Exploitation elements

[MachRider]

There's one thing that we probably won't see in Fury Road that symbolizes Mad Max movies... exploitation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploitation_film

It's why MM1 is so damn disturbing. It's not the actual violence... there are shootings and car crashes in every other movie.
It's the way how that movie mind-rapes the viewer with implied violence in almost every f..ing scene. From Sprog playing with the gun to post-rape scenes, to Toecutter, jesse and ice-cream... the ending saw scene... it's endless. The only calm time, ironically, is when Max races around in the BoB.

MM2 is calmer in that regard, but still has some nasty stuff... rape again, Max using the dying guy, Wez, Humongous, laughter at chopped fingers, golden youth, good guys (including WarriorWoman) dying in most banal ways... Gyro with all his lingerie and eyeing the girl at the compund... and my favorite - fetishization of shotgun shells. Shotgun shells and firearms are pure gold in RW setting.

Miller really is the master of this stuff...

BTD then fucks it up... apart from some notable moments it really lacks really disturbing stuff. Even worse, it usually tries to water it down by being funny about it. Imagine the Pig Killer character in RoadWarrior setting. Or even MM1 setting... Not to mention Ironbar Bassey. BTD would be 3x better movie if they edited him out altogether.
The kids have most implied exploitation elements, their backstory, lack of parents, them dying, getting pregnant, leaving the other half behind, etc... Bartertown part is nothing more than your average Indiana Jones adventure movie really...


So, Fury Road then...

We will have lots of Carsploitation, that's without a doubt. But what about those subtle and not so subtle mind-fucks? I guesstimate very low. For example, Immortan Joe looks like your average arch-villain really (cough! *Bane* cough!)... ooooh, white skin! so scary!.... NOT! Too unrealistic.... Toecutter could be your mailman gone bonkers. Immortan Joe is as real as the Skeletor from He-Man. It's not the mask that made Humongous so scary. It's that damn revolver case... Hope Joe's got something up his sleeve too..
Same goes for those mutant masks... come on, they look like your average video-game characters.... take a look at any gaming magazine cover and there's quite a probability you'll see a masked mutant there. Or boobs.

There will probably be something with the wives, there was that baby animatronic. Depending how they use it, it can be either very cheap or really disturbing. But then again, Jesse and child died in most disturbing way, without anything actually being shown.

The same goes for spikes on vehicles. Moving multi-tonne vehicles are quite dangerous by themselves. Put medieval spikes on them and you risk impaling yourself when you go to take a piss break... Props to stuntmen who actually worked with those vehicles!

And last, and most important, is the apparent $100 million budget and WB. Exploitation and big budget studio don't go together. At all.

But I like the interior of the black interceptor. Only a true madman could decorate it like that.

[Uncle Entity]

The Mad Max "world" is still pretty brutal and bleak at the time 'Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome' is set.

Lots of deaths happen off-screen or before the events depicted in the movie.

1- Jedediah is just one of the many Marauders still left in the Wasteland.

2- The Audition. Aunty explicitly mentions the fact Max is the first (and only) one to have survived the Audition. They slaughtered many warriors before Max appeared.

3- Underworld. As Pig-Killer stated it, you cannot survive in Underworld for more than 3 years. That would explain why, later in the movie, we don't see the guy resembling Charlie (from MM1) anymore. He just died.

4- The Thunderdome. Pretty brutal/bloody system nonetheless. We don't know how many Thunderdome matchs occurred since its inception, but Aunty referred to the Max-Blaster fight as "another edition of Thunderdome".
And, of course, we got two murders: the guy Blaster accidentally killed with the spear and Blaster himself.

5- The Wheel. So many people must have died because of it.

6- Max's horse.

6- The Leavings from Crack in the Earth/Planet Erf caused the death of a lot of people. Savannah was just lucky to have found Max and a quick way to come back to Planet Erf. Many people, including Captain Walker and the "Great Leaving" team, must have died in the "Nothing".

7- Finn McCoo and Gekko (deleted scene, but you can still see him barely alive in the night-scene, when Scrooloose finds Bartertown).

8- The Underworld collapse: the blonde female bodybuilder surely died (broken neck). The pigs and the bodybuilders/Imperial Guards died because the entire place basically blowed up.

9- Bartertown's demise: many people must have died during the huge explosions happening all across the place.

10- The Cowboy Marauder driving the Cow Car surely got killed under the tyres of some Junkmobile.

11- Scrooloose surely left in the desert the unconscious Imperial Guard. We don't know if Aunty cared for him enough...

12- The driver of Ironbar's harpoon-equipped Junkmobile burned in the explosion.

13- Savannah stabbed/killed an Imperial Guard with an unspecified object/weapon.

14- The driver of the Junkcycle fell from the bridge and died.

15- Most of the Imperial Guards died in the final collision with Max's Junkmobile.

16- Ironbar's death.

17- In the end, we see that only very few Imperial Guards survived.

18- Sure as hell, without energy, Bartertown ended its regime and everything crumbled down within weeks. More people must have died in the process.

Plus: Aunty and the Imperial Guards were going to brutally kill the adults ("And for those who took him... NO MERCY!") and maybe leave the children in the desert without resources to survive. She just spared Max because he sacrificed himself for his group, which Aunty recognized as a move of bravery and heroism too great to be ignored.


Conclusion: The world depicted by 'Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome' is as much brutal as the first two Mad Max movies world, it's just different and more "subtle".

[DetritusMaximus]

The thing about Thunderdome is that with all the implied and veiled barbarity, it's really about violence of those that prop themselves up as 'civilised'. The first two movies were the breakdown of civility and the third is brutality putting on the cloak of civility. And in the reversal of roles, Max is the enemy of 'civilisation', he brings it down.

[MWFV8]

The problem is exploitation negates broad appeal.

Mad Max and the RoadWarrior are films, Thunderdome is a movie.

[MachRider]

It's not about violence, it's about how that violence is portrayed. I just think most of BTD violence is quite pointless, actually. Violence for the sake of violence.

Look at MM1 and MM2, there weren't any useless vehicles crashes there. Each crash brings consequences with it (death, fear, profit). Miller worked in ER, he wanted to show the horrors of the road. We've all seen nasty shit on real-life roads. That way each crash in MM1/2 brings out deep, primal fear. Not because we are afraid of seeing crashing vehicles on screen, but because we're afraid of real consequences that come afterwards.

On the other hand, there are lots of crashes in Thunderdome, but always with a laughter to water it down, and with zero consequences.
I'm not afraid of any violence in BTD, as much as I'm not afraid of any violence in the Raiders of the Lost Ark or in the Goonies. It's the context of violence that's flawed in Thunderdome.

The one scene that depicts Thunderdome well is when Max shoots the feathers off Bartertown guards head. Now compare that to the RoadWarrior fires-shotgun-into-Bad-cop's-windshield scene. No comment needed.
Or the fact that in first two movies we have some looming apocalypse that everybody's afraid of but noone actually knows anything about it (mysterious = scary). And then in Thunderdome they go full-retard with geiger counters, pockalypse and dead Sydney. Never, ever was it necessary for Mad Max story to be set in post-nuclear Australia. Ever. It's the story that can happen (and it DOES happen) all over the world, most time without any apocalyptic disasters.

But no, they had to imply some fantastic doomsday scenario, as average people aren't capable of producing RoadWarrior-style environment.
Actually, RW scenarios are probably happening RIGHT NOW, some thousand km north of Namibia! Replace V8s with Toyota Technicals and sawn off shotguns with RPGs and that's it.

The problem is exploitation negates broad appeal.

Mad Max and the RoadWarrior are films, Thunderdome is a movie.

That's it basically...

[MWFV8]

Actually, RW scenarios are probably happening RIGHT NOW, some thousand km north of Namibia! Replace V8s with Toyota Technicals and sawn off shotguns with RPGs and that's it.

It was probably happening not too distant from the set of Fury Road.

Charlize Theron herself once witnessed a guy trapped in a burning truck wreck -- the crowd around him frantically trying to get him free -- him desperately pleading for someone to shoot him -- eventually they had no choice.

[Uncle Entity]

MachRider,

There is TONS of mystery about the apocalypse in MMBThunderdome, we're still here - 100 years since the movie - to argue about the Sydney we see in the end, the Tell, the Bartertown genesis and many other mysterious aspects. MMBT is just the most mysterious MM movie to date, sorry.

Plus, the geiger is about the hard rain/fallout coming from the outside. Maybe Australia wasn't "nuked" as you think at all.

The point is that, in the Thunderdome era, there is no more the "cult of the death" because the Living realised they need each other to survive. The violence in the movie is "adventurous" just because it's "accidental". Nobody wants to kill anymore, because men and women are NEEDED as "citizens" of this new civilization. Anyway, there is much "implied" violence in Thunderdome which is actually scary, just because it "happens" without much evidence, very easily. It's very easy to die in the Thunderdome era, and nobody cares if it happens.

[MWFV8]

When you walk away from watching Mad Max and the Roadwarrior you're haunted by what you've seen, be it the graphic depiction of mortality or the conceptual theme of humanity.

When you walk away from Thunderdome you've had fun, had excitement, had some thrills, got some laughs.

I think there's just one upsetting element in TD, and that's where the kid suffocates in the sand. The rest is all comedic, but that's not to say that's detrimental, it actually makes a more marketable and profitable movie, that's what made it a blockbuster.

[highfatalityroad]

exploitation? you must be joking?

who cares? it's an action movie.

and Thunderdome is a terrible movie, unworthy of MM and RW. a blot on the franchise.

[DetritusMaximus]

Part of the appeal is that they are more than just 'action films'. There are layers of meaning and relevance beyond the action, so much beyond the simple plot line. Can't say that for most 'action' films where what see is all there is.