Mad Max society background?? (1 Viewer)

[todd s]

I have seen Road Warrior 2 & 3 and only parts of Mad Max. Can someone tell me what happened to civilization? In the Road Warrior movies the cities are destroyed and their is no authority. While from what I gather in Mad Max their still is a police department. Is Mad Max set as soceity is collapsing? Thanks! You can include spoilers.

 

[Walter Kittel]

The prologue and epilogue, as narrated by the Feral Kid ( as an old man ), from Road Warrior pretty much sums it up...
My life fades. The vision dims. All that remains are memories. I remember, a time of chaos, ruined dreams, this wasted land. But most of all, I remember The Road Warrior. The man we called Max.
To understand who he was you have to go back to another time, when the world was powered by the black fuel, and the deserts sprouted great cities of pipe and steel.
Gone now. Swept away. For reasons long forgotten two mighty warrior tribes went to war and touched off a blaze which engulfed them all. Without fuel they were nothing. They had built a house of straw. The thunder of machines sputtered and stopped.
Their leaders talked and talked and talked, but nothing could stem the avalanche. Their world crumbled. Cities exploded. A whirlwind of looting. A firestorm of fear. Men began to feed on men.
On the roads it was a white-line nightmare. Only those mobile enough to scavenge, brutal enough to pillage would survive. The gangs took over the highways, ready to wage war for a tank of juice. And in this maelstrom of decay ordinary men were battered and smashed, men like Max, the warrior Max.
In the roar of an engine he lost everything and became as shell of a man, a burned-out, desolate man, a man haunted by the demons of his past, a man who wandered out into the wasteland. And it was here, in this blighted place, that he learned to live again . . .
. . . And so began the journey northward, to safety, to our place in the sun. Among us we found a new leader, the man who came from the sky, the Gyro Captain. And just as Papagallo had planned, we traveled far beyond the reach of men and machine. The juice, the precious juice, was hidden in the vehicles.
As for me, I grew to manhood. In the fullness of time. I became the leader, the chief of the Great Northern Tribe. And for The Road Warrior, that was the last we saw of him. He lives now, only in my memories.
- Walter.

 

[Alex Spindler]

Not exactly an archivist of Mad Max lore, but I think it breaks down as follows:

Prior to Mad Max, a catastrophic nuclear (I think) war decimates most of society. Mad Max is set in Australia, which hasn't received a direct hit, but has felt the impact of being essentially alone in the world. There is a steady decline into lawlessness, being held in check by limited social services such as police. There are also stores, and I think they use money. It's also possible that they are in a section of the country that has maintained as much of the present civilization as possible, while more remote areas have collapsed into what you see in the other movies. As should be clear from the first movie, civilization is quickly losing the fight.

By the second movie, we are more than likely several years and some distance from the setting of the original movie. By now, society has likely completely collapsed, with isolated pockets still hanging on to their old ways. It appears that fuel has become the primary economy, although bartering and piracy appear to be common as well. They seem to have knowledge of areas that may resemble the city of the first film, as they hatch a plan to travel there.

By the third movie, it appears a new form of society heavily centered around bartering exists. They have their own form of police, government, entertainment, and agriculture. This is set far enough in the future that young people have been born without knowing how the world was before the war. The original cities are just a myth for many. I wonder if any of the original civilization exists by that point.

That's my take, but much of it is just based on casual observation. My DVD of Mad Max hasn't even arrived yet.

 

[Seth Paxton]

If I might add my take which is slightly altered from the above.

I have always taken it that in Mad Max nukes have not yet been used, but simply that the world is at major war and it is stressing the culture in Australia without Australia being directly involved. That is if Miller intended the setting to explicitly be Australia at all, I've never been sure about that either.

But while public monies were running short in Max and thus putting society in dire straits and making things harsh for the judicial system/police, nothing was totally wiped out like it was in Road Warrior. I guess RW to be about 10 years later and the nukes to have been used in between. Thunderdome simply tells us that nukes were used because the pilot tried to fly some people away from the attacks in the jet.

But this is just how I see the series without reading about it or hearing interviews/commentaries.

 

[Brook K]

I haven't seen any of the films in some time but my thinking was always that the war had happened prior to the films, Australia just wasn't a target for nukes. Mad Max's urban setting is the situation there, in the Road Warrior's Outback, the situation is much different.

I don't think enough time has passed between the two films for cities to completely vanish. I think we're just seeing life in the wilderness vs. where civilization/institutionalized government had deeper roots in the cities.

 

[JoeDelan]

Typical Post-Apocolyptic society...Think of it like that...

 

[Ken Seeber]

I have to disagree with Seth a little bit, mostly because of this quote from the opening narration of "The Road Warrior":

For reasons long forgotten two mighty warrior tribes went to war and touched off a blaze which engulfed them all.

Sounds like a nuclear war to me.

 

[Mike boettner]

www.madmaxmovies.com
all you ever wanted to know about Max, and then some!

 

[Seth Paxton]

I wasn't saying no nukes.

I was saying in MAD MAX no nukes, but by Road Warrior nukes had hit. I figure 10 years between the time frames simply because of the dog and Max's look. Could be less sure, just how I always saw it.

Because why would Max leave the cities where gas was still easier to come by, unless enough time or events had passed to force scavengers off into the outback in search of fuel.

I don't disagree with those who think the nukes hit before Max, I just never saw it that way is all. As I said, I resolved the change in the films to be that civilization had been nuked after Max about 10 years before RW.

 

[Max Leung]

Hmm, never thought of it that way Seth. Then again, I still haven't seen the original movie. Just a few snippets here and there when seeing TV teasers and retrospectives on the Mad Max series.
What happened in the first movie? I don't care if you spoil the movie for me in this case.

 

[Derrick Cameron]

there's really no way i can sum up Mad Max. i highly recommend you go rent it or buy the awesome special edition dvd that just came out. it's quite possibly my favorite movie ever.

 

[Terrell]

Welcome to the forum Derrick. Mad Max is a great movie, and that DVD is great as well.

 

[Derrick Cameron]

thanks Terrell! i love this forum, but i'm sure my wallet won't. the more i talk about movies and home theater hardware the more i REALLY wan't to go out and buy stuff.