# What is it about Australian movies? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 28, 2013, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-it-about-australian-movies/662149 "2013-06-28T18:46:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ombre12](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/d26b3c/32.png) [@ombre12](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ombre12)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2013, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-it-about-australian-movies/662149/1 "2013-06-28T18:46:25Z")
Thriller Movies made in Australia, or in other locations with Australian actors, directors and producers (amazing how the actors can copy very well an American accent)…seem to have a different viewpoint than an American thriller does. I can’t remember specific examples. But it seems like whenever I have watched a thriller type movie with an unexpectedly “bad” ending…“bad” in the sense that the bad guy or guys always wins. The “good” people are always toast, and in the most horrible ways…it always seems to be an Australian produced movie. Are the Australians into some sort of “film noir” genre of their own? I do find these type of movies to be fascinating, even though I am always depressed at the end. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-it-about-australian-movies/662149/2 "2013-06-29T00:02:07Z")
You should check out _Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation!_ (if you haven’t already). It’s a documentary about the history of Australia’s low-budget film industry. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-it-about-australian-movies/662149/3 "2013-06-29T00:07:16Z")
The bad guys usually win in American horror movies, too. Or at least, they’re almost NEVER really dead at the end. Michael Myers is still alive at the end of almost every _ **Halloween** _ movie. (And even when he isn’t, he’ll be alive in a sequel.) Freddie Krueger always seems to win. Jason Voorhees never dies for long. Hannibal Lecter is invincible. Jigsaw and his disciples always win in the _ **Saw** _ movies. The killer mutants are still alive and killing people at the end of the \*\*\*Hills Have \*\*\*_ **Eyes** _ and \*\*\*Wrong Turn \*\*\*movies. Every low-budget horror movie you run into on the SyFy network ends with the killer surviving (even when he SEEMS to be dead, he’ll either start twitching right or spring to life and kill the last surviving hero/heroine right before the credits. It’s not just in Australia. ---
**Author:** ![tellyworth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/977dab/32.png) [@tellyworth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tellyworth)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-it-about-australian-movies/662149/4 "2013-06-29T00:15:56Z")
Australian filmmakers might be into that sort of thing, but Australians rarely watch them. ---
**Author:** ![Accidental\_Martyr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ce7236/32.png) [@Accidental\_Martyr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Accidental_Martyr)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-it-about-australian-movies/662149/5 "2013-06-29T01:27:11Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > You should check out _Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation!_ (if you haven’t already). It’s a documentary about the history of Australia’s low-budget film industry. Yes, that’s a great documentary. Highly recommended. ---
**Author:** ![penultima\_thule](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penultima_thule/32/3833_2.png) [@penultima\_thule](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/penultima_thule)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-it-about-australian-movies/662149/6 "2013-06-29T02:25:32Z")
You can get tied up in knots over cultural stereotypes but Australian don’t do the indestructable superhero, the “good guy gets ticked off, kills all the daddies and gets the girl” thriller though we’ll happily watch yours. Maybe it’s a consequence of an egalarian ethos, maybe we just don’t have an film industry that can produce franchises of the “Mulga Bill and the Cycle of Doom IV” genre. Maybe it is a function of the size of the special effects budgets. Maybe because the average Aussie bloke doesn’t have enough weaponry in his back shed to sustain a small civil war. Personally I’m more of the view that “We’ll give him a fair go” will trump every time “he looks at my girl friend funny so I’m going to blast him and all his family”. Contrast [The Odd Angry Shot](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079652/) with virtually any American Vietnam War thriller. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-it-about-australian-movies/662149/7 "2013-06-29T03:11:58Z")
ombre12, you make it sound like Australian films are untypical of the movies made around the world because they are more likely to have unhappy endings than those of most countries. On the contrary, I think that American films are untypical of the movies made around the world because they are more likely to have happy endings than those of most countries. ---
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-it-about-australian-movies/662149/8 "2013-06-29T03:25:11Z")
Only Australia could have a national song about a sheep thief who kills himself when the police catch up with him, or a national hero who robbed banks, shot police, and was executed in the end. (Waltzing Matilda and Ned Kelly, respectively). ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-it-about-australian-movies/662149/9 "2013-06-29T03:30:44Z")
One of my all-time favorite movies is _Breaker Morant_, a historical court-martial drama and an Australian classic, and although there are certainly some moral shades of gray, two of the three “good guys” are executed at the end. ---
**Author:** ![ombre12](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/d26b3c/32.png) [@ombre12](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ombre12)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 11:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-it-about-australian-movies/662149/10 "2013-06-29T11:04:28Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > You should check out _Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation!_ (if you haven’t already). It’s a documentary about the history of Australia’s low-budget film industry. I just added “Not Quite Hollywood”, “Breaker Morant” and “The Odd Angry Shot” to my Netflix list. Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![Sr\_Siete](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6de8d8/32.png) [@Sr\_Siete](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sr_Siete)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 11:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-it-about-australian-movies/662149/11 "2013-06-29T11:29:41Z")
> [@Giles](#): > > Only Australia could have a national song about a sheep thief who kills himself when the police catch up with him, or a national hero who robbed banks, shot police, and was executed in the end. (Waltzing Matilda and Ned Kelly, respectively). What? Criminal outlaws are all what the US folklore is about, just like Australia. ---
**Author:** ![Aspidistra](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspidistra/32/3894_2.png) [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-it-about-australian-movies/662149/12 "2013-06-29T12:50:03Z")
The difference between Australian and US narratives isn’t in the “criminal outlaw”/“lone dude against the Big Guys” style of stories. We both have those. They’re frontier narratives, and both of our countries have/have had frontiers. The difference is, you guys in the US have a narrative that we lack, which is the “Good powerful guys save the world” narrative. The Australian psyche has this weird combination of “Best bloody country in the world, mate” combined with a sense of being small, totally unimportant to pretty much everyone else, and exty million miles away from where the really _important_ shit is happening. To move away from thrillers, which I don’t know heaps about … “Superman”, for instance, could never ever have been made in Australia. Nor could Star Trek, or Star Gate, or B5 … any of these stories where important decisions involving the fate of the world are being made by the protagonists. We do things more like, say “The Dish”, with its prevailing sense of “hey, here’s history being made out there and…holy crap WE’RE involved in this somehow!!! How the fuck did THAT happen?”. Or Farscape. The Terminator films couldn’t really be made in Australia either, because they’re all about “what we do here is crucially important to the future, even if it doesn’t look like it.” Just doesn’t work for us. But Mad Max could, because he’s just trying to survive _himself_, and that’s basically what we look for. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-it-about-australian-movies/662149/13 "2013-06-29T17:13:42Z")
> [@Sr\_Siete](#): > > What? Criminal outlaws are all what the US folklore is about, just like Australia. That’s a pretty gross overstatement: Pecos Bill, John Henry, Paul Bunyan, Babe the Blue Ox, Alfred Bulltop Stormalong, Mike Fink, Johnny Appleseed, Davy Crockett, Casey Jones, etc. weren’t criminal outlaws. Yes, I know the last three were real people who later became legendary. ---
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-it-about-australian-movies/662149/14 "2013-06-29T19:14:07Z")
Will we count movies like Mad Max where the hero does morally ambiguous things himself? I think it’s all because of those giant spiders down under. Ooh! Reread end of post 12. Still think it’s them bugs. ---
**Author:** ![Imasquare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Imasquare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Imasquare)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2013, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-it-about-australian-movies/662149/15 "2013-07-02T01:03:04Z")
> [@penultima\_thule](#): > > You can get tied up in knots over cultural stereotypes but Australian don’t do the indestructable superhero, the “good guy gets ticked off, kills all the daddies and gets the girl” thriller though we’ll happily watch yours. > > Maybe it’s a consequence of an **egalarian ethos,** maybe we just don’t have an film industry that can produce franchises of the “Mulga Bill and the Cycle of Doom IV” genre. Maybe it is a function of the size of the special effects budgets. Maybe because the average Aussie bloke doesn’t have enough weaponry in his back shed to sustain a small civil war. > > Personally I’m more of the view that “We’ll give him a fair go” will trump every time “he looks at my girl friend funny so I’m going to blast him and all his family”. > > Contrast [The Odd Angry Shot](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079652/) with virtually any American Vietnam War thriller. I often hear Australians say how egalitarian they are. They don’t seem any more egalitarian than anyone else to me. ---
**Author:** ![Imasquare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Imasquare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Imasquare)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2013, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-it-about-australian-movies/662149/16 "2013-07-02T01:05:09Z")
> [@ombre12](#): > > I just added “Not Quite Hollywood”, “Breaker Morant” and “The Odd Angry Shot” to my Netflix list. > > Thanks. You should take a look at Picnic at Hanging Rock as well. It’s one of the best made and creepiest movies I’ve ever seen. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2013, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-it-about-australian-movies/662149/17 "2013-07-02T01:16:13Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > ombre12, you make it sound like Australian films are untypical of the movies made around the world because they are more likely to have unhappy endings than those of most countries. On the contrary, I think that American films are untypical of the movies made around the world because they are more likely to have happy endings than those of most countries. This. OP, do you watch many non-American movies? ---
**Author:** ![GreedySmurf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a698b9/32.png) [@GreedySmurf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreedySmurf)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2013, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-it-about-australian-movies/662149/18 "2013-07-02T04:40:05Z")
> [@Imasquare](#): > > I often hear Australians say how egalitarian they are. They don’t seem any more egalitarian than anyone else to me. IMO it has always been a bit of an ideal more than day to day practice, but the idea of our strong egalitarian ideals stemmed from rejecting the British class system. We’d like to think that Australia has always been about giving some ‘a fair go’ regardless of where they’re from, who there parents were, etc. It’s a time-worn meme in Australia that you can never tell how rich and powerful someone is by their dress or how they talk. And to some extent that is true, Have a look at [Clive Palmer](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clive_Palmer_(businessman)) for example, if you saw him on the street (which I actually did the other day, in a public phone box of all places), you’d never think he was one of the richest men in the country. ---
**Author:** ![Wolverine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ba9def/32.png) [@Wolverine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wolverine)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2013, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-it-about-australian-movies/662149/19 "2013-07-02T05:11:19Z")
> [@GreedySmurf](#): > > IMO it has always been a bit of an ideal more than day to day practice, but the idea of our strong egalitarian ideals stemmed from rejecting the British class system. I think you’ve been wooshed. Go back and read **Imasquare** ’s comment again. ---
**Author:** ![sisu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df705f/32.png) [@sisu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sisu)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2013, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-it-about-australian-movies/662149/20 "2013-07-02T05:46:24Z")
> [@ombre12](#): > > I just added “Not Quite Hollywood”, “Breaker Morant” and “The Odd Angry Shot” to my Netflix list. > > Thanks. You should add Wolfe Creek. If that doesn’t make you sheet your pants nothing will, creepy cause it’s true… [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-it-about-australian-movies/662149.md?page=2)