Best Mad Max movie that is not Fury Road

IDK if I will vote for it or not, but I always loved the Captain Walker subplot in thunderdome and felt it was severely underrated for that reason.

I just watched all these for the first time and my ranking is 1>3>2 but my impression is this is an unpopular opinion. Seems like Road Warrior is the canonical classic? But Lord Humongous is such a dud as a villain, especially compared to Toecutter or Aunty Entity. What do you think?

Thunderdome is great! I think the common opinion is that it is awesome for the first half but not for the second, but i loved the whole thing. The kids weren’t too cutesy and the big train action sequence rules.

Road warrior for me

easily Road Warrior but I have a lotta friends who say not seeing Mad Max and going straight to Road Warrior is ok and I want to beat these ppl up

like yeah, the truly nihilistic stuff takes a while, but maaan does it hit hard when it does.

hate Thunderdome. I've tried three times. when the kids show up, I'm out.

I wanted to get a Lord Humungus tattoo

Lord Humungus isn't so much a villain like Toecutter. first Mad Max is taking place in the waning hours of civilization, where lawmen still (barely) exist, and society is hanging on by a thread. Toecutter is one of the guys expediting its downfall.

Humankind is pretty much the villain in Road Warrior. yeah, the oil hoarders aren't violent and don't seem to be bad people, but they also seem to be hoarding oil which naturally attracts scavengers who want to rip you off, which is all Humungus and company are. they have a little muscle and a murderous streak but they're fairly easily defeated with sleight of hand in the end.

Tell u what i could murderous steak right about now

lol

out of curiosity why exclude Fury Road from the poll? I'm genuinely interested how many might think it's the best in the series. I might actually believe that myself!

I just watched all these for the first time and my ranking is 1>3>2 but my impression is this is an unpopular opinion. Seems like Road Warrior is the canonical classic? But Lord Humongous is such a dud as a villain, especially compared to Toecutter or Aunty Entity. What do you think?

yeah you're bonkers, but it's okay, you have decades to rewatch these and better appreciate the worldbuilding, production design, visual storytelling and action in Max 2/Rad Warrior

easily Road Warrior but I have a lotta friends who say not seeing Mad Max and going straight to Road Warrior is ok and I want to beat these ppl up

this is totally fine. all the Max movies are standalone, and ppl can discover them in any order. especially if its the difference between them watching Max 2 then Fury Road vs watching none of them.

fury road is without question the best in the series, i thought

yeah that’s why i left it off. also wanted opinions on the original trilogy.

xxpost what I really meant though was "you don't need to ever see Mad Max at all", as if it's an inferior entry in the series. watching out of order is fine because it's not a linear storyline and more about style and atmosphere.

xpost I didn't think consensus = Fury Road is best though? I definitely feel like there's a pretty big pocket that still prefers Road Warrior.

Road Warrior used to be my favorite, but a more recent rewatch left me underwhelmed. The original Mad Max is my go to these days.

xpost but clicking anyway

out of curiosity why exclude Fury Road from the poll? I'm genuinely interested how many might think it's the best in the series. I might actually believe that myself!

different lead (Gibson vs Theron), made 35 years after the previous one by the same director, took 18 years to get made vs six months

it's a coinflip whether Fury or 2 are better, each have very distinct merits, as well as the most similarities of any of 'em.

xpost I get more anxious every time I watch the og Mad Max because of how brutal the end is and knowing that it comes at you fast.

that's why it's so rewatchable with me.

what I really meant though was "you don't need to ever see Mad Max at all", as if it's an inferior entry in the series.

you don't though! it's a great movie but nbd if someone never sees it, for whatever reason.

anecdote: saw the first trailer for Fury Road before Inherent Vice with a pal. he was like "holy shit that looks amazing. but I've never seen any mad maxes."

a year or w/e afterward, with Fury Road's release scheduled, the only existing rep cinema (60 seat converted screening room) in a city of 6 million people was gonna play MM2, so I told pal we should go. he demurred re. not having seen 1, but I assured him it didn't matter.

drinks in hand, the movie starts with the explanatory montage about climate change and state capture by oil corps leading to the collapse of civilisation in Australia*. he leans over and says, "oh, is this why I didn't need to see it - all this is what happens in #1?" I tell him "none of this happens in #1." he beams, says "oh fuck yeah" in a NOW I get it tone, leans back, and we ride.

*phew, thank goodness we solved that in the last 40 years!

Neanderthal wants to beat me up

don't worry, I could get KOed by a mannequin!

voted og Mad Max

it’s all about the gonzo filmmaking for me & doing so much with so little. Post apocalyptic Looney Tunes gearhead weirdofest. Who even comes up with that?

i know that Mad Max 2 is the ~better~ movie structurally, visually whatever but i really feel like the heart & soul of the whole franchise is in the first movie, all of the George-isms are there.

and Hugh Keays Byrne. Toecutter is truly a character beyond anything the script envisioned , all of that menace was all him on screen in the moment & he’s so fucking brilliant

3>2>1

insanity

challops

thunderdome ~sucks~ SO MUCH

Yeah im in broad agreement that fury road isnt worth having in here, its an all time great and the other three are quirky faves, each quite different to the others, i can nod along to VGs arguments for one which is a fairly unique effort as it stands and has two legit great performances and several wtf moments that you can see as miller signature moves before he could even afford a pen, but three is tbh only interesting as a study in mess

Road Warrior/Mad Max 2 is the most iconic. It's the one that's often imitated but never replicated. Mad Max is an excellent grim, gonzo exploitation film. But I've always loved Thunderdome, too, and can never quite understand why it has so many detractors. To me it's almost on par with Big Trouble in Little China for bizarro action/comedy/adventure with its own weird rules, dialogue and world.

Jesus

Ok im not out to attack what ppl love but

a. People detract from thunderdome because shite

b. Bog trouble in little China is a standalone masterpiece and Hollywood has never matched it

I stand hy the typo, much of it occurs in sewers

It's not the best, but I will always remember Thunderdome because my dad went away on a trip for work and we rented a VCR, Thunderdome, and another movie for the weekend. I must have watched it five or six times over the three days and I don't even remember what the other movie was.

I always think I dont like Thunderdome, and then I'll happen to catch it on cable or something and rediscover one super cool image, idea, or sequence after another. hard to top MM2, which has zero flaws, but TDome is always better than I remember it.

Not comparing it to Big Trouble, like, literally. Big Trouble is its own thing. But the first half of Thunderdome shares a certain similarly unique (is that an oxymoron?) bonkers cadence and rhythm to the dialogue and storytelling.

I forgive u

Two men enter, two men leave! Two men enter, two men leave!

Uh, one man leave. Two men leave is Hammocktown.

i suspect a lot of people's opinions about these are shaded by seeing them when they were kids. like i see complaints about the kids in thunderdome, which feels like someone who loved road warrior when they were a kid but they saw thunderdome when they were a preteen or teen and didn't want any "kid stuff."

here are my thoughts on them as an adult who just watched them all for the first time (bits of thunderdome seemed familiar but i had definitely never watched the whole movie):

mad max - i'm a sucker for low-budget gonzo filmmaking and for movies with stripped-down plots. the action scenes in this are amazing even before considering the budgetary and technical restrictions. toecutter is easily the best villain in the original trilogy and i love his gang of weirdos too, everyone has their own distinct psychotic personality. lots of other fun supporting characters too like goose and fifi. the end does get into generic revenge thriller mode but that's only like 15 minutes of the movie.

road warrior - my feelings on this were probably tinged by watching it through TNT which has a pretty shitty print of the movie. solid world-building, though it's just desert and then the oil village. i like the gyro captain. the villagers are fine. the feral child is a worse "cute kid" violation than the tribe in thunderdome. my biggest problem with it is lord humongous who is a snooze of a villain. no personality, doesn't really do anything cool, boring. the mohawk henchman has more personality but is also dumb. great action as always.

thunderdome - amazing world-building and sets in this. it looks fantastic and the whole thing is just fun. bartertown/thunderdome is sick obviously. i had heard the complaints about the kid tribe but i found them not particularly cutesy and actually effectively creepy when max first wakes up and they're following him around repeating everything he says, and then the recitation of the captain walker legend is great too. the train action sequence is cartoony but still rips.

fwiw I saw all of these after I turned 30

the feral child is a worse "cute kid" violation than the tribe in thunderdome

no way, he was badass!

totally domed a dude with a boomerang

The thing that I never see remarked upon about the original Mad Max is the dark queer undertone within the biker gang; I remember reading in Hunter Thompson's Hell's Angels about how the bikers he hung around with would occasionally make out with each other just as one more way to freak out normal people in the street, and I feel like there's some of that there, but there's also Toecutter seemingly keeping Johnny as some kind of pet, making Bubba jealous in the process. This shows up again in Road Warrior, when Wez (the red-mohawked lead henchman) has a boyfriend (who gets boomeranged to death), but it's not at all present in the third or fourth movies.

Anyway, my ranking is 1 > 2 > first half of 3 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Fury Road (which I don't even like, really, mostly because Tom Hardy is such a meat paperweight weighing down the whole thing) >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> everything with those goddamn annoying kids

lol whoa now

Insane

say what you will abt fury road, i would not describe that movie as "weighed down" by anything

i do recall the Fury Road thread being rather harsh towards Hardy despite loving the movie when it first came out, but I feel like people came around on him. I always liked his performance. it's Furiosa's arc though.

Hardy’s weird line readings stuck out like a sore thumb on first viewing, but on subsequent viewings they seemed perfect. Max is a loner who barely ever speaks to anyone. He's not gonna be the most fluid conversationalist.

btw these are all on HBO Max right now, except the first one which is on netflix

oh awesome! I have them all on blu-ray somewhere but I have no idea where.

Hardy (likely by design) works to Fury Road's advantage, because you enter the movie thinking it's going to be his movie but then leave realizing it was Theron's. Definitely not a coincidence that the first thing the movie does is put Hardy in his iconic Dodge Charger and the second thing they do is destroy it.

I like the inanity of the villains in Road Warrior a lot, perhaps *because* of their pointless cartoon nihilism. Like, it doesn't matter what their motives or morals are, they're just outright lunatics, and for that reason alone the people at the gas pump know they've got to go somewhere else.

Hardy struggled badly with director instruction throughout and was very unhappy with his performance and what he was allowed do until he saw the movie, in which his max is exactly as miller wished

Something I've always wondered: "Master" (of Master Blaster fame) from Thunderdome: was he supposed to be the hulking simpleton from the first Mad Max movie?

voting for babe: pig in the city

it's a mad max movie

xpost You mean Blaster, the big guy? There's a line in Thunderdome after he's revealed about him just being a child.

Oh yeah, meant Blaster. I thought the "just a child" remark alluded to his mind state. I recall hulking dude in first movie to be very childlike. And of course I really wanted that Easter egg.

Yeah, they probably meant mental state. Either way, there's no real timeline at work here. Each movie features just a few faint echos of the one that came before.

the first thing the movie does is put Hardy in his iconic Dodge Charger

his iconic fuckin' what

um yes WTF

iirc it was a 1991 Cutlass Ciera

I thought it was a Charger?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pursuit_Special

Ah, thanks. There's a dude down the street with a black Charger he is always revving, and whenever I see him zip past I think of Mad Max.

creating extra accounts to FP Josh for racism over again

also for being very confused about what "iconic" means

Wait, I got the car wrong, but how is the black muscle car not iconic? It's the car associated with Mad Max?

put some respect on the XB Falcon, son

We be awesome if instead of a dog Max had an iconic muscle cat. Which, lol, apparently exist.

https://s8.favim.com/orig/151011/cat-cats-mad-max-mad-cat-Favim.com-3419305.jpg

Sometimes
I think it's a sin
When u don't know what car
Max is drivin in

Today I learned that car was uniquely Australian! I didn't even know that country had cars back then, at least cars that didn't eat people.

>:(

:)

I thought the whole point of the Mad Max series was that it's futuristic because they have cars.

I didn't even know that country had cars back then

as opposed to the thriving industry today


Wait, I got the car wrong, but how is the black muscle car not iconic? It's the car associated with Mad Max?

the clue is in the questions tbh

Aren't the cars that eat people or at least Paris some of the same ones used in this film. Remember reading that several years ago.

Once lived on the same street as a bloke that had a Pursuit Special replica in MFP livery. Always parked it on the street.

Anyway, I voted 2.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

i watched Bacurau last week and it has a good Beyond Thunderdome reference near the end

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Yes

Does it go through to face Fury Road?

Be like the last page of black beauty being a description of the rendering process.

Let it be

Think u've misremembered the lyrix

decided to follow this up with something a bit different

best movie directed by George Miller

TS: "Just walk away" vs "MEDIOCRE!"

Man, the shot beginning at 1:22 here is one of the coolest ever. How'd they time that so well?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNzfgl_H5vA

First class editing.

the kids in Thunderdome were great. ... I am generally not a fan of movies with kids

too early to say where Furiosa fits in here, going to see it again tomorrow.

but as of right now....

Fury Road > 2 > 1 ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................Thunderdome

well now I have to see Thunderdome

Watched the road warrior with my boys, they laughed at humungus

Bruce Spence, for all of his comedy, really does some nice dramatic facial acting while watching the depravity of Wez and company on their poor victims

xp they wouldn't be laughing if he was laying siege to their desert compound

idk why people hate thunderdome so much, some p amazing stuff in there

it has a markedly different vibe than the first two movies and feels way more like a Big Movie

there are parts I enjoy but i can feel the shift of being largely, mostly George/less in spirit, or at least being at a remove from a lot of the decisions surrounding movie for the majority of the production

it’s not a crap movie in the sphere of movies in general

but to me not a good mad max movie

just play me the song & give me the Frank Thring clips and i’m good

I've always been a defender of "Thunderdome," and still am, even the stuff with the tribe of kids. But last night was the first time ever that it just wasn't clicking with me, or perhaps maybe mostly the stuff with the kids. I still really like how this movie starts, and I really like how it ends, and I think Tina Turner was inspired casting, but there are a few long stretches that are just kinda eh. Nonetheless, ridiculously packed with cool ideas and weird little details, from Thunderdome itself to the mask Ironbar wears on his back (or Ironbar himself, for that matter), or elements of the kid village, despite their innate corniness. Some funny gags and good dialogue throughout the movie; to paraphrase Dave Kehr on "Big Trouble in Little China," a "loopy originality" ... that bears "no resemblance to any known form of human expression," lol.

Til Roger Ebert not only gave it four stars and not only called it the best of the three, but he also called it one of the best of the year:

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/mad-max-beyond-thunderdome-1985