Spectrevision Radio

Welcome to Weird Studies, an arts and philosophy podcast with hosts Phil Ford and J.F. Martel.

For more episodes, or to support the podcast,

go to weirdstud J.F. Martel. For many younger viewers, the Australian filmmaker George Miller

made his biggest impact as the producer of Babe, a movie about an adorable pig, and the

director of Happy Feet, about a dancing penguin, also adorable. Devotees of the Babe franchise

would add that Miller also directed Babe, Pig in the City,

exploring the further adventures of the beloved pig.

But here at Weird Studies, Miller is idolized, no doubt predictably,

for the post-apocalyptic experiment and ultraviolence and chrome fetishism that is Mad Max.

Since the fifth film in the franchise has yet to be

released at the time of this recording, our episode focuses on the first four. Each of those films

showcases an episode in the brutal life of one Max Rakatansky, rover of the wasteland,

an occasional friend of those in need, a dog's life, you might say,

and one not particularly conducive to adorableness, despite any fleeting resemblance to the littlest

hobo. The first film, released in 1979 and simply titled Mad Max, features our hero as a highway

patrolman, squaring off against a ruthless biker gang

in a decrepit late-70s Australia, reminiscent of Kubrick's dystopian England from a

clockwork orange. This origin story introduces us to the tragic events that earned Max his

mad epithet. The subsequent films, Mad Max 2 or The Road Warrior,

released in 1982, 1985's Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, co-starring Tina Turner as the ambitious anti-entity,

and the much more recent Fury Road, in which Tom Hardy takes over the titular role

...