Max is back.
Seeing “The Road Warrior” at the Chinese Theater in darkest Hollywood when I was in high school was a mind-bending experience. Jacked up on a steady diet of pulp Westerns by John Benteen, I was well-primed for George Miller’s particular brand of post-apocalyptic mayhem. Max Rockatansky was, to me, a classic lone wolf gunslinging frontiersman on an especially bleak desert frontier.
The theater was packed; my buddies and I sat in the second row. The front row was full of mohawked and safety-pinned punks. As the previews warmed up, the theater rocked as they stomped their Doc Martins and chanted “Mad Max! Mad Max!” In the third row behind us were several girls in Hollywood hooker garb — fishnets, spike heels, heavy make-up — who were driven (literally, folks) to sexual ecstasy by the vision of Mel Gibson in black leather. Repeatedly.
And the movie. The best chase sequence ever filmed. I’m tellin’ ya, it was a profound experience for a 16-year-old boy.
Well, Max is coming back in 2015. Director George Miller debut the trailer for “Mad Max: Fury Road” at ComicCon, apparently to a rapturous response. Gone is Mel Gibson — he’s too old for what is envisioned as a trilogy. Max is now played by Tom Hardy — and I can’t think of a better Max Rockatansky.
From ABC News:
Miller describes “Mad Max: Fury Road” as an extended chase taking place over three days. The movie, due out next summer and also starring Charlize Theron, features minimal dialogue. The screenplay consisted of storyboards — sketches of each planned shot — rather than a conventional script.
“You’re picking up the characters and the backstory as you go,” Miller said. “And in order to create that backstory, we found ourselves having written two other screenplays. One of them is completed. The other one is in the form of a kind of unedited novel. So by the time we got there, we realized we’ve got a couple more Mad Max stories to tell, and that … required us to cast someone who was younger.” Miller showed the first footage from “Mad Max: Fury Road” at the recent Comic-Con fest in San Diego and got an enthusiastic response from attendees.
Trailer here.
I imagine I’ll see it in tamer circumstances — me and that 16-year-old kid…
Lane Batot says
Wow–a remake for ” The Road Warrior” is long overdue–or perhaps just in time! Can’t beat the “old” classic, I doubt(never thought much of the other two parts of the original trilogy–except Tina Turner was a HOOT in the 3rd one!–, but “The Road Warrior” was fantastic!)–and too bad if they don’t AT LEAST give old Mel a cameo somewhere! No sign of the faithful cattle dog/heeler like in the original(DAMN them; they always gotta kill off the faithful dog in movies!). And guess which character I most related to in the original? yeah, that “feral kid”–that WAS ME as a kid! Except I didn’t have a razor-edged boomerang. And in this trailer, was Max draining his lizard when he stomped on the lizard? Just wondered; kinda hard to tell…..I also WELL REMEMBER seeing this in the theatre as a 20 year old(lo, those many eons ago), and my first viewing couldn’t have been more different than yours, Jim! It was in an old fashioned really nice theatre(no mall multi-unit deal), and other than two teen-age couples sitting together rather far behind me, I had the theatre to myself! Funny how you can remember such specifics about SOME movies….. And what a small world; many years later, I worked on a TV series(“Christy”) filmed on location in Tennessee near where I lived(I worked mainly as a construction laborer on the set, but also got a coupla extra parts and did animal work during the course of the filming over two years), where one of the main stars(Stewart Finlay-McClinnon) got HIS start(he was an Australian playing a Scot in the series I worked on) on, guess–“The Road Warrior”! He only had a very minor role in it–a somewhat veiled/turbaned individual with the “good” guys holed up at the refining plant. But he had LOTS of neat stories about the filming, as you might imagine!
Eccentric Cowboy says
Your movie theater is far more interesting than mine it would appear. XD
Still love Road Warrior, which is perhaps the pinnacle of post apocalyptic movies and still a wild ride that I love watching! I genuinely get chills every time I watch the introductory scene. So much atmosphere and weight!
“In the roar of an engine he lost everything… and became a shell of a man…” Brrrr! It’ll be interesting to see what this new upcoming movie is like. I hope it meets the standards set by the original!
JimC says
Well, it WAS the Mann Chinese in darkest Holllyweird in the 1980s when it was really seedy. RW set the bar high. I, too, hope that Fury Road measures up. I have a lot of faith in Tom Hardy.