(3) SF: MAD MAX

(1979-2024: MAD MAX 1-5 – yeah, I’m counting Furiosa as a fifth Mad Max film)

And now for some classic Australian post-apocalyptic cinema – let’s face it, Mad Max defined the post-apocalypse or at least post-apocalyptic chic, the apunkalypse or biker leather with a bit of BDSM kink thrown into the mix. (Hmmm…maybe a LOT of BDSM kink).

The only issue is which Mad Max film to choose? The correct answer is, of course, all of them – yes, the whole franchise. Even Thunderdome. Even Furiosa as “a Mad Max saga”. They all have something to offer the post-apocalyptic genre, particularly as the apocalypse shifts somewhat in each one.

Although overshadowed by its immediate sequel (so much so that the American audience was generally unaware that there was prior movie and the movie was instead titled The Road Warrior), the first Mad Max is arguably the purest of the films. Part of the latter is that it was shot on a shoestring budget – so much so that director George Miller paid extras in beer.

However, it is not purely a post-apocalyptic film – it also combines elements of ‘buddy cop’ movies and revenge movies, falling squarely within the so-called Ozploitation subgenre of contemporary films at that time (the Australian or ‘Oz’ version of exploitation films). Indeed, these elements predominate in the film – Max Rockatansky or Max is mad because a biker gang, led by Toecutter, burnt his cop buddy ‘Goose’ as well as running down his wife and infant child.

Oh the apocalypse is there somewhere in the background, but it has happened offscreen. Something has caused central governmental authority to decline, but it is still present in Max’s police highway patrol. What’s more – life and society are still relatively intact in the Australian country towns, and there’s even commercial traffic on the roads. This apocalypse reminds me of the proverbial decline and fall of the Roman Empire – too few legions and too many barbarians, the latter represented by the biker gangs emerging in the towns. Indeed, the parallel to the Roman Empire is even closer – just as the legions themselves were increasingly comprised by barbarian Germans, the police force in Mad Max resembles the leather-clad biker gangs. When the highway patrol arrests one of the bikers, the biker even has the mainstay of cop movies, a sleazy defense lawyer, show up and get him out. I mean, come on – what self-respecting post-apocalyptic world has lawyers?! Man, lawyers – they’re hardier than cockroaches! I might have to revise my post-apocalyptic job criteria…

It’s in the second film with the higher budget that the post-apocalyptic scene really gets into gear. And how – the opening narration speaks of oil running out and global (presumably nuclear) war. Long gone is the highway patrol – Max is now a lone survivor, albeit still in his iconic police super-charged V8 Pursuit Special. The plot revolves around an island of semi-barbarized civilization in the form of an oil refinery in an armed compound, besieged by the barbarian marauders. And what intriguing marauders in their leather bondage gear – led by the masked Lord Humungus (“the warrior of the wasteland, the ayatollah of rock-and-rollah” as he is announced) and his lieutenant Wez in those ass-less chaps.

The third film sees the last semblance of former civilization replaced by the barbarian Bartertown and its Thunderdome, ruled by an uneasy diumvirate of Aunty Entity and Master Blaster (although the latter is actually two people).

Personally, however, I can’t go past the visual splendor of the fourth film, Mad Max: Fury Road, which resets the apocalyptic story back to somewhere about the time of the second movie. Indeed, it probably works best as a retelling of the second film, but ramped up to eleven – the fourth film makes the apocalypse in the second film look positively cosy, while Immortan Joe and his War Boys makes the Lord Humungus and his retinue look like a polite picnic party. The plot, characterization and dialogue are all pared down, but who needs them when the film is this visually spectacular? John Keats basically wrote the plot in His Ode on a Grecian Urn:

“What men or gods are these? What maidens loath?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

What pipes & timbrels? What wild ecstasy?”

Basically, that is, if Keats were to replace pipes and timbrels with flame-throwing electric guitar – and wild ecstasy with balls to the wall insanity. As I’m sure he would if he saw Mad Max Fury Road. Ode on a Fury Road, perhaps?

Furiosa is Miller’s belated return to the world of Fury Road with the prequel story of Imperator Furiosa, which sadly underperformed at the box office – despite Chris Hemsworth’s memorable addition to the Mad Max rogues gallery with the warlord Dementus.

FANTASY OR SF?

SF obviously – and the cinematic trope codifier for that SF subgenre we’ve all come to know and love, post-apocalyptic SF. Although it would be intriguing to see more post-apocalyptic fantasy – I’ve read books that are arguably literary post-apocalyptic fantasy but you just don’t see it in film (or at least, very little of it).

HORROR

Mad Max is not horror as such, although it arguably has elements of slasher and survival horror, not to mention the sheer existential horror of a post-apocalyptic world and the occasional body horror of the ravages of the wasteland on its warlords. As such, it wouldn’t take too much to switch it up for horror.

RATING: 5 STARS*****

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(4) SF: THE THING

(1982)

My fourth place entry is The Thing – not the original 1951 The Thing from Another World or the 2011 prequel but John Carpenter’s classic 1982 film. Once again, we’re back to Wells’ Martians and Morlocks, with some Lovecraftian Mythos a la At the Mountains of Madness thrown in for extra horror, because The Thing is at its core a horror film. Of course, in this case, we’re dealing with a Martian – not literally Martian but alien. And holy crap – every other alien in cinematic science fiction (including those of another entry on this list) are positively cuddly compared to the alien…thing in The Thing. That…thing doesn’t just invade our bodies – it assimilates them. Violently. The Thing is a shapeshifter, absorbing its victim’s body into itself, yet able to retain the appearance of (and mimic) that victim, seemingly extending to any lifeform.

Fortunately The Thing is confined to an American Antarctic research base, but then so are its targets subject to the body horror of the thing itself – it takes the hostile environment and inescapable isolation of the setting and raises it with a full house of paranoia, as the Americans desperately try to figure out which of them have been assimilated (against the background of the grim calculation that if the Thing should escape the isolation of Antarctica, then all of humanity will be consumed), an uncertainty that continues to the ending itself.

Apparently, it’s an annual tradition for viewing by the winter crew at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station during the first evening of winter.

FANTASY OR SF?

SF obviously, from the very opening sequence of an alien spacecraft crashing to Earth – although arguably like the Lovecraftian or Cthulhu Mythos it resembles, it borders on fantasy, albeit not as much as beings like Cthulhu or other elements of the Mythos. I sometimes muse how it could work as supernatural rather than SF horror – with the Thing as something akin to a vampire or the demons in the Evil Dead films, except with shapechanging assimilation abilities.

HORROR

One of my three top ten entries which are also my holy trinity of SF horror – perhaps the most classic SF horror entry in my top ten, which has inspired or been referenced by films and other works of popular culture ever since. Like all good classic horror, it is essentially haunted house horror, substituting an alien for the ghost, and neatly solving the so-called haunted house problem – why don’t the characters just leave the house? – by virtue of its Antarctic setting effectively confining their characters to their base and isolating them from the outside world, the latter being something the more astute characters realize they have to maintain to protect the world from the Thing.

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(5) SF: THE MATRIX

(1999. There are no sequels).

The Matrix is perhaps the next most definitive cinematic Robot War after another entry on this list, and like that entry, it works best by combining the Robot War with another trope, in this case that of virtual reality. As such, it is the direct descendant of H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine, consistent with my pet theory that the heart of science fiction is still all Martians and Morlocks.

We’ll be looking at Martians later, but the Machines and their software Agents in the Matrix are Morlocks, except that it’s cyberspace travel rather than time travel. The original Morlocks were one of two evolutionary descendants of humanity, evolved from the working class – maintaining the advanced technology of the future for the Eloi, the other descendants of humanity evolved from its leisured upper class.

The dark twist of Wells’ novel is that the Morlocks eat the Eloi, “farming” them like livestock. This theme of evolution endures in the Matrix, albeit transformed from Wells’ unrealistic biological evolution (without genetic engineering or mutation) to cybernetic evolution – involving artificial intelligence and robots as machine Morlocks that rise up against their human Eloi, particularly as the machine Morlocks do actually farm us for their food or energy.

Ultimately however, this makes no sense – humans don’t produce more energy than they consume. The Machines would obviously use more energy keeping us alive than they would ever extract from us – and that’s aside from programming and maintaining the Matrix itself. My theory is that the human resistance have no idea what the Matrix is for and the Machines actually use the Matrix for entertainment, like television (or the internet) – “Let’s see what the humans are doing on the Matrix tonight!”

And for a Robot War against humanity, the Machines are actually quite nice to us, whatever the purpose of the Matrix. Morpheus lets slip that humans fought a genocidal war with the Machines, in which we nuked the sun (NUKED the SUN!) to deprive the Machines of their solar energy (and you know, hopefully wipe them out). It didn’t work and we lost the Robot War, but instead of the Machines exterminating us like cockroaches, they keep us in our own cozy virtual dream world. Indeed, Agent Smith (who, unlike Morpheus, tells it straight) says that the Machines even tried to make it a perfect utopia for us, but human psychology wouldn’t accept it.

As I see it, the Machines’ only mistake was not advertising the Matrix to sign people up for it as your own programmable (and not necessarily permanent) reality (like, say, the Playboy Mansion or World of Warcraft) – I should be so lucky to lose a Robot War! “Seriously, you feed me and take care of me in a pod while I live it up in any number of dream worlds of my own design and all you want is my body heat? Sign me up!”

FANTASY OR SF?

Yeah – the virtual reality world maintained by the Machines to farm humanity for energy after a Robot War? It’s obviously SF. Or is it? Well, yes, it is – but it does have substantial elements of fantasy, what with its mystical trappings of the Oracle and Neo as the (chosen or messianic) One.

And yes – I know there are no sequels, but if there had been a second film it at least might have the interesting spin on fantasy with fantasy creatures such as vampires and so on as leftover programs or perhaps glitches from previous versions of the Matrix.

HORROR

One can’t really rank it as horror but it has elements of SF horror and could well have been written more in that direction.

RATING: 4 STARS****

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The iconic poster image of the first film

(7) FANTASY: STEVEN SPIELBERG – INDIANA JONES

(1981-1989: INDIANA JONES 1-3 – yeah I don’t count Crystal Skull or Dial of Destiny)

“You call this archaeology?”

Indiana Jones is the pure awesomeness you get when you mix George Lucas and Steven Spielberg in a bowl of serials – the adventure cliffhanger serial films of the 1930’s. The centerpiece of that awesomeness is the film trilogy of the 1980’s, although there is a media franchise or expanded universe extending to books, comics and television. For Indiana Jones, archaeology was adventure – racing Nazis for mystical artefacts such as the Ark of the Covenant or the Holy Grail, as opposed to the much less adventurous reality of dusting off and sorting one piece of broken pottery from another, barely above watching paint dry in excitement. Who’d have thought that a bullwhip and pistol were such indispensable archaeological tools? In fairness, Indiana does actually teach archaeology at a university, but even then his classes are full of hot coed groupies, who spend their time writing love messages to him on their eyelids rather than studying.

It is hard to choose between the three films of the original cinematic trilogy (ignoring, as I do, the fevered dreams of a fourth movie nuking the fridge two decades later, let alone the hallucinations of a fifth film, hence my entry only extends to the first three films), but it is equally hard to beat the introduction in Raiders of the Lost Ark to the character and his historical world much cooler than ours. I assume it needs no further introduction? From the iconic opening scene in the South American tomb of terror to the equally iconic finale, it is a masterpiece of cinematic adventure. The plot of course revolves around the archaeological arms race between the United States and Nazi Germany for the titular Ark of the Covenant. (That’s right – they’re going Old Testament on each other). Indiana Jones is enlisted by the United States government to thwart the Nazi recovery of the Ark. (“Nazis! I hate those guys!” We all do, Indy, we all do). Which explains why Nazi Germany lost the war – well, that and they lost too many men in Castle Wolfenstein.

FANTASY OR SF?

It’s fantasy – the first film depends on its literal deus ex machina. There are rumors of a fourth or fifth film with SF elements but I don’t credit any such rumored films beyond the trilogy.

HORROR

And how! For adventure film fantasies, there’s surprisingly many elements of horror. Each film has a room full of horror – spiders or snakes, bugs, and rats. Also the second film has quite pronounced elements of horror with its cult of Kali led by Mola Ram.

RATING: 4 STARS****

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