movie for like five hours. Oh, yeah. It's so incredible. and it's just it's packed and especially this you know watching Friyosa this week

watching Mad Max yesterday as I did I can see so many things that are connected to all these things that I really impressed me I mean in the very first movie in the very first chase scene the Knight Rider is there and he's screaming into the car radio it's like you know I am the Knight Rider and it was like you know

remember the Knight Rider and see the Knight Rider remember him and it's like the backbone of the sort of the cult in Fury Road is about you know witness me I'm going to go to Valhalla. Like, they've got this, you almost see like a religion is built up in this world, you know, in a place where society is gone. It's like, the only thing that matters is, you know, being acknowledged by everyone around you.

And then, you know, remembering you as best they can and telling people about about yourself once you're gone. Like, that's it. That's all there is. Yeah, that's like the importance of storytelling in this world is underlined by how much these characters will die just. to have a story about them be told later in the future of this world. Yeah, it's incredible when you can, I love always encountering, oh, they made a new kind of movie, oh, they made a new kind of video game. I'm excited to experience it.

And that's what I was feeling when I was watching this movie for the first time, not knowing anything about it and thinking, oh, this action scene probably is going to end soon, and then thinking, oh, maybe this is just the whole movie, and then realizing, oh, this is the whole movie. And I try not to be a movie guy. I think because other movie guys annoy me. I've seen a lot of movies. I haven't seen a lot of it, some of the more important movies.

Like, I've never seen The Godfather. And if I say that in front of someone, they'll go, you've never seen it. And then there's an argument. There's a conversation. I only get like that with this film. And thankfully, only internally. And in fact, when I was scouting for Retronauts co-host to be on this episode,

I said, oh, hey, I'm doing a bad Mac's episode. Who Wants to be on it? And one of our lovely co-host said, oh, I've never seen that. Not even Fury Road. In my head, I thought, You've never. And then I kind of wanted to mail them a Blu-ray or something just because you're missing. It's such, it's a singular amazing experience and I just want everyone to have it because I was once like them.

I thought, ah, a desperate Mad Max reboot. It's not like a Ghostbusters or Beetlejuice reboot. This thing deserves to exist. Yeah, I hear you. You know, my kids, I think, are a little, are still a little too young to enjoy any of these movies, but even especially Fury Road. But my wife loves to go to the movies. And I've been trying now for almost a decade to get her to watch Fear Road. And I just, I can't, I can't get her to do it.

I don't know what it is. I need, I need a Japanese celebrity to come along. She needs to meet Hideo Kojima in real life. And then if he tells her how good it is, then maybe she'll watch it. I don't know. I have seen The Godfather. I don't know if that makes me a movie guy. I don't know if I want to be a movie guy.

I do like movies, though. I am a guy. So you can like movies and be a guy, but you don't want to be a movie guy. Okay. I'll try and navigate this. It seems fraught. But thank you. And one thing I do want to point out about this movie is that we mentioned how the Mad Mac series largely avoids the topic of sexual violence, especially against women, in this world.

And I feel like it was inevitable that one of the movies handled this topic. And I think this handles it in a very classy and subtle way, where we don't have to see anything that's happening. It's all implied, but you know, oh, here's an avenue that was not explored. And the success, it feels more rewarding because you understand how dire things are for this group of people now. Yeah, I mean, the scene where the wives cut off their chastity belts really just, you know, I think one of them even kicks the chastity belt if they cut it off, which is like, it's so beautiful. Although, as long as we're seeing the praises of George Miller, we also need to, we need to highlight Margaret Sixel, who in fact is Mrs. George Miller. She is the editor of this movie

She spent about two years of her life Putting all this stuff together If you look it up They gave her some kind of Unimaginable number of feet of film That they shot So many hours and hours And hours of footage that she had to work with

And she cut it all down into this movie And she very rightly got an Academy Award For her work So if we talk about You know How incredible this movie is And how it feels so unlike anything else You know

Credit to her which, by the way, Bob, she's from South Africa. So all your earlier accent work was on brand. Okay, good. I was actually doing my Margaret Sixel impression. I only dusted off at parties. We could talk a tiny bit about Furiosa. Unfortunately, not a lot of people have seen it.

I imagine a lot of listeners haven't seen it. They might be waiting for, you know, the home release or the streaming release. But I feel like it's hard to come up with an original take on the movie because I feel like everyone has the same take and that take is correct in that it's not as good as Fury Road because nothing can be. Fortunately, it reminds you too much of Fury Road out of necessity based on what it is. And then the movie ends with clips of Fury Road. So I feel like it cannot possibly succeed in the way Fury Road does. But at the same time, you are watching a George Miller movie and the craft is there and there's nothing else like it. So in a vacuum, excellent film.

Unfortunately, it is too close to the life-changing cinematic experience that it is being spun off from. I really I want to know who who came down to like hey we need to end this movie with clips of the last movie because I feel like that sucks the energy right out of the theater like I enjoyed this movie I watch it I absolutely it's a very intense movie it's not it's not on Fury Rose level but it delivers it keeps you engaged it's long but it doesn't feel long I was not look at my watch but then it ends with just it does like the Rogue One thing where it goes goes right up to the end, right up to the start of Fury Road, and then you just see literal clips of Fury Road during the credits. And I'm just like, man, don't make you, don't remind me of how much better Fury Road is. I'm sorry. I love, I, like, this is a great movie and I recommend it, but holy shit, don't do that. That's stupid. Oh. I'm at very real risk of being a film, so I'm going to be very brief on this one. I mean, I think this was a film, and I'm so sorry before I'm about to say it's so pretentious I know

I feel like this is a film ultimately that is about the sort of severe patriarchal oppression of storytelling in Hollywood women's stories because it is for me from like the first

I'm not going to spoil it but one of the first shots is one of what they call the history men and he's looking at the camera and then he fades away and I'm just like oh that's interesting what the hell is that all of And as I watched the film, I started to feel like, oh, I see, this is like about, this is even more about myth-making than any of the other movies. It's almost like a thesis on his, what, George Miller's entire sort of career of movies. I think it's a really feminist one here, even more so than Fury Road.

So the Chuds can get really mad about it. And I, as a big old film studies nerd, I loved it. I thought it was thematically really, really impressive, and I want to watch it again. But if you are here for more of Fury Road, it is very pointedly not that, and in that respect, it doesn't

deliver the same experience. And Fury Road is, the way I see it. Fury Road is just the most perfect, like, five-star action film. And this for me is like a perfect five-star, maybe final movie, here's what I want to tell you. I mean, I'm not going to spoil it if I could go on and on about all the stuff that I loved in this film,

But for me, yeah, I think it's kind of a masterpiece. I absolutely adore it. Yeah, I think we are all mad Max Likers and can say, please go watch the film. It's a very good film, even if, again, can't compete with Fury Road. It reminds me of something I like to paraphrase a lot. The writer of Catch 22, Joseph Heller, he says, people ask me, why haven't I written a book that good? He says, no one else has. So that's essentially what George Miller can say, why didn't you make a movie better than Fury Road?

Nobody else has, so why can I? Why should I? Before move on, I just want to say, because I did, I saw Furiosa this week and then I watched Mad Max the first one again, I was impressed watching Mad Max to see little things that were definitely, you know, thematically on point and how much was, how much, how much felt, you know, like a kinship. I really was, I really enjoyed how Furiosa still, you know, I think every movie does this, but even the fact that Furiosa in 2024 is still doing like the, the, the, the hand cranked stuff where it's like the movies like what do you call it like it's like undercranked where like the action kind of feels like it's kind of spit up a little bit it almost looks like it almost looks like

slapstick at points even though that's not jovial um don't forget the george miller special zoom in on the eye very very yeah that's in the movie oh no i definitely notice the under cranking and i notice it's a common theme throughout all of the movies and then when you first see it you're thinking is this going to be too silly but then you get wrapped up and how fast everything is moving So, as enjoying Friosa as I did, I also feel like it also maybe appreciate Mad Max even more watching it again because like, oh, this is just, you know, he got so much, he got so much right when he was still figuring out how to even do this, that even years later, he's still doing some of the same tricks and it still works, but he had a lot of this down, you know, 45 years ago and this movie still holds up to me. So I feel like I appreciate both movies more, having seen them back to back, and I will definitely. I will definitely see Furiosa again, just maybe not this week. And I'm sure I'm going to have more affection for it the next time I'm around.

I'm sure I'll pick up on little things. But, yeah, it is kind of hard to watch that movie and come out of it, you know, because of the way they end it, just kind of like, oh, man, Fury Road was so good. So good, you guys. Yeah, I hope that was a studio note and not a Miller idea to include clips of Fury Road at the end. Unnecessary. Oh, no. You know what? No, forget it. You know what? I love the clips. I think they fit in with everything in the movie about how it's all about telling a story and passing it down, ending it with clips of why old... Because they've thrown it out about whether or not any of this happened the way that they said it did with the history men who are telling this as men and maybe they're enhancing and exaggerating what they did. It's a lot. It's a lot. I loved it. It's a lot. I can at least respect the history men because I think that is just a few.

future podcaster. And when the world ends, I'll be one of these old men with a long beard and ruins scraped all over my face. Talking about how Mario Brothers used to be killed dokey, dokey panic. Somebody's got to know these settlements. So moving on to the games, yes, there are only two Mad Max games in a handful of canceled ones, and we're not going to linger too long on these, but we'll talk about them just to cover them. The first one is Mad Max.

It's developed by Gray Matter and published by Mindscape for the NES in 1990. and if you were to imagine a licensed Mad Max game from 1990, what they made is basically what you're imagining now. It's you searching through these nonlinear maps for supplies, you go into traditional overhead scrolling action segments to get supplies, and then you have to use the supplies to buy tickets to get into an arena where once you pass the arena, you move on to the next stage. And that's essentially it.

And I'm not sure if you have any more knowledge about this, Stuart, because I found out that it's one of those weird things that happens in reverse sometimes where they make the rip-off and then the later version they actually get the license. So this was originally a microcomputer game called Road Raider slash Motor Massacre

came out for many microcomputers and then when they decided to make the NES version they said let's just get the license and sell it that way and of course there are some compromises to make the NES version but it's basically the same game. Yeah, I've not played the micro when I didn't know that existed. I've seen the Nes version, and, I mean, it's got horrible music.

It's got great sound effects. And honestly, it looks kind of fun for what it is. It's not the sort of thing I would rush to play now, but I think it could be a lot worse considering. It's got a weird gameplay loop in that you're driving around, and then you have a brief sequence where you have to, like, rate a place to get supplies. But then you get to the arena, and the arena is just more driving. Like, you're, like, I don't want to, I don't want to get, like, you know, the realism of it all. but it's like, how big is the arena that you're able to drive a car around? Like, it must be like the size of Detroit.

Like, it's this massive place with, like, giant pits in it, and the pits that are opening and closing. And, like, I feel like you have to, you have to ram, like, 20-something cars to their death in order to proceed to the next level. Like, it's a really strange setup. I feel like, given that it's called Mad Max, I feel like this game is very little.

It's very little about humanity, and it's more about just driving around, which is, I don't know. It's, to me, it's a strange, It's a strange ratio of Max to Mad, if you will. I do like how they keep the touch from the other version of the game where when you shoot another human being, they kind of melt. It's surprisingly gross, isn't it?

Yeah. Yeah, bloodless but nasty. There's not very much to say nobody remembers this game. Nobody talks about it. Again, the cover to me as a kid is like, Mad Max, this looks boring. Who's this guy and his dog? But, yeah, it's just kind of the most obvious interpretation of this game or this movie for 1990 console design mindset. We're going to move on because 25 years later, there's another Mad Max game finally.

Once again called Mad Max, developed by Avalanche, published by Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment, for the PS4, the X bone, the PC, all the good ones. And this was planned for release before Fury Road, but it came out months after the movie. And unfortunately, it also came out on the same day as Metal Gear Solid 5, another open-worldy game in a desert-style environment, which super unfortunate for this game, which I feel is like a sterling 7 out of 10 classic. I feel like this game really got handicapped by a lot of things that obviously couldn't have helped. They couldn't be helped. I'm sure, like, during development, they had a lot of issues with publishers, you know, whims. The fact that it's released after the movie, but in fact has almost nothing to do with the movie.

You know, like, there is no Furiosa in the movie. Like, some of the characters are there, and some of the places are there. But to me, like, having seen the movie and loved the movie, everything I heard about the game made it sound like, oh, this isn't for me. This is like, this almost feels like a pushback against the movie. Like, oh, it's more Mad Max, because the movie didn't have enough bad Max it. I'm like, well, that's not a relation to me. Which is unfair, because it sounds like it actually is a cool game that's worth investigating. But given the circumstances surrounding its relief, relief, release.

and other versions were planned but cancelled other publishers as their own ideas and just you know there's probably a whole book and just getting this movie like much like Fury wrote

at its own book like there's probably a book behind this game like what it took to get it out there and then what happened and what went wrong and how no one seemed to have any faith in it including George Miller

who apparently kind of badmouthed after the fact which doesn't sound fair yeah Jason's trying to get on that place I the thing that I found interesting after seeing Furiosa is how much of the game is in Furiosa, like

all the way down, and I don't think this is really a spoiler, like, for a very brief scene, you do actually meet, see the character Chum Bucket, who's with you for this entire game pretty much, he's there, he's in Furiosa, and I was like, oh, it's that guy who annoyed me a lot. But I played this

game, I think it's probably one of those not-for-me games, because I kind of respect it, but because I like 100 percenting everything, I get really upset about picking up all of the scrap and knocking everything over and 100%ing everywhere you can visit. And you can visit about a million places and they're all quite similar. So I really

highly recommend you don't try and 100% this game. And then you will probably have fun with it. It's really not worth your time to explore every little environment. And I don't think you're supposed to do that. So get in there. And yeah, it's fun. It's got nice and management kind of gameplay

driving around in these wasteland and suddenly like a convoy will turn up and you can be like, should I take that convoy down if I ignore it and go where I'm supposed to be going. um yeah i think it's pretty good i think seven out of ten is a good score for it really it's um and if you're a fan it got that up to seven point one you know generously yeah i was impressed steward uh when i played a few hours of this yesterday for the first time i didn't have time it was in the press in 2015 and also playing metalgar solid five a lot so i kind of shrugged at this game and thought well

it can't match up to the fury road experience but even if it is the most obvious open world version of mad max it's made with a lot of care and like you were saying a lot of furiosa elements are in this because George Miller wanted a film Furiosa back to back with Fury Road and it just didn't pan out so a lot of those ideas worked the way into this game like I believe it's either Scrotus or Richtus that makes their debut in the video

game and they're not in Fury Road So yeah if you played this game when you saw Scrotis in Furiosa you're probably clapping and hooting and saying I know that guy because he was in this game yeah I mean this is made by Avalanche

who makes the just the just the just cause series. So you're right, Stuart. If you try to 100% any of those games, you will go insane. They're made to take over your life. It has that thing as well, where you have to hold A to do things instead of just pressing it once, which makes me cross, and I wish they would

stop doing it. Yeah, I'm not used to holding down triggers. I mean, I think I did too much trigger holding down in Final Fantasy 7 rebirth, so I'm very tired of that. So I was getting a little fatigued by driving in the game, even though that's just the standard driving controls for every game. I think Final Fantasy 7

Rebirth might have broken me in some way. I think you can get this game now for like five bucks and it's worth that. Oh, yeah. Yeah, grab it. Because there's all the storytelling is so visual in the Mad Max movies. I actually delight in reading bios on characters in this game because you never are given that much of a luxury in any of these movies. You have to learn just by watching what they're doing and how they're interacting with people. It's nice to see, oh, here's five paragraphs on Scrotis.

I think I'll like sip some wine and read about Scroatus tonight. So, yeah, I mean, like you said, Stuart, it's five bucks usually, and it's a moderately excellent multiplayer game, or sorry, open world game that is a little compromised based on the publisher. There have been a lot of canceled Mad Max games, so let's talk about these. This one wasn't canceled, but it was re-skinned. So there's a game called Outlander that came out in 1992 for the Genesis and Super Nintendo. And apparently, they wanted this to be the sequel to the previous Mad Maxx. game. They're both published by Mindscape, but the license expired and they either couldn't get the rights again or they didn't want to pay for it. So it comes out in this outlander form. To me, it does not look very good. Actually, the NES game looks like it's more fun than this, but it's still very Mad Maxy. I just real quick

I think that the visuals when you are driving are surprisingly impressive like the frame rate is surprisingly good and you've got enemies like you can hit them with your car you'll see them slam into your windshield you've got a little window for when they drive past you sort of to the left or right and then you can pick a shluck gun out the window and take them down

and there is something cool about that but then you get to the side scrolling sections and it's like some of the worst shit that I've ever seen it's like rolling thunder but like somehow worse sorry for the rolling thunder fans Yeah, that part does not look good I prefer the overhead Mad Max NES game action

Just to fit in with the Ozzy I call it rolling chunder There you go That's one of the Aussie slang things We haven't hit upon yet So yeah That's Outlander not a lot to say about that The next item on our list though

It's fascinating to me It is Mad Max Autorama Originally intended for Project Nemo Which was Hasbro's VHS-based video game system that lived on in the form of productions that were made for it that never saw release on the original platform like Nighttrap and Sewer Shark

they were made for this system eventually came out much, much later which is why when you're playing Nighttrap in 1992 it looks like it was made several years ago That's crazy I mean starring Dana Plato That's all you need to know Starring Dana Plato

In 87 that was a draw Yeah They were competing with atmosphere They couldn't possibly win it's true i mean and talk about pearls before swine there's a lot written online about the making of this apparently george miller wanted on board with this project he wanted to direct the footage

and he's like i don't know what the rest of this game is but i'll direct it so that was what how his involvement was going to work because he didn't understand how they would put it together in forms of an in the form of an interactive game movie but he wanted to direct the footage and at this point mel gipson could have been in this Mad Max spinoff. From everything I've read, it seemed like he was on board as well. But apparently

they designed a lot of the game. Hasbro found out that Mad Max is not a kids franchise, and this was not the market they were going for. So they wanted this to be very compromised and eventually they shut it down. So there's a lot online about

this, but I can just imagine if George Miller had shot this and it never came out. That is so wild to me because like half of the 1980s was about R-rated movies getting games made for children you know like all those

all those horror franchises that got NES games you know you weren't like kids weren't supposed to watch those movies but they did and they knew about them and they were famous and they like the idea that you would have you had a potential Mad Max game with Miller and Gibson in the 80s and the company's like oh I don't know this maybe

maybe this isn't for kids like it's it's it's not for kids but they love it yeah I mean on that note it's weird that Mad Max was never marketed to me like Robocop and Terminator aliens Freddy Kruger Jason all that stuff was there was no Mad Max action figures I'm sure

maybe for the adult collector they came out much later but Miller was very careful about licensing the property The Mad Max cartoon could have been dope honestly yeah I was really cool it's kind of funny there's really there seems to be no real animated history I know there's a comic at some point but I don't think there's

any real animated history, is there, of Mad Max? I don't think so. I can't think of anything, no. Yeah, and I think the comic book was just a very limited Fury Road tie-in, and I'm hearing not great things about that comic book. Yeah, it's also sort of been clearly decanonized now by Fury, it's not that it really matters that much. So, yeah, that's Mad Max Autorama.

What could have been? Then we have Mad Max Asylum, which was going to be an early-aughts generation take on Mad Max, and given what we know about that generation, and it might not have been that great, but it was going to be developed by Melbourne House, which was eventually absorbed by Chrome. Oh, my God.

And apparently George Miller met with them and eventually shut them down, but there's a fun story about the meeting with him in which he came in to talk about the making of the game, and they dumped, like, their big design dock in his lap because they're just so proud of all the ideas they came up with. He opens it up, and on the first page, there is a page that says,

here's three reasons why Beyond Thunderdome sucked. Oh, wow. they're really embarrassed because they forgot that's part of the design doc and he's like guys I know what's wrong with the movie don't worry but he eventually shoots that project down so maybe that pissed them off maybe he didn't trust them if it was chrome they were probably just like yeah Mad Max runs around throwing boomerangs and collecting opals and if he double jump uses the boomerangs to hover it can't have been good it can't have been yes I guess they're behind

tie the Tasmanian tiger yeah that's the bit sorry that is the bit I'm doing there I just want to make sure I was right There's another guy named TAC Is there like a caveman? Max, the Australian man Okay I'll take your word for it And then finally

We have competing Fury Road games That were going to be in development At the same time So Corey Barlog I forgot he briefly left Sony And in that time He was going to be working on

A original Mad Max Fury Road game That never came into being. And then Interplay was developing their own Fury Road game, but then Warner Brothers got the rights to publish the video game. And that changed. These are two things that never came into being. I'm not sure how long, how far either one got into development. But Corey Barlog, at least, was a consultant on Mad Max, the eventual 2015 game. Yeah, the Corey Barlick story goes back quite a few years. So you really, it also, it just helps to underline how much of the 21st century George Miller spent trying to get back into the Mad Max business,

but he had to just jump through, you know, so many hurdles and get the right people and get so much stuff done. In fact that he had, like, multiple tie-in projects that just didn't come together at the right time. So there's this, you know, you've got about 20 years of history now of just, you know, George Miller says this and George Miller wants to do this. And like, it just didn't happen. It's like we could have, you know, 60-year-old Miller could have made it Mad Max movie.

Who knows what that would have been like? I don't know. Yeah, from my research, it seemed like Miller is not a gamer per se, but he's aware of video games and what they should be. And above all, he is worried about any bad licensing, tarnishing this brain, which I think is why Mad Max has remained so pure. It's hard to find, like, low-quality Mad Max products. It's basically here are five movies, here are two video games, one you can't play anymore, so don't worry about it. And that's kind of it. There's no, this is not Star Wars.

There's no, like, Mad Max series hitting Disney Plus every 18 months. Yet. Yet. Let's hope for the best. When these creators die, that the sanctity is upheld, things like Back to the Future in Mad Max. I hope to God, they're not mine for all their worth. I guess in the case of Mad Max, though, what you also have is you have now, you know, 40 years of people who love Mad Max and made their own thing. Because so much what makes so much about Mad Max is basically, you know, a.

available to anyone. Like, you don't, you know, there's no desert copyright. You don't need to, you know, you can put a guy in a fast car in the desert without paying George Miller. The fact that, you know, other, it's like, there are like at least three or four other properties that are basically Mad Max plus something else. Like, I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't mention Fist of the North Star, because Fis the North Star is absolutely, you know, mad Max plus martial arts, you know.

And, you know, Fist the North Star, you know, Fist the North Star, does have, like, I think, 30 games. I mean, like, we probably touched like 10 of them in the podcast that was only a fraction of the total number of Fist of Nostar games that are out there, including the more recent one, which is basically like

Fistanorstar slash Mad Max slash Yakuza that you can play on your PS4 right now called Lost Paradise. And like, I'm, like, do I want to play bad Macs? I'm kind of curious. I feel like I didn't give enough time, but I know I didn't get enough time into Lost Paradise, so I definitely want to play that first.

Yeah, Mario Kart is basically a madmacks When you think about it Yeah, I don't see any people in that world I just see cars and warriors You know Diamond I was thinking In my head I was thinking people Can't flagrantly rip off existing properties That much anymore

But then I realize Oh, Zach Snyder just made his own Star Wars And nobody cares Yeah, yeah It's just out there on Netflix You can watch it whatever you want It's got all the elements You got farmers, you got droids, you got an empire

you got a Darth Vader type guy I didn't hate it but it also it's like the more I watch it the more I'm like this doesn't seem this doesn't really seem great Zach It seems like the option is there to not watch it at all So I think I'm going to exercise that one

Yeah I really can't recommend it I'm sorry bring back the owls That's what I say bring back the owls You're free to not watch it The Owls of Gahoul Yeah the Ales of Gahul I forgot about that I'm pro any animated bird movie

But we have to wrap up soon my final question for all of you is Will Death Stranding 2 become a Mad Max game So gradually we won't even notice Now what I'm noticing online is Hideo Kojima is becoming BFFs With George Miller Relationship with Gerel Moldo Tormo ended

George Miller is my new best friend It's that meme And he's you know He's trying to get meetings with Anya Taylor Joy And I feel like we're going to see a lot more Mad Maxy stuff in Death Stranding 2 Which I'm excited about And then, reflecting upon it, I'm thinking, wow, Death Stranding is kind of mad, Maxi.

And I'm just seeing Kojima, like, just tweeting, oh, this is my fifth Furiosa screening. And look, I got the pamphlet. And he's so excited about the movie, and I'm happy for him. By the way, it's extra impressive when you realize that, again, it wasn't that late, but Furiosa didn't open here in Japan until the end of May. So if he's seen it five times already, that means, like, he's seen it, like, multiple times per week since it come out. Like, he's, he's not, there's not a lot of downtime for Koja between Furiosa screenings in his, you know, in his timeline. Maybe, yeah. Didn't he get Miller to appear in one of his games?

Am I crazy? I don't think Miller was in Death Stranding. There was, uh, you know, Deltoro and Conan O'Brien and Junji Ito. I'm not, I'm not sure if Miller was in that, but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Miller was already hyped for two. Like, could be. Oh, crap. I, I get, it's hard to keep track, it's hard to keep track of, of the, the, the Kojima celebrities.

Apparently he is in Death Trane 2, yeah Oh, nice, okay, so he will be into. I mean, I'm bringing this up as a joke, but George Miller has said on the record, you know, I didn't like the 2015 game, but if I could have anyone make the game it be Kojima, but I wouldn't ask him to do that, and I'm thinking that's all you had to say.

Yeah, it's no longer on the beach, it's now in the desert, and it's in Australia, and it's not called Death Stranding 2, it's called Mad Max. There will no longer be a Death Stranding 2. This is now going to be a Mad Max game, and let's, uh, Norman Read us, go home. Tom Hardy, what are you doing? But yeah, let's see what happens in the future.

I'm excited about Mad Max, even though Garfield was eating Mad Max's lunch, as he's known to do. And I'm worried about the future of the series, but also George Miller is in his 80s, and maybe he's not, he doesn't have another one of these in him. But again, he seems so spry. But I am just excited about Mad Max and excited to talk to two people as excited as me. But we're going to wrap up now. This has been an episode of Retronauts. And if you want to follow us online, we're on Twitter and Blue Sky as Retronauts.

And this is all brought to you via the Retronauts Patreon at patreon.com slash Retronauts. And if you're interested in supporting the show and getting a lot of bonus episodes, I believe over 100 at this point, sign up at the $5 level. You'll get two bonus episodes every month. They're all full length. And you'll also get a weekly column and podcast by Diamond Fight,

who you just heard on this podcast. And that really helps support the show. and we like to give you, I would say, at least three hours of audio content extra every month just for signing up. So please check it out at patreon.com slash retronauts. I will do my own personal plugs last, but let's go over to Stewart. Where can we find you? What are you working on and what do you want to promote? Hello, you can find me well on Retronauts a lot of the time.

I'm going to be, I haven't actually done it yet as of this recording, but I'll be doing a weekly thing for the Patreon soon as well, so I look forward to that. You can find me on Twitter as Djibacabra, and you can find me on Blue Sky as Stuart Chip. And I wrote a book called All Games Are Good, and it is very good book, and I think you should read it, and that's the best picture I've got. And Diamond, how about you? You can find me around the internet by looking for Fight Club, F-E-I-T, that is my last name, C-L-U-B, that's something a barbarian might wield in the wilds of Australia. Awesome website is fightclub.comme, that's dot-me, so that's a good place to catch up on what I've been writing, what I've. I've been podcasted about. All my social links are in there, too.

And also, before we wrap up, I just want to make sure, am I the only driver on this podcast? Because I do have a car. Oh, no, I drive. You do? Okay, you have a drive. I drive very dangerously. Okay.

Do you have any skulls or feathers on your ride? Yes. Excellent. I've got a family car, so I can't. Sorry. And as for me, I have been Bob Mackie, the main host for this one. You can find me on Twitter in Blue Skies.

Bob Serbo, and my other podcast is the Talking Simpsons Network. you can find those podcasts wherever you find podcasts there's Talking Simpsons and what a cartoon and if you sign up at the Patreonatryon.com slash Talking Simpsons there's over 180 bonus episodes there covering things like Futurama and King of the Hill every month

but that has been it for another episode of Retronauts we'll see you again next week but until then Just walk away Just walk away I don't know... ...know... ...no...

...withal... ...then... ...and... ...you know.... ...and... ...and... ...and... ...and...

...and... Thank you.