Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Speaker A: 00:00:00

Foreign.

Matthew: 00:00:12

Back with my friend Matthew Blevins. What's going on, man?

Speaker A: 00:00:15

What's up, dude? So Movie wars.

Matthew: 00:00:18

Yeah.

Speaker A: 00:00:18

Crowd. Yeah, man.

Matthew: 00:00:20

Dude, you've been busy, man. I've been seeing you. You've been posting your shows. You've been working all over the place. How are your shows going, man?

Speaker A: 00:00:26

You know, there's.

There's a lot of great shows happening all around, so it's kind of fun to go do a road gig and, you know, try a room full of new people somewhere and just, like, blow like a brewery.

They weren't expecting someone like me to show up and just talk to them for a half an hour and, you know, we all learn things together, so, you know, best Reuben sandwich I'd ever had, too. So, you know, those. Those are my favorite shows when get like a. A great sandwich.

Matthew: 00:01:00

Yeah. What are you. Are you too good for the five drunken comics left at the draw Mike? Is that. Is that what you're saying?

Speaker A: 00:01:09

Man, I don't know if I have it in me anymore to. To subject myself to that. It. It feels like. It feels like masochism at a certain point to. To do those.

But occasionally, you know, you come up with new ideas. You have to go do that to yourself.

But if you can keep your calendar full of other stuff, then, you know, you don't necessarily have to do what I've called the comedy Kobayashi Maru scenarios. You can. You can. You can just go enjoy your time.

Matthew: 00:01:43

That's amazing. It kind of makes me think this would be a great idea. Here's a new idea for an open mic. At the end of it, there's a Russian roulette table. And if.

Speaker A: 00:01:54

If that was problem, can you can mute that? If that was a problem, I was doing. I was doing Deer Hunter. It was a reference. Yeah. We need.

You know, I think there are a few dark characters in every comedy scene that would take it that far for a chance at like a Kill Tony minute or something like that. That's the inevitable conclusion of those types of shows is like a squid game scenario where, you know, let's take it all the way.

Matthew: 00:02:23

Yeah. Deer Hunters, where you should go. That's where my mind went automatically. It's. It's just so embedded.

Speaker A: 00:02:30

Yeah.

Matthew: 00:02:31

Well, we are rounding out. It took us some time. We've been all over the place. I've been traveling. You've been traveling. We finally.

But we're landing the plane on our Mad Max franchise finally. And we're in a weird spot here. You know, we have Furiosa.

Speaker A: 00:02:44

Yeah, It's Kind of like. I mean, we've. We've had a great time. We had Fury Road right before this one. And of course, beyond Thunderdome is problematic.

It's not a great by any means, but it's still. It's still like a classic Mad Max movie. But now we've got to round out our series together on this.

Matthew: 00:03:05

Yeah.

Speaker A: 00:03:05

Furiosa. It's not even. It's not even a Mad Max movie. It's a. It's a Mad Max tale.

Matthew: 00:03:12

Yeah, Mad Max tale.

Even though he, you know, the way he copped out of the inconsistencies of the timeline of all the other ones is he called those fire fireside tales or fairy tales. So now we're at. Have a real tale.

Speaker A: 00:03:24

Yeah, yeah, it's. It's a. It's a. I don't know, a tale or it's. It just.

I've had to watch it like four times in preparation for this because to be honest with you, when we started this series, I'm such a weird nerd that I watched them all in a row thinking that we were just going to knock out a. A podcast about the Mad Max series.

Matthew: 00:03:52

And then we did one.

Speaker A: 00:03:54

Yeah. And I don't remember when that started, when that journey started, but, you know, to end it on. On such a tale. Yeah. It just seems anti. Climactic.

Matthew: 00:04:05

Well, I feel bad about that. I'm a bad producer for having to go through that that way. I'm so sorry.

Speaker A: 00:04:11

No, not at all. Not at all. It was.

I think I would have done it that way either way because I feel like I wanted to put them all in context that weekend anyway because, you know, they, they all kind of. They're a representation of like indie or action movie of their respective time. For better or worse.

Matthew: 00:04:33

Yeah. Yeah. And that's. That's a good place to start.

Like earlier you said something, you said beyond Thunderdome, you know, and we're going to talk about at the end, we're going to stack rank our.

Just our personal thoughts and we're going to give our little summaries just kind of what we've learned and what we think about this franchise as a whole. But there's a weird pattern with Miller here now that we're seeing, you know, we have a big enough body of work now in this franchise.

And, you know, it's almost like he has two extremes, like real extreme storytelling. You know, like Road Warrior is just so deep. Even though it's not a complex story, it still feels very deep. Fury Road goes deep.

Not just in terms of, like, how it's made, but, like the action and the stunts and like, they just went so all in. But then he has this other extreme, which is where this movie, in my opinion, and Thunderdome belong, which is caricatures of the franchise. And it's.

I put the word in my notes. Spoof. Like, almost feels like this movie and beyond Thunderdome are more on the spoof spectrum of these movies.

Speaker A: 00:05:35

Okay, so my number, the first note that I had here is that I figured out a way to enjoy this particular movie, and that's to pretend that it's a Zuckerberg brothers parody of. Of all of the worst traits of Mad Max movies. Then you can actually enjoy this piece of crap.

Matthew: 00:05:56

So we were in the same exact vein on that thought.

Speaker A: 00:05:59

Yeah, absolutely. It's like, like, I'll teach you everything you need to know about Road War.

Matthew: 00:06:06

I mean, that's.

Speaker A: 00:06:08

That should be in an airplane style spoof of a Mad Max movie, but not a real Mad Max movie.

Matthew: 00:06:14

Mm. Yeah. And I think we did a good job nailing down what it is, what it was in Thunderdome. But I'm curious to hear what it is for you. But for me, it's.

It's definitely Dementus here. I mean, Dementus is a cartoon to me in a lot of ways. He's. He's way too muscular.

I mean, Humongous Lord Humongous was muscular, but he also wore like a weird hockey mask and a tunic and spoke like Shakespeare. And. And for some reason we buy it then. Like, if.

For some reason that made sense, like, we don't know where he was lifting weights, but here Hemworth sticks out like a. He's just like a cartoon.

Speaker A: 00:06:52

Yeah, absolutely. And there's no. There's really no depth of range in the emotions that he portrays. It's like, I'm angry. Dementus. It's like he literally just has one.

One emotion per shade that the character takes on. And.

And then he's just this absurd buffoon that makes these demands and somehow he just bumbles through the apocalypse as this leader figure simply because he's muscular and charismatic. So that's why I've been in, like, working out and lifting weights every day.

Because, you know, if you develop enough charisma on stage, then perhaps you can be useful in the apocalypse. I'm going to get a motorcycle chariot and we're going to make this work.

Matthew: 00:07:35

Yes. Yeah. And I think. I think it's interesting too. I think it was a little bit of a lazy argument too.

Because the defenders of this movie, they kind of leaned in like, well, you just don't want a female protagonist. And I hear, I hear what they're saying because there is that, that is out in the ether. And we've seen that go both ways.

I mean you can say, you can point to Ghostbusters and say bad. But the thing is, is that with Furiosa, Furiosa was beloved. Like she was.

The biggest surprise of Fury Road was that everyone was just so on board and Charlize's portrayal of Furiosa was beloved. It's in this fan base.

You and I actually talked about this a few episodes ago, that although there are some negative portrayals of women, and they're not like negative in the, in the Zeitgeist, they're, they're actual portrayals of what I think would happen to women in these scenarios. But he, he loves women rising and showing their strength. Like he elevates them. Furiosa is that he's had in Road Warrior 2.

Some of the villages and things that form are led by women. Miller has empowered women in this franchise before.

So to say that we didn't like this because we don't want a female leading this film is completely asinine to me.

Speaker A: 00:08:52

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, not to say that some sci fi fan bases can have some toxic elements to it and you know, there are some dudes in there that maybe have some outdated ideas about things, but that is, that's not the sci fi fan base that I know. I mean, dudes like us that tend to be more conscientious about things. And that wasn't the problem for me at all either.

The Furiosa character, I didn't necessarily find the story compelling or interesting when it really gets down to it because it's like Charlize Theron, her character was intriguing. Not necessarily because we knew exactly where she came from. It's just that stoicism, that same kind of that.

That the eyes say everything that you got with Mel Gibson's Max in, in previous films, I mean that's what made those characters great. It has nothing to do with gender at all. And, and you know, and she, you know, she was one of the, the better parts of this movie anyhow.

I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matthew: 00:10:01

I, and I think too, prequels always start off in the negative in my opinion. Like if you're going to do a prequel of a long standing franchise, you are kind of starting off behind the eight ball because you take out suspense.

So you have to find new ways to create suspense because we know the end result. So you have to maybe over index on trauma or over index on other elements to keep that story feeling full.

But for me, I don't know how you think, but, like, for example, I'm a giant Thomas Harris fan. Like, some of the first books I loved were the Silence of the Lambs, Red Dragon. Those were some of my favorite books.

Now, Red Dragon is the first book, and it's the best book in my opinion. But they didn't make the Red Dragon movie until years later.

So you have years of this, you know, Hannibal Lecter business going, and it's like, you have to watch this. This is the map. So you're. You're almost watching this. This is the map that gets me to current state, so I know the end result.

So I'm expecting a pretty good map here. Like, you're gonna. You're gonna take me on a little mini journey here. And so to me, I was like, is this really the story that mapped us to Fury Road?

Is this really how we got there? And this is really what they landed on?

Speaker A: 00:11:11

Yeah.

I mean, frankly, you could have had like a middle schooler with ChatGPT that could have linked those bridges more effectively, because I didn't connect to the story in any kind of meaningful way. There was nothing that kind of grabbed me about that. You know, you are behind that eight ball.

And, you know, not to be cynical, but, you know, perhaps there was a cash grab element here or a timing element. Fury Road had so much time and preparation and storyboarding and world building that happened before that movie was made.

Whereas this one, you know, just a couple of years later, and all of a sudden you're using mocap techniques and, you know, you're. You're kind of getting into less of the practical effects, which is kind of John.

Like, what was what made the Mad Max series so genre defining in the first place? So, you know, then why make the movie at all? Was. Was it.

I mean, did Miller really need to tell this story or is it just like, we can capitalize this and now you can have it on HBO Max.

Matthew: 00:12:19

to: 2015

The turnaround time here is obviously, it's still a long time, but comparatively, I mean, this is rushed. I mean, you can see the extensive use of.

You know, there were still some really interesting scenes that were reliant on practical effects, but we're seeing A lot of green screen. Sometimes I'm seeing some of these scenes, I'm thinking, wow, it's like Zack Snyder's hanging out around out here somewhere. Like the saturation.

A lot of the dementous driving scenes were so obviously green screen that I'm like, wow, they rushed this.

They actually rushed this, you know, and it's still a pretty good result for being rushed in today's Hollywood, but still felt way short of the marker to me.

Speaker A: 00:13:11

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, why. Why was it. It's not necessary in the way that. So the, the. That short gap that you talk about between Fury Road and Furiosa.

If you think about it, then that gap existed from the Road Warrior to Beyond Thunderdome as well. That was kind of a tight gap as well. And then you had those 80s influences that we talked about in the early episodes.

Now we're kind of into those: 2020

Neither like Beyond Thunderdome did not feel essential either. And it felt like a product of that particular time as well.

Matthew: 00:14:02

So, yeah, you know, fan base their listeners. You probably have a friend at work that you're thinking that person's planning for the apocalypse.

Like they seem like a nerd at work, but they are scheming. They have canned goods, they have. They have minerals. They are planning. Send this podcast to that person. Let them listen.

Send that Mad Max from Matthew and I. This is the most in depth Mad Max franchise podcast out there. Send it to them, let them know. Share it with your friends.

You got a friend like that probably work, right? Matthew? There's probably somebody like that person. They're gonna take over or they want to.

Speaker A: 00:14:38

I'm afraid to have friends at work because, you know, I. I just.

Matthew: 00:14:44

Yeah.

Speaker A: 00:14:49

I'm strange, I guess, when you get right down to it by most people's standards. So it's better just to be knowledgeable and useful. That's what I find.

Matthew: 00:15:03

Yeah. Friends in and out of work have been a problem for me for a long time. Both. It's just really that's why we do.

Speaker A: 00:15:10

Podcasts together for all you movies, movie wars fans out there. This is the extent of Kyle and I's friendship. Yeah. Occasionally we're on a lineup together and. And then we do podcasts and.

And he's one of the closest friends that I have.

Matthew: 00:15:28

We're brother. We're basically Brothers. Yeah, we're basically brothers.

Speaker A: 00:15:32

Yeah. Yeah. I talk to you more than I. I've talked to my brother this year for sure.

Matthew: 00:15:36

I mean, let's think about it. We are recording this on Super Bowl Sunday. Yeah, let's. Let's just put that out there.

Speaker A: 00:15:43

Occurred to me, really, because I, I, like I said, I'm a strange. It never occurred to me that it is Super Bowl Sunday. So go teams, I guess.

Matthew: 00:15:52

Yeah. And when you have a friend this. And here's the thing, too. When people find out at work you do comedy and I avoid telling people.

Speaker A: 00:15:59

Yeah. I keep those worlds very siloed. You know, I don't talk about. I don't talk about my job on stage, and I don't talk about my stage at the job.

You know, they're just two different worlds.

Matthew: 00:16:11

To me because people are just like, you're gonna make us laugh. It's like, well, I don't really want to know. No, not really.

Speaker A: 00:16:16

I've been down that road at jobs before too. And then people find it too interesting because a lot of people's day to day lives are kind of boring.

And then you've got shows coming up all the time and you're doing all these interesting things and it just, it's the topic of conversation all the time and it's, it's just not. And I don't want to do that. I like to just buckle down and really focus on what I'm. What I'm supposed to be doing.

Matthew: 00:16:40

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So don't, don't tell your, don't tell your worker, your co workers, what you do. Don't do it. Never. No, the questions on the scale.

I made up the scale. It's completely asinine. I made it up out of nowhere. But I imagine Road Warrior is kind of the pinnacle.

Fury Road kind of is akin to it because Road Warrior and Fury Road kind of. They really extend the action orientation of this. And then we have the other side of it. Thunderdome.

So on a scale of Road Warrior to Thunderdome, where on that spectrum does this movie set? Is it in the middle? Does it lean one way or the other? What do you think?

Speaker A: 00:17:17

I think it's past Thunderdome, frankly. I think it defines the crap end of the spectrum for me.

Matthew: 00:17:24

Yeah. Yeah. Do you think, Is it the boisterous nature of it? Is it the writing? Is it the, is it the characters? What pushes it that way?

Speaker A: 00:17:33

It was just unnecessary and unengaging and, you know, it had, it was. Like I said, it worked. Worked well as, as Like a comedy at points. There were some really funny moments to it. The.

That moment at the end where Hemsworth. Oh, shoot. I. I wish I wrote the line down. It's. It's escaping me right now. That wasn't. That wasn't hope. That was instinct. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That made me laugh. And then that road war, that. That made me kind of giggle, even though maybe it wasn't supposed to. And then you had Praetorian Jack.

I don't know if you noticed this, but in the. The bullet farm scene when Furiosa is shot by a rocket, he makes an oopsie face. Just. It's ridiculous. Cut to his oopsie face scenes. So ridiculous.

Matthew: 00:18:30

Yeah, Praetorian.

Speaker A: 00:18:31

What kind of God, what kind of hero is this guy?

Matthew: 00:18:36

Dude, I know. And, like, when he's driving in. What is it? What do they call it? Gas Gastown.

And like, he's driving around that very thin ridge, but he's not breaking eye contact with Furiosa. So, like, it's like he's never, like, looking at anything else. I'm like, dude, you're going to drive right off that ledge. You are going to.

I don't care how good you are in this world, you're going to drive off that ledge.

Speaker A: 00:18:57

Yeah, for sure. Brutal. Yeah. Yeah. This guy is a Teemu version of a Mad Max, you know, even as compared to, like, you don't even have to have a Mel Gibson.

You don't even have to have a Mel Gibson. Is the dollar tree Max.

Matthew: 00:19:21

The team. I got to tell you, I. During Christmas. This is a total tangent, but I don't know if you know this, but I quoted you on we.

Seth really wanted to do the Snyder series because he wanted to do it. He's really into Snyder and he wanted to respond to James Gunn, Superman. I know I've.

I've texted you like three times randomly when I thought about it, but your. Your quote that the Superman trailer looked like a Sprint ad from the mid aughts.

Speaker A: 00:19:50

Yeah, dude, I quoted you. It's a Sprint PCs commercial, bro.

Matthew: 00:19:55

It's from the mid aughts.

Speaker A: 00:19:57

Yeah, man. It's. It's one of those. It's one of those phones with the little. With the little microphone that flips down.

Matthew: 00:20:04

That's. That's.

Speaker A: 00:20:05

It's a commercial for one of those.

Matthew: 00:20:08

The way you describe movies from the Teemu thing, like, you're just so quotable with that. I just. I just die sometimes. I will randomly. Just the mid. Odds thing will hit me in the middle of the day.

And I will just chuckle like, I just don't even know why. It just destroyed me.

Speaker A: 00:20:23

Oh, man, if I could ever indoctrinate my kids into managing my social media presence, I. I would be unstoppable.

Matthew: 00:20:30

Yeah, you really would be. You should narrate trailers, actually.

Speaker A: 00:20:35

Yeah, I could be Morgan Freeman, dude. Just. Yeah, talk about penguins and shit.

Matthew: 00:20:40

Do you like the play by play? That Superman one's a tragedy. We can talk about that later. But like the cross eyed Superman all sudden with the dog. Have you seen the zoom in?

Like, there's a freeze frame that's been going around on Social where it looks like. That's where it looks like he's cross eyed. Now they've made really exaggerated ones, but they're like people.

Like, why, like not there's anything wrong with being cross eyed, but why is Superman right there cross eyed? Like, why is he flying and he's cross eyed? Like, why?

Speaker A: 00:21:08

Yeah, it's not like that. That was a frame mishap. There's no frames that aren't there on purpose in those types of projects.

Matthew: 00:21:15

Yeah, so funny. All right, back on track. Sorry I had, I had to go on that tangent.

Speaker A: 00:21:22

Hey, this is the track.

Matthew: 00:21:24

This is the, the day in the life. Because we're brothers. Next question. Where does. Where's Dementus hitting the gym?

I mean, those triceps, I mean, Lord Humongous was jacked, but Hemsworth is out of control here.

Speaker A: 00:21:40

Yeah, yeah. I don't know where his is, you know, his testosterone is coming from or where he's getting steroids.

Nor gym time because he doesn't seem to have equipment and he seems to spend all of his time in motorcycle church. So I don't know where, when and where is this gym time happening?

Matthew: 00:22:03

And making really bad deals. He's just a bad negotiator. He's just so bad. I, I do think it was funny though. Like, I, I do. I am going to give this movie some props.

Like, again, I'm. I'm mostly disappointed, but there were a few things I liked.

But the, the idea that Gastown, like, he becomes the tyrant there and it completely goes downhill, was really funny to me actually, that he couldn't manage it. Like, he's just. He's a bad. He's a bad negotiator. Like, he negotiates and gets his nipples ripped off.

In Gastown, a town of thugs and rejects and basically, you know, enslaved people turn against him. It's like your triceps aren't working out so well for you now, are they, buddy? You know.

Speaker A: 00:22:47

That's right. That's right. Well, and there are some thinly veiled, or thin, you know, not even veiled political commentary stuff happening in there.

Because if at the beginning of this particular movie, they have that same usual voiceover, but then if you listen, I guess the Hemsworth voice prior to the.

The apocalypse goes on there, and it's talking about, like, fake news or whatever, so you just extrapolate that into, you know, modern political times, and then it's obviously a satire on that whole thing. And, you know, you can ham. You can ham fist all of that in there if you want to, but that doesn't necessarily have any permanent.

Well, I guess it's got. Okay, Paul. Politics. I don't know who. I don't want to get political because every time I felt like I've. Been.

Every four years, I've been just, like, wincing for the actual apocalypse. Yeah. I keep being told it's the worst ever. And so it's like, is this just going to be a snapshot of another one of those times?

Like the people in: 1964

You look at the movies of the time, and they're just a byproduct of that particular time and a snapshot of a particular political context that's no longer relevant.

So these movies are disposable, ultimately, because if you're only capturing, like, what's happening now, then, I don't know, you have to get to a deeper level. And I think there's a lot more interesting things about humanity than there are about politics, which, you know, politics are important, but you can.

You can encapsulate that through humanity, which has always been what George Miller was best at. So he didn't capture that at all in this movie.

Matthew: 00:24:41

Yeah, yeah. He definitely. Yeah. And if they. And if they are trying to weave that in, first of all, I. I'm like.

I think I posted something like this, like, God, can I have one conversation where just politics don't appear? Just one. Just one. But, you know, it's more. It's more like Confederacy of Dunces, you know? Did you read Confederacy of Dunces?

Speaker A: 00:25:01

No, but I like to pretend that I did. So if you cannot let it out that I didn't actually read it, I dropped it casually in conversations. I don't want to lose my street cred.

Matthew: 00:25:13

Oh, yeah. Okay, cool. We'll edit it in and be like, oh, I read. I wrote it. I mean, I wrote the full.

Speaker A: 00:25:18

I'm aware of it through the character in Sideways making reference to it. So I do have, like a personal relationship with it.

You know, the guy that wrote Sideways actually followed me on Twitter back when I was a film critic, so I know about Confederacy of Dunces. That's all I'm saying.

Matthew: 00:25:36

You are up there. You actually wrote an expose on it. Because that's what we do. We write exposes.

Speaker A: 00:25:43

Expose, yes.

Matthew: 00:25:46

Oh, my God.

Speaker A: 00:25:47

Yeah.

Matthew: 00:25:48

Sorry, I didn't mean to drag out a book. I do that sometimes. But, dude, Dementus is. Is that book. I'm just. That's all I'm saying. It's just like. Just do a T. All right, Randos.

A lot of interesting stuff here. I always get worried. People ask me why I don't do a ton of brand new movies. Because it's like, well, there's.

It's hard to dig up detail on really new movies, but there's plenty out there. This is really interesting and I can't wait to see your reaction to this. If you didn't know this already.

Originally they wanted to put Charlize Theron in this movie, but they were going to de age her digitally. That was the original plan.

And Miller saw the Irishman and he saw the Gemini man film, that Will Smith movie, and said, no, that's not ever going to look good ever. So. And good choice.

Speaker A: 00:26:34

Yeah. Or they could have just put her in there.

I mean, well, it's like Wet Hot American Summer style where the characters just come back all fat and older or whatever. But sure, at least the Ron is not fat and older. So, you know, she could play a younger Charlize Theron with just a little makeup.

You don't need technology to get involved.

Matthew: 00:26:53

Yeah, yeah. I'm trying to imagine how bad that would have looked. I mean, this movie's already suffering from.

From a major, major saturation of color issue in some scenes. Overwhelming visuals. You had a protagonist that's on the screen 75% of the time who's got digital deaged. We just covered on another Movie Wars.

We did the Snyder trilogy and we covered the fact that Henry Cavill was doing a Mission Impossible movie and they wouldn't let him shave his mustache.

And so Snyder, for the Superman movie or for Justice League, he has this really horrible looking mouth because they CGI'd his mouth in to replace the mustache. And it's so obviously blatantly bad. I'm just like. It's just. That would have been a stupid choice here. I mean, I'm. I mean, I guess.

Speaker A: 00:27:39

Yeah, I just.

Matthew: 00:27:40

I can't even imagine it.

Speaker A: 00:27:41

I.

I would do it with: 2004

So we've digressed because it's become cheap to do it. And, you know, they're not thinking about the artistry. They're just trying to dump out a thing, a product, the cheapest possible way.

So, yeah, I think we need to get back to like, heartfelt, like meaningful. Putting your soul into a project. Storytelling where a stunt guy almost dies. That's where. Yep, that's where.

Matthew: 00:28:28

Near death. We need near death experiences. Blood on the ground is what we need.

Speaker A: 00:28:34

Yeah. Except for. Unless you're doing a Twilight Zone movie, Less blood.

Matthew: 00:28:42

Do you remember what Was it on T2? What was it, like 4 seconds? I can't remember. It was like 4 seconds of CGI and T2 took like 3 days to render.

It was like an insane render time for just like per. One second was like a day of rendering.

Speaker A: 00:28:58

Yeah. Do you remember what it was like to download pictures on a 14.4 modem?

Matthew: 00:29:02

Yeah. Try God forbid a song, you know.

Speaker A: 00:29:07

Oh, man.

Matthew: 00:29:08

God forbid a song. Oh, my God.

Speaker A: 00:29:10

Oh, man. I don't. Where were you even getting songs on a 144 modem? Because I'm just like Napster. I think by then I had DSL, but, you know, 56K modem.

You might have a buddy who had his own web server and he would throw up, you know, whatever MP3s were circulating at the time. You know, a lot of nine inch nails.

Matthew: 00:29:32

Yeah. You know, I remember early YouTube, you know, when, like, people were like, oh, they got this new thing.

And like, I remember thinking, this thing's garbage. You know, I, I didn't. I could never get a video. Like, it was just the first image and it never would play.

And that was YouTube for like, three years for me.

Speaker A: 00:29:49

it was a crappy product from: 2006

We're gonna, they're gonna put this on YouTube and I, I, you know, I don't want demonetization because we're gonna be rolling in advertiser money from, from the Furiosa episode, and I'm not gonna mess that up for anyone?

Matthew: 00:30:09

Yeah, the Fig Newton people are waiting for us to sign the line that is dotted.

Speaker A: 00:30:13

So are we getting actual Fig Newtons, though? I'll do it. I don't need money. Just send me Fig Newtons. I might make that like a campaign.

Can we make that a thing on the Movie wars people just mail me Fig Newtons. It's a thing.

Matthew: 00:30:30

Just the shell casings, though. They're not going to do the filling. They're just going to send us the stale external shell.

Speaker A: 00:30:36

Just. Just the carbs.

Matthew: 00:30:38

Just the. Just the. The most processed bread you can get in the marketplace.

Seriously, though, Fig Newton, if you're out there listening, we would love to have you. Oh, man, I remember that.

Speaker A: 00:30:52

Like I said, not even money, just your products.

Matthew: 00:30:56

Maybe put the filling in a jar. I'll. I'll put the filling inside. You don't even have to do that part. I'll. I'll get the casing.

Speaker A: 00:31:02

If it's easier for you, for sure. I'm willing to put them back together.

Matthew: 00:31:06

I will construct it. This really shocked me, too. So this had a weird finance structure. The budget was 170 million, but it was actually. Yeah, I know, right?

But it was actually 230 million because Australia threw in an additional 50 million. I don't know why, but they threw him a bone to film in Australia. So they got an additional 50 million.

They were anticipated to make 40 million domestically. They forecasted 40 million internationally. They only made 31 million. It was the worst Memorial Day release of all time at the time.

And it was beat by the movie Garfield.

Speaker A: 00:31:46

All right.

Matthew: 00:31:47

Fury, indeed.

Speaker A: 00:31:49

That's just the most beautiful thing. I don't know. God has a sense of humor, I think.

Matthew: 00:31:54

That damn cat. I couldn't believe that, though. I mean, I just to consider that I saw Fury Road three times in theaters, and I knew people.

I knew a guy that saw it nine times in theaters. I mean, that movie was rolling.

Speaker A: 00:32:09

I don't know. This just seems like some sort of CIA psyop or something. They just. They're. They're funneling government funds into a George Miller movie for.

For who knows what reason. I don't know. We're. Yeah, we're spreading apocalyptic propaganda now at this point.

Matthew: 00:32:27

Yeah. Why throw them a bone? Why throw them a 50. A 50 mil? Like, why did Australia do that? I don't have no idea.

Speaker A: 00:32:34

Yeah, I. I don't know. Because this movie needed to exist, apparently. This was. This was the Zeitgeist changer.

Matthew: 00:32:43

It's crazy. This was going to be Anime. And they actually got like 80% into finalizing the story as anime. I'm not a big anime guy.

You know more about it than I do. What do you think about that?

Speaker A: 00:32:54

I think that that could have been a really fascinating project, actually. I think that that. That would have made more sense because this is more of like. Like a serialized version of the Mad Max story.

And it's kind of like you could spin off a story like they did with the Matrix films, like the Animatrix film. Something like this would have. Yeah, I didn't realize that that was in the works. Can we get a. Just do a redo, take a back.

Yeah, I think it could be a fantastic.

If you got the right animators behind it and were conscientious about it, then the gaps in the story of this particular movie wouldn't be so glaring because you could have a lot more interesting visual storytelling because without the. The dangerous practical effects that usually you'd find in a Mad Max movie, there's nothing interesting about it.

So if you could do something interesting visually with animation, you could have something really fantastic.

Matthew: 00:33:57

Yeah, I agree. I'm not into anime that much, but one thing I have enjoyed is. I can't remember what it's called, but the.

You know, the Cyberpunk: 2077

And I know that I haven't seen it, but a lot of people have raved about it as almost a really great extension. So there are people out there making kind of almost complimentary series or films or shows that are anime to complement other mediums.

So I think that's interesting.

Speaker A: 00:34:23

Yeah, and it's a logical. I mean, it just pairs extremely well with that genre.

That genre has its roots in samurai films and in western films, and it's the same stuff that the Mad Max series is made of in the first place. So it's. I mean, it's. It's only a natural conclusion to have a Mad Max anime series. Really.

Matthew: 00:34:46

Yeah, it's interesting. Last rando. It's kind of a long rando. It's mostly just facts about Anya Taylor Joy, who we'll get to when we talk about casting.

First of all, she had never driven a car before. She didn't have a driver's license and never driven a car. So that's kind of cool, you know? Yeah, that actually was true in Fast and Furious too.

A few of the actresses in that film had never driven either or had driver's licenses, so I guess That's a thing. I don't know where these people are all coming from, where they just don't drive.

Speaker A: 00:35:11

So New York City, I suppose.

Matthew: 00:35:13

I guess so. Or Italy or.

Speaker A: 00:35:15

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matthew: 00:35:17

Or Neptune.

Speaker A: 00:35:18

Yeah, yeah. I think. I think Anya Taylor Joy might be a Pleiadian or something. I don't know where she came from.

Matthew: 00:35:25

Oh, it's so true. And there's a lot of weird things about this.

Like, I've listened to a few podcasts and read a lot to prepare for this, and there's a lot of weird stuff out there about her relationship with making this movie. It was very hard on her. And there's, you know, that also played a little bit into it.

I also think Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron maybe don't want to get back into this world because of how grueling it was. And it was really hard on her. It was so hard on her that when she was interviewed, I think by Variety magazine, she says, I can't.

I don't want to talk about it. I can't talk about it. It's going to take me two years to process what it was like. I'm like, okay.

I mean, yeah, I bet it was hard, but you're still like one of the highest earning actresses out there. I mean, it's. Was it so hard you can't do this interview or, like, what happened that you can?

Speaker A: 00:36:14

Yeah. I don't know. Maybe he went all Kubrick on her for not even a great movie.

Matthew: 00:36:18

Oh, I hope not. Oh, yeah, Yeah. I mean, we got another Shelley Duvall on our hands here.

Speaker A: 00:36:24

Yeah, that's what I'm saying, man.

Matthew: 00:36:26

Yeah.

Speaker A: 00:36:26

Yeah. Let's check back. It was. Check back in on her in about 30 years and if, you know, she goes all Shelley Duvall and it's for Furiosa.

Matthew: 00:36:35

I mean, yeah, she's smoking cigarettes, talking to an imaginary friend.

Speaker A: 00:36:39

Yeah, she has. She's farming goats.

Matthew: 00:36:42

Yeah. The goats is where you gotta just. You can't. You gotta just say goodbye.

Speaker A: 00:36:47

I would. Oh, man. If I didn't have an hoa, I would. I would get goats.

Matthew: 00:36:52

It's a major goat action. Oh, they eat the trash instead of you. You can also save money. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: 00:36:57

That's what I'm saying is you. It. They would convert, like your yard and just whatever random garbage you had in the. In the badass goat meat.

Matthew: 00:37:08

I haven't had goat. I don't think. Is it good?

Speaker A: 00:37:11

I haven't either. I. But I would. I'm. I could. I could put it on my smoker. I live in Tennessee, man. I've got a smoker. I. You could put.

Yeah, you could throw some smoke on that thing. And the right herbs and spices. There's no way it's not going to be awesome.

Matthew: 00:37:26

Yeah, I guess that's what they mean when they say get goaded. I don't know. That was really bad. I might cut my own joke there. That was really stupid self editing at this point, closing this out. She also said she.

It took her forever to watch the final cut. And she. When she finally did, she said she was sobbing in the first three minutes of watching this film.

Speaker A: 00:37:49

Yeah, me too.

Matthew: 00:37:51

For different reasons.

Speaker A: 00:37:53

Probably the same ones. Like this is not that good there. This is 2 hours and 28 minutes. Yeah.

Matthew: 00:38:01

She's quoted saying, and afterward, I cannot speak. I found it very traumatizing to watch. I mean this. She was in the Northman, you know, she was in.

She was in the witch and this is the one that traumatized her, dude. The witch traumatized me.

Speaker A: 00:38:16

Yeah, no kidding.

Matthew: 00:38:17

But this is the one.

Speaker A: 00:38:18

This is the. I don't. I. I suppose there are some grueling shooting conditions.

You know, I don't know if it's maybe like an abyss situation where they, you know, but on. On trucks and things, you know, maybe she. Or.

Or like an Uma thurman and Kill Bill 2 type of situation where there was a tragic automobile thing, you know, it. I. It's hard to say what traumatizes a person about a particular film experience. It didn't seem.

Or maybe it just kind of sucked to be shooting in like the motion capture locations all day long. I, I mean that could be a rather traumatizing experience. And, and then having to go on location at times in hot locations and maybe she wasn't.

I, I don't know. Maybe not prepared for the Australian.

Matthew: 00:39:08

Yeah, that could be. That could be it. I was just wondering like, man, this is. This is quite a response, you know?

Speaker A: 00:39:13

Yeah.

Matthew: 00:39:14

Yeah. You ready to. To war here. To Road Warrior the war score card here.

Speaker A: 00:39:23

Yeah.

Matthew: 00:39:23

Are we ready? Let's. Let's get furious here. I'm really doing that on these.

Speaker A: 00:39:29

We're gonna furiosted.

Matthew: 00:39:31

Yes. Yeah, there we go. We're gonna do. We're gonna do dips. We're gonna do tricep dips on a corpse here to keep our triceps in good shape. I'm just.

Speaker A: 00:39:41

Still can't figure it at the same time.

Matthew: 00:39:44

He would too. He, he. Dude, you know, he was like a gamer. Yeah, he just like annoyed dude. Oh, my God. I have so many thoughts, but let's get there.

Let's get there right now. Top bill, cast. And remember, shiny and chrome is. Yes, good. I dug it. Blood bag is. No, hated it. Don't like it. Top bill, cast.

Anya, Taylor, Joy, Chris Hemsworth. Tom Burke as Praetorian Jack. What do you think?

Speaker A: 00:40:13

You know, they're all fantastic actors and I respect all of them, respectively, but in this particular project, it's just a blood bag for me. There was nothing interesting about them. There was no depth to the, to their portrayals of these characters.

It was just, you know, one dimensional portrayals of these characters that were either louder or softer, depending on the scenario.

Matthew: 00:40:40

Yeah. So you're going blood bag.

Speaker A: 00:40:43

Blood bag all the way. Yeah, yeah.

Matthew: 00:40:45

It's tough. I, I struggle sometimes because when we see really great performances, we tend to credit actors and we see really bad performances.

I feel like my weird tendency is like, well, were they written well? You know, but it's like. Or do I. Should I blame the actors there too? I, I don't know. I'm really divided. To me, it's.

I, I probably go blood bag because I do think Hemsworth sticks out like a sore thumb here. He's not just with his. How he looks, but the way he delivers everything, the lines. He's the worst.

He's probably the worst villain in this entire franchise.

Speaker A: 00:41:21

And this is maybe the, the worst character in the entire franchise as well, because there's. Yeah, he's just completely out of place.

Matthew: 00:41:30

Out of place. Annoying. Written really badly and, and honestly was so really monotone. I mean, he doesn't really. He doesn't really show a lot of range either. Yeah.

And. And it's two. It's. There wasn't. The thing that Road Warrior does really well is that it's not just Lord Humongous. It's, you know, there's.

We have all kinds of different people. We have Wes, we have Wes's boyfriend.

We have all these different interesting characters that kind of combine and melt into this overwhelming presence. But here, you know, and I'll get to this more in supporting cast.

But like the War Boys, for example, like, I actually had so much sympathy for the War Boys in Fury Road because they were presented as these people that had no choice. They were at the end of their half life and they were willing to sacrifice themselves for this cause. And the way that they presented that to us was.

It was clear. It was simple, but it was clear that this was really sad. But there's none of that here.

Like these war boys were even mailed in, you know, they had less character.

Speaker A: 00:42:30

Well, the bobbyknocker operator was perhaps the only sympathetic amongst them. Although, although he kind of had one job to do and he failed it because he was using the spray paint recreationally instead of.

Because this is business. Spray paint, it has a particular function. You can't just huff it and then screw up the one job you had and then get shot in the head anyway.

It's, this is ridiculous.

Matthew: 00:43:02

Yeah, undocumented use of the Valhalla chrome. It's, it's a citation for sure. It's def, it's malfeasance is what it is.

Speaker A: 00:43:11

Yeah, it's mediocre.

Matthew: 00:43:14

And then he ruined cabbage.

Speaker A: 00:43:17

Yeah, he's got, he's got spray paint and blood all up all over the cabbage. You're going to have to peel back a couple of layers for sure.

Matthew: 00:43:26

After already sitting his probably very not clean ass on the cabbage for the entire sweaty ride through the desert.

Speaker A: 00:43:32

Oh, could you imagine? I don't, I mean, they're already pissing into bottles most of the time, but there's no way they don't have bidets out there, man, these guys.

Matthew: 00:43:43

Yeah.

Speaker A: 00:43:43

Oh, you don't even want to picture it.

Matthew: 00:43:46

Yeah, this is a bad war, boy. But yeah, I go blood bad for that. You know, I guess we really got to talk about Anya Taylor Joy, to get really specific.

I, I, I've seen this movie twice. I saw it in theaters and then I saw it today prepping for this. I'm, I'm okay with this portrayal. I love her. I love her as an actress.

I especially love it when she works with Robert Eggers. I've loved the Witch, loved her in the Northman. She's probably right now the hardest working actress in Hollywood. I see her everywhere.

Shows, she's always got like a movie and a show coming out at the same time, like, and she's usually really good. I just, like I said earlier, her performance didn't map back to Theron to me. So to me it's a prequel.

So I'm expecting her at least to be at the level. In this instance, she wasn't at the level of Fury Road. So.

Yeah, you know, again, I hate saying it because I love her and literally everything but here it just, it just felt under, underperformed.

Speaker A: 00:44:44

Yeah. And you know, who knows? It can't possibly. I don't, I don't think that's on her. It, I don't know.

There were only so many things she could do with this particular Story, I guess.

Matthew: 00:44:56

Yeah. All right, zero to one, we are blood bagging here. Supporting cast.

There's quite a few to go through here, but like any Mad Max film, most of these people we don't know. So I'm trying to look for the history man, George Shestov. Ayla Brown is young Furiosa. Kind of a highlight for me, actually. We'll get into that.

We have a new Immortan Joe here, though, Lechi Hume. That's new, right? That's not the guy that played him.

Speaker A: 00:45:26

Yeah, well, yeah, because the original guy was from, was Toe Cutter from the original film, which was whatever Hughes. Yeah. Hugh Kettner, something like that.

Matthew: 00:45:38

Yeah. I don't know how I could.

Speaker A: 00:45:39

Something keys. I, I, Yeah, I can't recall.

Matthew: 00:45:42

Noticeably different. Noticeably different. John Howard is the people eater. Angus Sampson as the organic mechanic. I'm looking for interesting ones here.

Rictus Nathan Jones, Scrotus, Josh Hellman and Toe Jam. David Field. We'll stop, we'll stop there. We'll smag. David Collins. Smag was in there quite a bit too. Yeah. What do you think?

Speaker A: 00:46:08

You know, I think back on some of those characters and they're interesting enough to. I think I go a half a blood bag on them. Because if the ones that you listed are very interesting, they're very singular in their own respect.

They, you know, they, they went with whatever they were doing and they really went with it. You can tell that, you know, they were trying to embody these weird post apocalyptic characters.

But there were some, there were some henchmen amongst them that look like they use moisturizer. Yeah. Because the rest of them were.

There's a, there's just a lot of actors amongst them that aren't as like chiseled and defined and like battered as you'd find in those previous Mad Max films where, you know, you'd find these Australian and oddballs. I mean, there's, there's a share of them. And you talk about like the, the word guy, for instance.

He very, you know, it's, it's chiseled onto his face. He's got that thing that really makes these movies visually interesting with these, these rich characters.

But there are just a lot of, there are just a lot of. Oh, man. Well, well manicured dudes amongst them as well.

Matthew: 00:47:30

Yeah, it's kind of like in the Walking Dead when people started noticing the really well trimmed lawns, you know, in the middle of the, in the middle of the zombie apocalypse. Like, wow, that's a really taking that. They really took care of that lawn there.

Speaker A: 00:47:41

Yeah, it just jumps right out at you.

Matthew: 00:47:43

Yeah, I totally agree. I go full on Blood bag here. Mainly the War Boys being the biggest thing.

I know we didn't really list them, but that would be included in supporting cast. Just Fury Road, the story, and this is something else that Road Warrior does perfectly, too, is that the story is coming from everywhere.

Like, even the smallest side character, War Boy or henchmen, for some reason, there's a story being told. You know, it could be what they wear.

I can't remember who it was, but one of the early ones, Inferior Road, when Furiosa is first starting to go away and, you know, she's veering off the path. And there's that one older War Boy with the glasses. Yeah.

Speaker A: 00:48:24

Yeah, you can picture him right away. He's so defined. Yeah, you can picture. Yeah, that one particular character.

And he doesn't have a ton of lines in the movie necessarily, but it's just that the Australian outback is just mapped in this. In the lines on this guy's face.

Matthew: 00:48:42

Yeah, yeah. He's very. He sticks out in my mind still. There's none of that here. No.

And we have a lot of characters here that were in Fury Road that are lesser versions of themselves. They're. They're watered down. They're toned down. I. I think. And Morton Joe being one of the biggest examples here.

Like, he wasn't nearly as menacing, you know. Yeah. His voice wasn't as deep. It's. It's an interesting change. I just feel like some of the things that I loved about the other ones. It's weird.

Again, like you said, like, I don't know why we need this. Like, if you're gonna give me half versions of these characters that we grew to love, like, why. Why do they need to be half of what they were before?

Speaker A: 00:49:23

Yeah, well, they're ultimately there for punchline. Like, the one scene that I think of in particular is like, no, not you. The one to the right of you.

And then he just jumps off the witness and then jumps off of there. It's a hilarious scene, but it doesn't get into the depths of where you have a character like Nux, who has a true backstory and whatnot. It's just.

It's just a throwaway moment for. For what is a very hilarious punchline.

Matthew: 00:49:56

Yeah. All right, so that gives us a one. So you're going half a blood bag on that.

Speaker A: 00:50:01

I'm gonna just. I'm just trying to be not a complete cynical bastard on this.

And I'm gonna just give it a little bit of credit where I think it's due because some of like Scrotus and you know, those guys, you know, I, I know these, they, they really embodied what they were trying to do out there in their own way. You know, the Immortan Joe character. What's he gonna do? You know, he's just kind of, I don't know. Yeah. Trying to think of a, of a similar thing.

It's, it's like Raul Julia and Street Fighter 2.

Matthew: 00:50:42

Oh, Raul Julia.

Speaker A: 00:50:44

Yeah.

Matthew: 00:50:44

I was actually thinking about that movie randomly a couple weeks ago. Someone posted or something. I was like, oh, I remember that.

Speaker A: 00:50:50

Yeah.

Matthew: 00:50:51

All right, so we got, I guess we got two and a half blood bags here. Oh, goodness gracious, here we go. Vehicular manslaughter. And this is the road war. The vehicles, all the stuff that happens on the road.

How do we, how do we like that here?

Speaker A: 00:51:07

It's, it's not, it's, it looked, it reminds me of the chase scene at, at the end of Beyond Thunderdome where it wasn't particularly exciting for me. I mean, there were a few exciting moments like the, but they seem superfluous.

Just, they were just action set piece things to, you know, grab a paraglider out of the air with a grappling hook or, you know, you know, getting the piss boy onto the, to handle the radiator situation. And all of these things are very exciting ideas and whatnot. But in like the, even the bobby knocker and then the, that.

I don't know what you even, even call this thing, but the, the Octo dude, his, his flying zeppelin. It's, it's visually interesting. But ultimately, to what end? All of the vehicles are kind of gray and uninteresting in this movie. There's.

They don't have the carrot.

I mean, they don't all have the individual character necessarily that some of the other movies had, with each of them seeming like they, I mean, you had glimpses of some of the main character cars or whatever that were central to it, but you didn't have like these weird. I'm trying to think of how, what I'm trying to articulate exactly, because some of the spiked cars that you would see in the, in the pre.

In Fury Road, for instance, those were very visually interesting. There was nothing particularly visually interesting about the vehicles that were involved in the chase scenes in this movie.

And you know, there were a couple of cool moments, but otherwise it was just tedious. So I, I, I kind of, I feel like I gotta go blood bag on that.

Matthew: 00:53:00

Yeah, no, absolutely. I, I, I concur with a lot of that. I also go blood bag. You know, here's the thing. Like, I liked some of it.

Like, especially the very first one where that we still don't, they don't know that Furiosa is Furiosa yet. And she's dealing with the dynamite and she's, she's. There are some cool things.

Like the rig has like, the slides and the, like the rails and the things that move around. Like, there's some cool functional stuff on that. That is pretty cool. But it's still, I'm still saying to myself, does this need to exist?

Yeah, because it's still half, it's like half speed of what we saw before.

And I know it's, I know it's difficult to have to keep comparing this to Fury Road, a movie that so abnormally got so many accolades, not just critically, but it also got like a, like nominations out the, out the ass and for being an action film. That's really crazy how many nominations it got. Like, but, but if you're a Mad Max fan, like, I'm not just going back to Fury Road.

I mean, Road Warrior set the tone. I mean, Road Warrior had more interesting things with less technology, with less. It didn't have any visual effects really in it other than practical.

So I'm just stakes.

Speaker A: 00:54:14

It had urgency, it had cared. I mean, this just kind of meandered for two and a half hours.

Matthew: 00:54:22

Yeah. So I'm like, yeah, there's some stuff I like, but I'm not, I'm not get being taken to the same high.

And it's never good when you're asking yourself, like, well, does this, does this need to exist? And so for that, I give it the blood bag. It's unfortunate, but three and a half blood bags. 2.5, shiny and chrome. Here we go.

How great is this apocalypse, huh? So this is us talking about the setting, the, you know, the surroundings. We have a lot of.

We get a few different flavors in this one because we get some of those early green place, you know, views. What do you think?

Speaker A: 00:55:00

Yeah, the, the biblical allegories were just like, just overt. And it's like 40 days.

Matthew: 00:55:08

The 40 day war.

Speaker A: 00:55:09

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then the, the highways were pristine. I, I don't even. The shots where you had the teddy bear hitting the, they were even clean.

There was nothing gritty and apocalyptic about any of this movie. And I think that there were stylistic choices involved in making it less Apocalyptic in for instance, the.

Their Garden of Eden at the beginning, but then you go on to Chris Hemsworth in his little motorcycle church, and then it's also pristine. But I, you know, the Citadel, everything is clean and pristine and it's not as defined. And I. That's. That was.

It was what was interesting about the previous films. It was, you know, it was apocalyptic and gritty, and in this one, everything was just gray and shiny and shiny and chrome, literally.

But it's all blood bag for as far as. From a rating perspective.

Matthew: 00:56:18

Yeah, yeah, I. I don't. I'm just like scratching my head. I'm like, timeline wise. I mean, I guess we're.

We're left to guess Furiosa's age during all these times and how old she is.

Speaker A: 00:56:31

I guess. I guess Max appearing kind of for that one little moment would. Would contextualize it within the frame. So it's certainly post first movie.

Don't know if it would be post Road Warrior or not. Well, yeah, I'd have to. Yeah, I suppose it would be somewhere in there.

Matthew: 00:56:48

Yeah. It's just. It just doesn't feel like. It just feels like the setting was an afterthought in a lot of ways. The set pieces are very similar.

The Citadel is very similar. Yeah, I just. I don't know. I just expected it to be slightly different. You know what I mean? Like, but it's kind of that same desert and.

Yeah, I didn't. Yeah, I just didn't. I just didn't see anything that captured me in the setting. And then the.

The peach tree thing, when she grows a peach tree on them, I'm just like, that's kind of out of nowhere. It's like, you know how great. It's like.

I guess we're like struggling to exchange food and we're exchanging food with these different groups, but we're. We can grow peaches on human corpses all of a sudden.

Speaker A: 00:57:32

Yeah, and it's that. It's that campfire fairy tale bullshit. But then also with the Wayne's World, like, choose your own adventure end.

Matthew: 00:57:43

Yeah, yeah, I know. We get three different endings from this narrator.

Speaker A: 00:57:48

Yeah. And none of them are particularly interesting.

Matthew: 00:57:52

Yeah, yeah. And then the, like. I feel like they were trying to be interesting by throwing this peach. This peach tree thing at us. But I'm like, no, stupid. It is.

It's stupid. Yeah, it's. I don't know. And also, it's like it. To me, it opens a really dumb question. It's not a question that I want to answer.

Because it's a dumb question, but it's like, oh, well, if we can really grow fruit on corpses, we make plenty of corpses, so why don't we have more food?

Speaker A: 00:58:19

Yeah.

I would imagine that there would be a farm of peach trees just the way that there were milkers and breeders and, you know, everything's a resource, so naturally you would have more, more of those. So don't give them any ideas. I don't want a goddamn, you know, next installment with like a bunch of peach. It's a, it was a bad idea.

Just leave it as it was a campfire story. Like, bullshit. Just. Yeah, we don't need any more of the peach tree. I, this movie was so.

I think that they should show this movie in orientations for refugee camps. I think it was that bad.

Matthew: 00:59:01

Oh, my gosh. Yes. Yeah. I, I, Dude, Miller really has gotten too much mileage out of the campfire tail thing. He really has.

Speaker A: 00:59:09

It's, yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a catch all for, for your screw ups. I'm just gonna start.

Oh, the other thing that he does in this movie that I found hilarious is that there would be like a mediocre line and then it would be surrounded by a sound effect every time. I'm gonna start implementing that on stage every time. I, like, I don't get the response I'm looking for.

It's like, it's like a Nebraska dad energy and no response. And it's like.

Matthew: 00:59:41

ot, you know, in, in like the: 1950

Speaker A: 01:00:06

No, no, not even a little. And not even for misogynistic reasons at all. I can't even think of a good misogynistic reason to crap on it. And the only.

And I liked Lady Ghostbusters first of all. Not as a Ghostbusters movie, but it was a goofy comedy because it was just, it was just asinine and it didn't exist in a real world.

I mean, I digress. But this movie has.

I can't even think of it in terms of like a gender politics movie in the first place because Miller did it so well in the previous installments anyway.

Matthew: 01:00:39

Yeah, and there's just none of that here. There's just none of that complexity here. No, man. Also, I don't know where this even fits in the category, but her arm.

Like, her arm was never that effective in Fury Road. Like, it was never this. She's got, like, a saw. She's got a bolt cutter like that. That requires a. That was kitschy to do that.

Speaker A: 01:01:02

No, it was. It's that. It's like that steampunk arm in army of Darkness. Bruce Campbell, all of a sudden, he's got a. A steampunk arm happening.

Also, what I had a problem with is when she was riding the motorcycle away after losing the arm in the first place, I'm like, you can't have gas and clutch on with. You have to have two arms for that. So I'm like, how is she clutching? There's no way to clutch without us, without the other arm. Unless you.

You can't do it. I. I used to ride a motorcycle. You can't. Somebody tell me in the comments section how you can gas and clutch with one arm.

Matthew: 01:01:37

Maybe you used a muscle fiber or a tendril. Oh, you ever use a. Yeah, yeah. You ever use, like, a tendril?

Speaker A: 01:01:47

Yeah, of course. Who hasn't? Who.

Matthew: 01:01:50

Who hasn't lost an arm and then used a tendril to clutch? You know?

Speaker A: 01:01:53

Now we're back in anime territory. I don't watch an anime.

Matthew: 01:01:57

Yeah, one time I used my torn ACL to accelerate. I wrapped it around and.

Speaker A: 01:02:04

Yeah, yeah, that's just. That's just good. Good survival instinct right there. You're gonna need these skills in the apocalypse.

Matthew: 01:02:12

Just normal, dude. Just peach trees and tendrils. That's all. That's what they could have called this movie. A peach chick tree.

Speaker A: 01:02:18

That's what I'm gonna call our band.

Matthew: 01:02:20

Yeah. Oh, man. I love doing these with you, dude.

Speaker A: 01:02:26

Yeah, you too, man. Yeah.

Matthew: 01:02:28

Let's see. We are at four and a half here. We are almost wrapped up here. It's not going well. It's 0.5 on the shiny Croban. That was a. Let's be real.

That was a sympathy half point. Yeah, that we. Let's see, how good are these bad guys, huh?

Speaker A: 01:02:47

Which. Oh, let's see. Who's the bad guys again?

Matthew: 01:02:50

Yeah, Dementus. And then they add.

Speaker A: 01:02:53

Yeah, okay.

Matthew: 01:02:54

I guess you could say that. I mean, he's a. Yeah, he's a guy.

Speaker A: 01:02:57

His mind. He's the protagonist of this movie in his mind. So.

Matthew: 01:03:00

Yeah.

Speaker A: 01:03:01

Yeah, I think everyone's the protagonist of the movie in their own mind. Okay, so who else we got? We've got nobody. Interesting.

Like, everybody gets a bad guy cameo for a second there's nobody who's like, doing bad guy work for an extended period of time. There's nothing interesting about. They have like a bad guy summit for a moment.

Matthew: 01:03:28

Nipples were torn off.

Speaker A: 01:03:30

Nipples were torn off. There were some bad deals made, really bad negotiations. Yeah, it was hilarious. But not. I don't know, man.

I would prefer Tina Turner over what happened in this movie. I gotta go blood bag on that.

Matthew: 01:03:49

Yeah, these were. That, that. That meeting had parent teacher vibes. Parent teacher conference vibes. It was. It was just.

It's like, are you sure you want to teach Common Core math? Are you sure that's. That's what our kid needs? It was just very.

Speaker A: 01:04:04

I want to get one of those. One of those rigs and then put it on my kid's head. Okay. Like, what grade are you getting?

Matthew: 01:04:13

Yeah. Did you study? Did you study? No, you didn't?

Speaker A: 01:04:16

Daddy's arms getting a little weak, A little tired.

Matthew: 01:04:18

Oh, that guy. That poor guy with the discolored middle beard, you know, look like you've been sucking on a tailpipe.

Speaker A: 01:04:25

Oh, man. That poor. That poor guy. And he was even painting. But that's what you get. You can't get. You can't get lackadaisical in the apocalypse.

And he was getting. He was getting all artsy with it. Yeah. Yep.

Matthew: 01:04:39

It's amazing to me, and this gets a blood bag for me because it's just amazing to me that we. We have established characters here that we're purposely taking a step back from, you know, like, Immortan Joe is. Is. Is watered down.

We're ratcheting up the wrong character dimensions. Is the one we rap. We. I don't know if they did that on purpose because they wanted to elevate him, but like, ratcheting him. Him up.

Taking away from the performance of Immortan Joe and. And the, you know, the head of Gastown and the head of the Bullet Farm, like.

Like, why do we need to tone those things down for this mediocre performance? So that's what kind of killed me, was just I was missing. And that's.

Like I said earlier, it's a risk when you get into these prequels, you know, because you're like, you know, the end result. You know, what you have seen, and so your expectations are high. It's like, would have been that hard to really. To keep these.

These characters in their lane where they were at first, you know, And I just. It's weird. Supposedly Morton Joe should be younger here. Less. Less. What is it, radiation? He should be less Suffering from that. Less.

So he should be a little more here, you would think.

Speaker A: 01:05:45

Yeah, but he's less. He should be doing a cartwheel or something, at least. Yeah.

Or like the Yoda thing from the Attack of the Clones where he's like doing tricky lightsaber tricks. If you're going to do a prequel, then, you know, do a prequel.

Matthew: 01:08:10

Yeah, yeah, he's. He's just like a weird tone down. It's just weird that that's what makes me think it was just rushed, like. Yeah, like, I don't know.

This is, this is where I wanted to see them kind of dip in. Hey, at least I was thinking, at least I get a Morton Joe back when I was like, this is like a weird half version of that.

So blood bag all the way, you know, and part. I don't think, I don't think I, like. People are gonna probably hate. Hate me for this, but I don't think I like Hemsworth as an actor.

I just don't, you know, and maybe it's because the jocularity of the whole thing and he reminds me of every person that kicks my ass in high school, but I just depth to the guy at all.

Speaker A: 01:08:49

I mean, he's just, he just, he's just being the same guy he is when he's Thor or, you know, there's nothing interesting. There's. He can't do emotional complexity.

He can get fat because it, you know, he screwed up and, you know, half the population snapped out of existence or something like that. But he's still doing the same exact thing as when he was thin.

Matthew: 01:09:14

Yeah, yeah. I just, he just. The whole time I'm just thinking, oh, you know, and in a universe where we are enthralled by our villains, where we've.

They all seem very interesting. Like, you ask questions, I don't know if you felt that way. Like, I know I keep going back to Road Warrior, but that to me is the ultimate. Right?

So, like, I'm wondering who Wes was. I'm wondering, like, why. Why is humongous this way? Like, who was he before? Like, here I'm like, this guy was probably just an annoying prick.

Like, he is an annoying prick now.

Speaker A: 01:09:44

Yeah, everything's. Everything's a one dimensional character caricature.

You know, there were some interesting side characters and they didn't even need lines or anything else. They. It's just George Miller was picking interesting side characters and, you know, Praetorian Jack was a complete unnecessary thing.

You know, there was nothing interesting about this guy whatsoever and nothing Interesting about the character. You knew everything you were supposed to know about him because he was a one dimensional character.

Matthew: 01:10:16

All right, I'm trying to see if I'm doing this math right.

Speaker A: 01:10:18

5.

Matthew: 01:10:18

1, 2, 3, 4, 5. 5 and a half blood bags to 0.5. Shiny and chrome here. We're doomed, but we're going to go through it.

These last two categories are interesting because I kept them. I was thinking I should replace them because these elements really didn't exist here.

But I think we need to keep them here because these two are really the soul of this franchise. So it has to do with the western elements and the strangers in need. So we'll start with a stranger walks into town.

You know, the western soul, which we've talked about immensely in every. Even beyond Thunderdome, still had some of this, even though they decided to mix it with some Robin Hood and some Peter Pan. But what do we think?

What do you think about the western soul here?

Speaker A: 01:11:03

Yeah, it wasn't there as much in this particular movie.

Furiosa herself kind of had that hero's journey arc through this movie and you get to watch that whole progression, but there was nothing particularly western about it. To me, the only. I do remember thinking that the only thing that felt like spiritually akin to a western was the bullet farm shootout scenes.

They just looked like your old John Ford western shootout scenes that you might see in a mineshaft or something like that. But other than that, there's nothing inherently Western because the hero's journey is in just about every story. So, you know, every.

Sure, you could contextualize anything as a western if you really wanted to, but I don't feel like there's anything particularly. This is more biblical than it is Western.

Matthew: 01:12:04

Yeah. So you're going blood bag there. Yeah, yeah, same. I. It's missing here. It's. It's not even there, you know, and.

And unfortunately we made this category because that's really the. The foundation of the stories for almost every single entry.

Yes, it goes up and down a little bit, but, you know, Fury Road was a great example that where he literally entered and left almost, you know, completely disguised. You know, he left as quickly as he came and no one noticed he left except for Furiosa. He just snuck out and was going to go to the next town.

And that is the Western archetype. And it works and it is the foundation for so much of the storytelling. And they took it out completely here, you know, and. Wow.

I just got this thought I hadn't even written this down, but like to see maybe Furiosa do what Max does when she goes and gets involved, you know, and like, maybe an adult Charlize Theron. Do we need a prequel? How about. How about we actually get a Furiosa movie with grown Furiosa where she's then doing that?

I feel like that's a wide open playing field where that Western formula could have been really successful. But eliminating in here was a huge mistake.

Speaker A: 01:13:13

Yeah, I agree. It just takes all of the. Well, and then.

So you have something entirely different, which it is a Mad Max tale, you know, so you got the Mad Max in quotation marks. And maybe this. It's. Maybe it's unfair to contextualize this amongst the other Mad Max movies because it's not the same thing.

But if this had been an anime film, you know, or this could be a very interesting series of films. If they continue doing it, maybe it'll find its voice. I'm not going to watch any of them. I have no interest in them.

Matthew: 01:13:47

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I'm just giving up on the halves here because every time I try to figure out the half scores here, it screwed me up. But we. We get them.

We get the message here. I'm just going to say straight up that it's like six to. That it's six to maybe whatever. We're just going to say 5.5. Yeah, sorry. Sorry, fan base.

I struggle with the math on the halves, but we're getting the point across. We're going to finish up with Strangers in need. Again.

I thought about replacing these categories, but I think if we're grading a Mad Max film, this is an element where we've studied deeply here and it's not really here, is it?

Speaker A: 01:14:22

No. I'm trying to even think of it in those terms.

As far as Furiosa herself is who is in need throughout the film, it's just kind of her tumbling through Forrest Gumping her way through the. Through her character progression to get her where it's. It's. It's.

What's interesting is you lose that not only that Western element that we talked about before, but you're literally dovetailing directly into the next movie. So there you get Strangers In Need. So those. There's an implication that she's going to be helping these Strangers in Need.

She's going to be helping these. These women who are, you know, the Prisoners of Immortan Joe. She's going to be helping these people. But right now she's not helping anyone.

She's just kind of Sarah Connor learning her skill set in Mexico from Praetorian Jack. You know, she's in her. She's in her badass college years. So it's all about her.

Matthew: 01:15:26

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. I. I'm missing. I'm missing these characters, you know, I'm missing the, you know, the thing that pulls Max into the story, you know, and.

And what's. There's no. There's no pulling going on here. You know, we are.

We're kind of just in Furiosa's timeline of her story of survival and where and how she gets to the point where we meet her in Fury Road.

Not really helping a lot of people along the way, which again, it's a different story, but still it's just like that hospitality is what makes Max such an interesting character. He's a loner, but he. His flaw is that he can help but get involved and help people. And that was just missing here, man.

I just, you know, and these people are need. You see people in need. You know, it's not like these people are.

Speaker A: 01:16:12

Yeah, she literally was trying to like pushing away the people that are in need. Like the, the people that are the cave dwelling people that were actually helping her with wound ablaze with maggots and things. Like, it's like you.

You remind me of my first mother in law.

Matthew: 01:16:29

Stop, stop. I don't want another stocking above the fireplace, please. Yeah, no, you're right, man. Wow. We. We cleaned house here. Whatever you want to call it.

Seven. Seven to a half or whatever the math. This. This didn't go well for our friend Furiosa.

Speaker A: 01:16:48

Not at all.

Matthew: 01:16:49

Yeah. I want to wrap up though, like so we. We just did the whole franchise. Took us some time, but we did it.

I want to hear your stack rank of all the films, but also maybe just like a 30 second, 60 second summary of just like if you were like on an elevator and someone just said, summarize your thoughts on the entire Mad Max franchise.

Speaker A: 01:17:07

All right, so we're gonna go. We're gonna go Fury Road on top. Honestly, after re watching the whole series. Then I'm gonna go Road Warrior. Then I'm gonna go Mad Max 1.

And then I'm gonna go Beyond Thunderdome. And then I'm gonna go Furiosa at the very bottom.

And as far as the series goes, it's essentially you've got a brilliant sci fi filmmaker through the arc of his entire career and through many different zeitgeists and cultural movements, essentially capturing some of the political turmoil of the time. In movie. In a. In a. In great sci fi, you know, satire. And you said 60 seconds and then I got all.

Matthew: 01:18:00

You can go, how about this? Go as long as you need to. That's just a dumb way to say something for me. My bad. No, you go, baby. The people want to hear it.

Speaker A: 01:18:12

Okay, but it's. It. Essentially, you're getting a series that not only captures gender politics in a way that other action movies weren't doing at the time. You're.

You're in. You're capturing, like, action sequences that didn't exist in movies at the time.

There are a couple of crappy entries in this, in the series, but it's one of the best action slash, you know, sci fi slash, dystopia series out there. So even if there are two really crappy entries in that, it's still.

I much respected George Miller as a filmmaker and what he's done throughout his career. Even though he's just cashing checks at the end, which is what I hope to do one day. It's like I. I want to sell.

I want to sell out so bad and just cash all the checks one day.

Matthew: 01:19:03

So tell them about Mad Matthew. I'm just kidding. I don't know your franchise. That's a good summary, man. It's awesome. We're gonna have different stack ranks. I. I think. I don't.

I don't know. You're going to think about mine.

It's really weird, Road Warrior, which probably doesn't surprise you because the amount of times I praise it through all the other episodes that aren't about Road Warrior, Fury Road. It's so close, though, between those two. It is so close. I just. Maybe the nostalgia factor plays really big for Road Warrior.

For me, Mad Max, this is where it gets a little crazy. I put Furiosa above beyond Thunderdome. Okay. Both are just bad, bad movies.

I at least appreciated that the Fletch 80s soundtrack didn't make it into Furiosa. I. I at least appreciated more that they put a few elements in there that kept it at least within the bounds of the universe. I. I found what.

This was really hard, and I went back and forth.

What ultimately landed Thunderdome at the bottom of the list for me was that it was just so far off base with the Robin Hood Peter pan story, the weird 80s soundtrack, just the. The PG13 rating, the softening of the story. No, they took the Road Warrior off the road. It was just so.

They just did so many things that were just so unforgivable to me. So it was really hard between the two.

At least Furiosa had a few things that it shared with Fury Road that were enough to keep me at least interested, and it had enough road warfare to keep me going at least. This is a Road Warrior film, so that was a really tough decision to make for me. Is that weird? What do you think?

Speaker A: 01:20:45

No, I know. I completely get it.

I think that if maybe Furiosa had come out when I was, you know, in third grade, that maybe that I would have the reverse order on that as well. You know, if you look at. Because I think. I don't necessarily think I'm looking at Beyond Thunderdome in an objective sense, because I kind of.

I get entertained by it every time I watch it. So I don't think I'm going to get entertained by Furiosa every time I watch it.

I can go back and rewatch Beyond Thunderdome again sometime, and even though it's flawed, I'm like, yeah, all right.

Matthew: 01:21:22

Interesting.

Speaker A: 01:21:22

Of a fun way. If I have the flu, this is going to be a fun way to kill a couple.

Matthew: 01:21:27

Yeah, See, I can't. But if you put it that way, I can't go back to either of those movies. Oh, I will never. I'm never going to watch either again.

My little summary is incredible. And one of my favorite things about this was the education you brought about. Just the Australian tradition that birthed this type of film.

And it eventually changes the whole setting of action and it leaks into America and it turned into this crazy thing. And I see George Miller as both this innovator, but someone who can't help but you called it cashing the checks, developed these two.

He has these weird two caricatures of these great films. Like, to me, I don't understand the drop off from Road Warrior to Beyond Thunderdome, the lack of seriousness.

That's where we start hearing about this campfire tale methodology, where that becomes an excuse. It was just so outlandish. And then you have Fury Road, which is this apex, and it's considered one of the greatest action films. Maybe not.

If the greatest action film by a lot of people. And then we get this Furiosa. I just. The question isn't necessarily, is he a great filmmaker?

Because we know he is, but why does he feel the need to fill the gaps with these. These really shitty versions of what is great, but at the same time, does that frustrate me a little bit. But I'm still glad we have Road Warrior.

It's.

And I love that it launched Mel Gibson because we Got a lot of great Mel Gibson down the road with Lethal Weapon and all these different, different series. So there's more good than bad. And I still think I can. I can.

In my mind, I can take Beyond Thunderdome, and I can take Furiosa now and say George Miller is someone who's. In terms of being a film fan, is very essential to my fandom, and I forever will appreciate. And I've had a lot of good memories.

Just chilling watching Road Warrior, watching Mad Max, and so overall, net. Net positive, good stuff.

Speaker A: 01:23:20

Yeah. And nobody has 100%, like, track record. Andrei Tarkovsky is the only director I can think of that has 100% track record.

Everybody else has a crappy couple of films. So, you know, George Miller, like I said, keep cashing checks all the way to the end, dude.

Just like, yeah, coach, coach some anime series and, you know, cash all those checks.

Matthew: 01:23:44

Yeah, man. Well, dude, this has been a blast, and I'm so glad that we finally got to wrap this up. You and I are going to.

I'm still getting this all scheduled, but we are going to sit down in person with Mr. Seth, and we're gonna talk Kill Bill.

Speaker A: 01:23:57

Yeah, I'm excited about that one, man. Tarantino. I'm just, you know, I'm a nerd of a certain age, so it's just like, there's.

I have no choice but to be really into Tarantino and specifically Kill Bill. It changed the whole trajectory for me. So I love that.

Matthew: 01:24:13

I kind of want to. We haven't decided this yet. I kind of want to do all the Tarantino.

Speaker A: 01:24:18

Oh, yeah. I'd be totally down.

Matthew: 01:24:21

I kind of want to. Yeah, just start at the beginning and go all the way through. I got to convince Seth. But, dude, thank you again. This has been a blast.

And we finally did it. We wrapped it up, man. And I'm. I'm Kyle.

Speaker A: 01:24:34

And I'm Matthew. And also, I just want to say, give us time, and we'll teach you everything you need to know about movie war.

Matthew: 01:24:46

That wasn't hope. That was instinct.

Speaker A: 01:24:49

All right.

Matthew: 01:24:50

Love y'all.

Speaker A: 01:24:51

Peace.

Matthew: 01:24:52

We did it.