MAD MAX: Inside George Miller's Ozploitation Game Changer
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- Опубліковано 9 лют 2025
- An in-depth analysis of the history, creation, and meaning of George Miller's original MAD MAX, including an explanation of the Ozploitation wave of films that came from Australia, George Miller and Byron Kennedy's history that shaped the film, the difficulties that almost destroyed the film, and Miller's blend of brutality and cartoonishness that turned this into a one of a kind hit that spawned a series.
#madmax
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I think what I really like about the OG Mad Max is the gradual decent of society. Its not all at once, there is still a sense of normality that exists among people, but the gangs and resource scarcities are present and the crossing between them and the gradual intersection are what sell it to me and why I loved this film. God I fell in love with the landscapes in this film though.
true, every empire fell gradually as their unique societies devolved almost at the same rate they evolved. history does not "throw a switch" and things suddenly happen. there's always a thesis/antithesis/synthesis going on.
Yeah. Society is collapsing but hasn't imploded into total anarchy yet. That shift was complete by the sequel.
Yessss the landscape shots throughout the entire franchise are an opium all it's own. A well lit and directed landscape shot is hypnotic. Allows for full suspension of disbelief, and the entrance into the mind/world of the storyteller.
Also, it was through the Mad Max series that I came to understand, at least a little bit, why the Australians are who they are. In an alternative universe they are us, the US.
As such they fiercely love their land. It's the love of a child for it's mother. Australia herself made them the people that they are, they could come from nowhere else. Australia is dangerous? What beautiful woman isn't? A delight to the senses, it is love at first sight.
As a Texan first, a son of the South second, and an American almost as an afterthought; I have my own first true love, the homeland.
But Miller opened my eyes to something that surprised me when I recognized it. There is a little Australian in all men of free will. The majority of growth in their tourism over the past decades can no doubt be attributed to people around the world who wanted to see with their own eyes the backdrop for Miller's theatrical visions, and for fleeting moments they are able to walk on the very edges of the Wasteland itself.
That is something that can only be obtained by physically going to Australia. No pictures or videos can capture it, you have to be there, it is unforgettable.
Afterwards, it exists now only in your dreams.
you also can see some civilians already start showing little insanity by how they act and dress up tho
I think the scrappy nature of Mad Max really makes it stand out in the franchise. It gets overshadowed by Mad Max 2, but its really something unique and so very odd. Hope you dive into the entire franchise, Matt!
Ya i love how Mad Max 1979 has this vibe of a Not so distant Apocalypse. With a kinda Grassy but still kinda ok life Apocalypse. It has a town with a Society. But its almost there to the brink of destruction. Its an Early beginning to the Apocalypse. Which is rare. Or you could say. A Society thats no longer under government. But isn't falling apart. Almost in the Western world. Almost normal with cars of transportation. But kinda lost with government due to gangs going town to town to terrorize towns.
I kinda want to see more graasy town Apocalypse films.
Did you see the fan made short film Hope and Glory?
The Mad Max series has one of my favorite post-apocalyptic worlds. George Miller & his crew created an insane & I can't wait to return to it for Furiosa.
Back in the 1980's, I remember trying to rent Robocop (which had just come out on VHS), but it was out, so I went down the Sci-Fi aisle and looked for anything remotely comparable. That kickass boxart of Goose in the Motorcycle helmet, with the MFP Pursuit Special in the background sold me. The Toecutter, Goose, and the enigmatic henchman, Bubba Zanetti were my favorite characters. I ended up renting it multiple times over the next few weeks, along with Terminator (and R.O.T.O.R. 😂). Now I'm 40, and still quoting virtually every line from memory.
The original Mad Max is still really epic to watch, because it feels so ahead of it's time. George Miller really made you feel like you are looking at a dystopian world, from the ways the characters interact with eachother, to the desolate roads full of gangs. It's so surreal. Hits even harder with the baggage of the sequels.
This was the first movie I saw, and it made me a fan big time!
The early scene where Max walks away from the interceptor and removes his sunglasses to reveal Mel Gibson to movie-going audiences was filmed near our house.
Mad Max is a masterpiece and I enjoy pointing out local Werribee and Laverton filming locations to friends from interstate.
I grew up in Werribee also. I used to cycle on Old Geelong Road where one of the opening scenes where the caravan was smashed into. Not to mention the many trips to the YouYangs where many of the other back roads were that made it into the film. I always wonder whether the road sign for Anarchie, was a rehash of the sign-post to Anakie, which is in that area. Many other locations bring back memories.
Every criticism you have of the first Mad Max are actually points I love about this movie. I love how non-Hollywood it feels. I love the meandering moments. I love when the world just breathes. I love how naturally lived in the world feels. This movie has a rhythm to it unlike most films. It’s so good. I love all 4 films but this one is by far my favorite. Where the other 3 are post apocalyptic this one feels very pre apocalyptic. Uhg. It might be my favorite movie ever.
Great essay. Can’t wait for the Furiosa prequel.
That was not Miller's bongo van. Miller said in an interview it was a white shell they got from the wreckers and painted it blue to match his. As it was also used as the wardrobe and actor transfer van, they could not afford to destroy it. Proof of this was in seeing the van behind the scenes with doors open and actors sitting in it, totally painted blue. Where as in the film, when the crash happens, the doors fly open and you can see the white lining within the door frames. The bongo was only used for the drive up for that scene, not the impact.
Max handcuffing that guy at the end to his car and giving him a hacksaw also inspired Rorschach dark origin in the Watchmen comic… definitely an interesting connection
One of my all time favourite movies, I'm so glad you covered it!
Thanks, Owen!
Road Warrior is of course fantastically iconic and formative but I've always had a soft spot for the original. A lot of it really feels like it could take place on the hot, sticky tarmac of rural Australia
Hope you do the entire original trilogy.
Quadrilogy if you count Fury Road.
Tbh I always thought the first one was the best out of the Mel Gibson movies
I never noticed it before you started talking about it but I think part of the reason this is my favorite Mad Max film is because its subdued in a classy and impactful way like Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It knows what to show you and what not to. The implication and raw emotion is much more impactful than distasteful gore. Not that I look down on that stuff, Friday the 13th is one of my favorite franchises. ❤
Hitchcock made that famous in the Bates Motel shower scene. He knew he couldn't capture the full horror with special effects technology at the time, so he just poured chocolate sauce down the drain as blood and played music--and the audiences' minds filled in the gaps.
I've always felt a link from the driving on quiet roads with a sparse dry background and from the hints at the real-world 1973 oil crisis in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
I love coming to your reviews, not only for the high quality brought by a lot of skill and effort, but also because my playlist on spotify grows with new tracks. Thank you.
I was a big fan growing up! I must have watched it 1000 times DUBBED! As years went by i found an original copy and watched it 1000 more times! I have watched this whole movie one and two in slow motion! Nice video i like your work!
Great video.
When I was a kid I got to watch many of the chase scenes being filmed, plus Max's intro scene with the Interceptor. The house I grew up in has a brief cameo in the movie.
What I love most about this film, other than it's vitality and sense of adventurous filmmaking, is that an otherwise unassuming exploitation film paved the way for a series that planted a seed into pop culture than influenced nearly everything that followed. Kinda like Night of the Living Dead in that regard. It's a great film
Favorite behind the scene tidbit: Miller paid his biker extras in slabs of beer. Oh and the film’s ending literally inspired Saw.
This movie was a classic the ending actually inspired the guys who wrote saw
Matt, you know damn well we'll watch anything you make
Great video. I loved your "Babe: Pig in the City" comment during the credits. That movie is great and disturbs me to no end.
This is my favourite of the Mad Max series, The Toe cutter gang were such a genuinely entertaining bunch, so were the MFP, The screaming engines of those old Kawasaki's, The dark tone of the ending.
I've always found Mad Max to have been very Hitchcockian in terms of its storytelling, and especially in the score and sound design. One of my all time faves.
Mad Max and it's sequels practically set up the standards for Ozplotation, Road movies and post apocalyptic films/stories. It's been a major influence on various series like Fist of the North Star and Fallout. Heck, Fast and Furious wouldn't exist without Mad Max
George Miller is probably Australia's greatest film director. Mel Gibson seemed to learn from George if Mel's own directing career is any indication.
@@hanolodo ??? Lol, no. He never did anything worth besides Mad Max and Mad Max 2. Beyond Thunderdome was co directed with George Ogilvie and Fury Turd is, well, a turd. Peter Weir is way much better. Typical clueless millennials that don´t know shit think that Australia´s only movie director is George Miller...
One of my all time favorite action movies the best post apocalyptic series of all time. The action the story the characters all of it top notch
Yes
i love the visual rumble and shuddering of the camera during high-speed shots
entirely unintentional result of filming from a moving vehicle without modern steadying equipment, but it lends itself so well to the action and helps suck you in
Great video. Glad that the original Mad Max has some attention, as the sequels with their most overt post-apocalyptic have more staying power in the culture. Also, the MFP patrol cars rule. That livery is iconic!
Oh, yes! Please do the entire franchise! This video is great and shows how much you have grown. The amount of research and work that you put into these are amazing. I always look forward to your videos and always go back re-watching them. Thank you for this! I cannot wait to see what you have to say about the rest of the films and especially on The Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome.
Mad Max Trilogy from George Miller, is one of my Favorite Movies Franchise. The Trilogy who reveals Mel Gibson as an Actor. You Brilliantly explain what makes this Cult Classic Franchise a complete Masterpiece.
This is low budget masterpiece 🎉
Only America would overdub an English language film
😂
Hi! New subscriber here. I just wanted to say that ur legitimately one of the best there is at what ur doing. It’s quite rare to find someone so talented at producing in-depth critical analyses and breakdowns like you, who covers such a broad variety of pop culture media. At least to my knowledge, there are few who produce video essays on works of this many narrative and visual formats with the same level of quality and skill that you do. I in particular am delighted to find so many analyses on comic book storylines, a medium that is oft critically overlooked by most popular reviewers on yt. It’s very clear to me that you love what ur doing, and I wish you the best. So many of ur vids deserve so many more views!! 😭
Thanks so much!
Agreed! Such an underappreciated channel for the level of quality it hits!
Definitely more. For the longest time Thunderdome was my favorite. The comparison to Evil Dead struck me because I loved Army of Darkness as a kid too lol. My tastes changed growing up
Great flick! Not a big fan of the sequels, though. This one is classic and the issues filming no doubt helped make this iconic film so great.
I’d compare it to Evil Dead. The sequels are more fun. But the original laid the groundwork and you see them getting every penny out of the films $50 budget. You definitely see the director honing their craft but there’s a raw, almost punk rock energy to it.
Edit: And I see you made the same comparison. lol
I’d love a fresh video on Road Warrior!
Me too! One of my all-time faves!
More Ozploitation please.
The Road Warrior is my second favorite movie of all time, so yes, I would like another video about it.
One of my all time favorite films. It was a game changer when it came to action films.
Thanks!
This was a great video man, really appreciating the indie-rawness of the original! 🎉
As a viewer of movies you don't realize how the directors manipulating you invoking feelings and ideas thanks for the in-depth explained I want to go watch it again for the 20 something time
Thanks for the amazing video Matt. Big mad max fan. Much ❤ as always
You gotta watch HOPE AND GLORY - A Mad Max Fan Film. It is made with love and dedication. Combines elements from the the first movies, Fury Road, the comic book and the game. They even paid for a location with a couple cases of beer, supposedly. In my opinion, it is more than just a fan film.
Mad Max might have been made off the scent of an oily rag but it was still so well made - and it was George Miller’s first full length film.
Max doesn't only live on in film, he's secretly the hero of all the early Fallout games.
Great video essay man! Heaps of info bout the production that I had no clue about. Well done video dude.
Well Done Enjoyed very much.. I have seen the American International Dubbed version on Home Video And Finally Years Later restored Blu-ray version with all the proper actors real voices..
You know Matt, your getting dangerously close to being the everyman Rob Ager 🤘
I strongly recommend the novelization. It’s out of print but Audio Books For the Damned did a narration on UA-cam. It fills in a lot of blanks and still let’s your imagination run wild
I am surprised when the latest Mad Max IMDB rating sank to 6.8, It seems later generations are seemingly less impressed with this movie. One thing these people dont understand is the Mad max's ridiculous low budget in adjusted inflation of $2.4 million versus versus a typical Sundance indie movie average budget of $14 million. Sure it is not polished to 2024 standards, but the level of creativity and effort for such a low budget is very impressive.
Can you explain why the original film made nowhere near smokey and the bandits boxoffice?
I don't know how you do it man. I literally just watched Mad Max last night and was running out of Mad Max content to binge watch when this video popped up. Perfect timing!
Love that snazzy new intro, Draper
God damn I didn't know how badly I wanted this video
you know , this inpired Fist of the North Star ( hokuto no ken ) , which literally inspired or made the Shounen hero lead , this is actually crazy bonkers wild
Thanks for this Matt, I have been watching You since the beginning of last year when I found your "Perfect Spider-Man story" video.
Hope you are doing okay
The first time I watched the original MAD MAX, I thought it was boring, and thought THE ROAD WARRIOR was a massive improvement. But I dunno how that was my initial impression; my most recent rewatch of the series revealed this one to still be a total nail-biter with great performances and of course fantastic action. Yes, Road Warrior and Fury Road are better, but the original film still shreds, in large part to the verisimilitude you mentioned. The setting of Mad Max isnt The Wasteland yet, it's still Australia, dystopian but not yet apocalyptic, desperately clinging to some sense of order as the world crumbles.
One of Mad Max's main source of inspiration, was from the Manga/Anime Hoto no Ken aka "Fist of the Northstar ." The comparisons between the two are very obvious!
Mad Max and Road Warrior both came out before Fist of the Northstar was published.
@@MattDraper Fair enough. I stand corrected. 😅
I was a meer 11 years old when I saw mad max and I have been mesmerized ever since. I definitely love the original cut without the dubbing.
My favorite villain of the first three installments is iron bar..
Awesome review Matt. I remember thinking at the time, the low camera angles on the vehicles on the road, was something i had not seen before say in car chase movies like Steve McQueen's" bullet". The roads it was filmed on were familiar to most Melbournians, although now, because we have doubled our population, those roads are packed with cars. bummer!
Lol my friends said I was crazy for liking the first Mad Max over all the others. I just kept saying they didn’t get it
Hope you cover the whole original trilogy and maybe even the highly underrated video game!
I'm pretty old so I saw these films in sequence. The first is still my favorite due to how it was the dystopia of tomorrow (which is now... today, unfortunately); grounded, but with weirdness in the margins.
I really think a TV series that takes place in this time period that leads up to the "Pox Eclipse" that happens between Max 1&2 would be fantastic. But, that's me.
Great vid, big agree on the Evil Dead comparison. Spot on!
Well said... loved your outro, got me fired up... I'm going to dig out my original vhs and have a squiz..
Mad Max 1 is an interesting movie. I don’t really like it(in fact hot take: I sort prefer Thunderdome a little more) but I feel like this is a case where I came in expecting something huge as I had heard about how amazing Fury Road was. So maybe it was just a case where I let preconceived notions get in the way and not appreciate what the film was actually accomplishing. It’s a similar thing with Evil Dead as the original I wasn’t huge on while the sequels I gratefully enjoy a lot. Still this video gave a lot of great insight. And I look forward to revisiting Mad Max.
Great video as always. I honestly would love to hear your thoughts about Miller’s latest movie Three Thousands Years of Longing
The awesome thing about the first movie is that it's not a science fiction fantasy, it's really just an exaggerated cop, action movie. This is the one I'd love to see re-imagined.
Your Fury Road video is one of my favourites!
I have to admit that I'm not the biggest fan of the first Mad Max... but on the other hand, road warrior and beyond thunderdome have defined what post apocalyptic worlds should look like in my opinion...
I love the original Australian voiced version, but the American dubbed version gives it an even more cartoonish quality, which I also enjoyed.
To say that Australia had no film industry before the new wave is totally incorrect. The first full length film, The Story of the Kelly Gang, was premiered in Melbourne in 1906, which kickstarted a cycle of boom and bust until the early 1970’s with Federal Government funding investment through the newly created Australian Film Corporation. This led to the industry’s renaissance and the ‘New Wave’ that saw the emergence of Peter Weir, Bruce Beresford, Gillian Armstrong, Phillip Noyce and Miller, amongst others. NIDA is still regarded as one of the finest training grounds in the world for the industry.
One of the most impressive debuts ever.
love the instrumental version of „thunderdome“ used for this video…❤
Nice overview!
Great vid. I rewatch Mad Max periodically. Quite often back to back with Mad Max 2. I wonder if there's any film in George Miller's storage that could be put back into Mad Max to extend it as a Director's cut?
The best Mad Max movie of all time my opinions beat a the road Warrior I do enjoyed Mad Max movie. 🇦🇺💀🔥🚔💥
I really, really, really hope that Miller won't let me down with the Furiosa film and gives us another glorious saxophone scene in it. Sax and Max go together like sex and drugs.
wonder if the sax guy from lost boys is still around... he could use him...
And yes, still great👍! Thanks!
But, ei Miller, can i have a little more of Max in the Mad Max franchise?
Thank you Matt
Great video!
Loved this video and love Mad Max! You gotta redo the Road Warrior and complete it with Beyond Thunderdome. Guzzalene!!
Road Games & Razorback are great Ozploitation films but Mad Max is my favorite.
I love fury road but I prefer the term used in road warrior for gasoline “the juice, the precious juice was hidden in the vehicles”
I would LOVE to hear your thoughts on Beyond Thunderdome. In my opinion, the best of the original trilogy. MAD MAX is probably the greatest movie franchise of all-time, sorry Mission Impossible...oh, Mission Impossible, there's a idea for MULTIPLE videos!
The stark reality based feeling to it comes from it's scrappiness.
Hell yeah!
Want to see your thoughts on thunder dome to complete the mad max saga
Yes please more on mad max
I backpacked around Australia in the 90s and did quite a few jobs on farms and fruit picking, stuff like that. I spent time in Broken Hill but also other places out in the middle of nowhere, much further inland. I used to pretend I was in Mad Max, honestly the first film its not a stretch of the imagination at all that it could be real. There are quite a few ghost towns that used to be mining towns or settlements and the mines closed - its mad.
My favorite exploitation sub-genre is still the yakuza films of the 1970s. They have all the tropes of the genre, but they're also these weird little Japanese morality plays about why crime doesn't pay.
Please do a video on the David Gordon Green Halloween trilogy.
I personally enjoy them but they have a lot of problems.
Wow I just now realized they never resolved that scene with the baby holding the gun. I was really expecting some sort of intense moment were they had to get the gun from him but nope.
I'm sure you have seen the wonderful little documentary about ozploitation called: not quite Hollywood?
Great video
Please review Coraline and Frankenstein
I love all the Mad Max films. I prefer to watch the first two back to back. The Road Warrior makes MM a better film and Mad Max makes RW a better film.
And now, I like to watch Furiosa and Fury Road back to back.
Fury road is one of the greatest movies of all time? Maybe I should watch it again. Unfortunately I have little to no interest in the upcoming prequel. But I would love to see more Max.
Lethal Weapon's Martin Riggs character is just another version of Mad Max
I agree that Fury Road was leaner and therefore better.
Maybe it's not perfect, but this film is my fave.
I wonder if Toecutter's sort of "cat spit" at 18:10 is a tribute to "The Bride of Frankenstein"?
the origal mad max is the best
3:12 that is from "Stone" (1974)