Road Warriors, Pt. 1: Mad Max (1979)

There’s a lot of narrative road between 1979’s MAD MAX and the new FURIOSA, but in pursuing George Miller’s decades-spanning franchise back to its starting line, we uncover a lot about what fuels this saga beyond the big, loud cars. For example, there are also big, loud motorcycles. But more importantly, there’s a healthy skepticism toward revenge as motivation, an interest in messianic leaders and hyper-verbal antagonists, and an efficient approach to world-building that prizes the visceral feel of a crumbling society over the logistical details thereof. All of that, plus the symbolic richness of this bleak motorized world, come up as we look under the hood of a film that’s quite different from what the MAD MAX saga is today, but no less driven by Miller’s singular vision. And in Feedback, we respond to a much-appreciated listener correction about THE FALL GUY and a similarly appreciated response to a prompt from our DONNIE DARKO episode. 

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