You know, I’d like to correct a small error I seem to run across every now and again. There were only two Mad Max movies. Okay? Can we all agree on that?
[sub]Y’know, just like there was only one Highlander flick.[/sub]
Well, I count Mad Max, Mad Max 2; The Road Warrior and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. And IMDB agrees with me. Granted, Thunderdome was pretty bad, but nowhere hear how awful HighLander II was.
That I can’t argue with. Point.
But still, Thunderdome was Max Meets the Lord of the Flies, and this is an idea whose time will never come, in my book. And toned down just enough to sneak into a PG-13 rating (in the US, anyway), not for any creative reason, but because a slightly bigger audience means a slightly bigger profit. Because, y’know, nobody would’ve gone to see the “New Mad Max Movie” if it had been aimed at the same audience as the first two, I guess. You want less action and violence in your violent action movie sequel, right?
In all fairness, the first, oh, say, third of the movie wasn’t all that horrible. (And that catchphrase from the 'Dome itself is nifty as shit, I freely admit.) But once he ended up on the horse with the big themepark character head… thanks, no.
If you’re making a sequel to a film, and you want to have one of the actors return, please let him enact the same character, as well? Yeah, it’s minor and piddling, but the Gyro Captain rode off with the gang in the last movie, and never saw Max again. It’s just… jarring, I guess, to see Spence again, as an incredibly similar character, who’s not actually the same guy. Are there that few actors willing to work with Mel Gibson, fer pete’s sake? Or is Australia just overpopulated with eccentric survivalist pilots, who may or may not all be related to each other?
While I’m frothing, can someone explain to me why the vengeful, cold-hearted Ice Queen decides, after losing all those men, and her only technical wiz (the guy who made it possible for her little empire to actually function) that she doesn’t really care about the guy who destroyed everything she’d created, and just lets him go?
It just kept making my head hurt, the whole time I watched it.
[sub]Suspension of belief is one thing, but can we leave out the warm fuzzies this time, George, Mel? Please? Stubbled, yes, but fuzzy, Max ain’t.[/sub]
I kinda liked Thunderdome, but I couldn’t agree more on this point. That was just plain brainless to use the same actor to play a different yet very similar character. There’s no excuse for that whatsoever.
It isn’t the first time with Mad Max to reuse actors… For examplethis
I didn’t like Thunderdome much either…it had an excellent premise, great actors, and some real potential, but really went downhill once Max was thrown out of Bartertown.
But I imagine Miller was trying to do something different and wasn’t even attempting to top “The Road Warrior”, which would be an unlikely occurance in any case.
You sure he wasn’t the same character? It has been a long time since I have seen the movie, but I thought there was a moment when the Pilot sees Max for the first time and seems to recognize him.
From that I just figured the Gyro Captain got tired of the northern tribe, took his son, and went elsewhere.
But… But…
Whatever happened to
Emil Minty! ???
Well, New Zealand is only a hop, skip, and jump from Australia, right?
Looks like he’s playing “The Mouth of Sauron”- I hope his dental hygeine has gotten better since The Road Warrior.
I think Maci is right - when Max and the Gyro captain saw each other in Thunderdome, they both said “You” in recognition (they didn’t use a name for the Gyro captain, and nobody called Mel Max (except for one brief “me Max” from Mel), and Max knew he had a plane. Maybe the Gyro Captain was taking a vacation from the Northern tribe to bound with his son.
And I think they wrote the Tina Turner character (which I think was actually written with her specifically in mind) as somewhat sympathetic. She was a nobody, who survived the holocaust, and created an ordely society at a time of utter savagery. OK, maybe she was a teeeeensy bit ruthless - but look at the people she dealt with. And what did Max care originally for anyone - he just wanted his car back. She built the place up before - she figures she can do it again. I can see her character seeing Max as a fellow survivor. Who knows - let him fight the bad guys out there - less for her to worry about. Wasn’t one of the choices on the wheel “Auntie’s Choice” anyway?
Bring them all back if you ask me.
A couple things, here.
Max Fairchild had an incredibly minor part in both movies. He wasn’t playing basically the same supporting character in both flicks either. Not really the same thing at work, is it? Actually, this is exactly the kind of recasting you do when you want to bring someone back as a different character. Maybe if they’d given Spence the part of the MC at Thunderdome…
(Nice catch by the way, kingpengvin. A bit o’ trivia I completely missed along the way.) 
[sub]Can I use the fact that the “Give them nothing! Blow it up!” prisoner distracted me from looking closely at the other one as a valid excuse?[/sub]
Maci, YPOD: I don’t think so. The narrator for the second film is the Feral Kid, all growed up-like. He mentions somewhere that the Gyro Captain became a great leader of the northern tribe, which implies to me that he didn’t skarker off 3 or 4 years down the road. IIRC, anyway. Have to dig out the tape and watch it again, now.
And I’m pretty sure that Max knew the guy had a plane because he’d divebombed Max from that plane in the beginning of the flick. Same goes for the bit where they recognize each other.
Besides all that, the GC was awfully fond of Max. Going out to haul him out of the fire, after the way Max treated him earlier on, says to me he genuinely liked the guy. (For what reason, I can’t figure. I’d have been a bit pissed at someone who pulled that kind of thing on me.) Somebody you like/respect/whatever that much, you don’t aero-mug in the middle of nowhere. And you don’t need to be coerced into helping the guy again, later.
(Yeah, it’s just a movie. But that casting decision always bugged the hell out of me.)
It felt to me like they’d settled on two possible scripts for a third film, couldn’t quite get either of them just right, and tried to combine the best of both. With very piss poor results. It’s also possible that the screenwriter who polished up the final draft was not the same one who wrote the original (It does happen fairly often, I understand) and the change in Aunty Entity’s character resulted from this.
And lest anyone read too much into this: I loved the first two flicks, and I can still re-watch the third one, every once in a blue moon. Max is just so much fun as a character that I can overlook most of this stuff. I’ll cite Escape From L.A. as a real similar situation. To get to see Snake again, I could ignore all the bits of the second film that bug me.
But this is the Dope, so I get the urge to debate. 
I’m ambivalent about another Max Movie, but I’ll give it a shot.
For my money, I agree there are only two Mad Max films, but I disagree about what they are. Road Warrior was the first (and better of the two), followed by Thunderdome. Mad Max the movie was really just a drawn out bit of exposition for Road Warrior. It was incredibly boring and pointless.
We saw all we needed from Mad Max the movie in the opening credits for Road Warrior, and even that was longer than it needed to be.
The GC and the PIlot from Thunderdome are two differnt people. I think Spence was used in both because he might be a real pilot for small craft.
If you watch enough of THunderdome, you see that Max gets enough hints to indicate that the PIlot was the one who shanghied his wagon.
When he finally runs into the guy, the full dialogue is something like this:
Max: YOU!
Pilot: Yeah?
Max: You’ve got a plane!
Pilot: Yeah?
Max: It might just save your ass.
I don’t like watching the first “Mad Max” movie because, for years, all we had in the USA was that dreadful dubbed version. (No original voices—the apparently thought the Australian accents would be too much for American ears.) I hated that.
I know that there’s now a DVD out without the dubbing. I just have to bestir myself to get it.
Yes ma’am, you do. And pronto.
The dialogue, while it’s still the same words, just comes across so much better. I’d be curious to know, once you do see it, your opinions on the “voice talent” from the original American release.
For years I’d fooled m’self that the guy who dubbed Max sounded quite a bit like Mel Gibson. When you can compare the two, flipping back and forth between the two audio tracks, it’s a little frightening.
And Fifi (the police chief) is so far off it’s pathetic. Forget about the Toecutter and the NightRider. Yikes.
[sub]They say that people don’t believe in heroes anymore? Well damn them! You and me Max, we’re gonna give 'em back their heroes![/sub]
Teow dayhz agow eye sahw a veickle thatud awl thayt tankah…
…yew wanna get owtta eeah? Ye tahk tuh mye.
<best I could do for semantic aussie>