What genre is Mad Max

[Redd4]

***groan***


An epoxy on both your houses!

[Biker]

Yeah Nightwalker that's the title "On the beach." a thoroughly depressing book. Read it after reading the synopsis on the back cover... "Ooooh it's a post epoxy clip book, I gotta buy it!" .... Felt like topping myself afterwards. I had heard that the author actually DID kill himself but not over writing that depressing book.


They made a film about it in the 50's or early 60's it remained true to the book. i.e. depressing as hell. I guess at the time though it was the beginning of the cold war and people were expecting to die within the next decade or so in a nuclear firestorm so there wasn't really much of a positive side to a postepoxyclip lifestyle to glorify.


It's common knowledge nowadays, of course, that an intense radiation exposure will, in fact, give everyone super powers enabling us to fly, leap tall buidlings in a single bound or allow us to imitate a spiders and octopusses. The worst case scenario is that you'll turn green and be able to grow to 15 feet tall, but the good side of that is that your trousers won't ever split.


As for which genre Mad Max should be put in then it ought to be put in the "Goddamn best film of it's kind which spawned a whole generation of these type of films, most are bad rip off imitations of the original, but this was the first and best." In other words it stands in a catagory all on it's own.


If you really want to get pinicky though, I suppose you could put it in the same catagory as Duel and the original Vanishing Point ... However If you put it in the same pigeon hole as Death Race 2000 I shall hunt you down and kick your dog!


Had you worried there didn't I? Hehehehhehehee


Biker

[Big Bopper Bart]

its a sci fi action flick nuff said.lets not mind f**k the Mad Max trilogy pleeze!!

[Nightwalker]

@ Biker:


Thank you for confirming the title. At that time I found it a rather interesting book. I'd never heard of a post-nucliar world back then. And the mad max movies even less. Do you perhaps remember the title of that movie?


I think this whole genre was a result of the cold war. In the first few decades people where afraid something like this would happen. And many people gone fantasising about it.


Edit: Never mind on the title of the movie. I found it on IMBb. It has the same name as the book. And the film is from 1959.

[DetritusMaximus]

Most media have a tendency to drop anything and everything in the 'science-fiction' category, but there is another, 'science fantasy', that tends to be far more accurate for most of what is called science fiction. "Star War" is definitely science fantasy.





The difference between the two tends to be that science fiction is, well, fiction about science. Science fantasy is more the wild and crazy stories that involve, well...science.





Then there is the prophetic genre known as ....'speculative fiction'. What isn't, but maybe could be.











The have been two versions of the 'On The Beach' films. The original form the late 50's and a fairly new miniseries version with Armand Asante. Both are depressing.





As I have said before, I think 'On The Beach' was one of Miller and Kennedy's inspirations for Mad Max. It just seems like too natural of a progression to be coincidence.

[FRwL]

SCI-F**KING-FI

[Biker]

@ Nightwalker.


The film title? Hmmmm the name escapes me for the moment, wait a sec' here it comes from the mists of my overloaded memory cells (wrinkling my brows in deeeep concentration) yeeeeeeeessss here it is AHA! The title for the film of the book On The Beach was called.... On The Beach! Tadaaaaaaaaaaah


See here for more details: http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/nshute.htm


It's a brief synopsis of Nevil Shute, the author's life and works. Seems I was mistaken when I said he killed himself, but then all it says is Nevil Shute died... not how. Maybe I was right after all.


Anyways hope this helps a little Nightwalker. Detritus Maximus thanks for the comments, I didn't know an updated version had been filmed until I read it at the link above and you mentioned it too.


OK here's a question to put some spin on the definition of Sci-Fi. What actual "science" is there in Mad Max? I can understand it in films like Star Wars or Close Encounters and the like, but Mad Max? Not really. It's a violent road movie set in a possible future, or alternate history now that we're looking back on it from 2005. I still say it falls into a catagory all of it's own, actually what that catagory should be called still baffles me.


Biker

[.MAD MAX.]

I've never seen Mad Max in the sci-fi section at a video store. It's usually in the action or drama sections.


Doug

[DetritusMaximus]

Extrapolative visions of the future are considered science fiction, even though no science is involved.





Some of the references I've found regarding the definitions of the genre and sub-genre place science fiction and science fantasy as sub-genres of speculative fiction. Which could mean that separate genre could be allowed for MM/RW type stories.





Most definitions on 'science fantasy' require 'magic' in the story along with science, that's why Star Wars fits it so well, a mixture of epic fantasy (like The Lord of the Rings) and space opera (Battlestar Galactica), more sub-genres, with magic (The Force). But, I have to disagree, as there has been alot of 'fantasy'(which most take to be sword and sorcery stuff) that does not have magic or anything like it, such as the Horseclans series (Greek or Roman style empire building in the middle of the US a thousand years after an apocalypse). One description of science fantasy was that the setting is technically a science fiction type setting but that the technology or science is not relevant to the story, it's merely background.





Then again, there is some dissension on whether or not 'speculative fiction' is a title created in an attempt to distance writers and their work from the literary ghettos known as science fiction or fantasy. Much like the creation of the 'alternative' category in music because the music industry wanted to classify alot of punk and new wave based music but not acknowledge it's origins or the stigma of 'new wave' or 'punk'. It's kind of like loving your parents even though they always embarrass you in front of your friends.





But I prefer that term because it seems to capture the essence better. It's more accurate in describing 'what could be' without requiring suspension of disbelief or imagined technology or anything else that requires an unlikely development or change in the nature of the universe.

[Nightwalker]

@ Biker:





I already found the title of the movie 10 minutes after my post yesterday. Just thought: Why not try the book title at IMDb? And it was a great succes. It was the first hit. Edited my post after that.


I'm downloading the movie at the moment with eMule.