[00:00:00] Kyle Castro: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to episode 0049 of the Movie Wars podcast. You got Kyle here and what's up, Matthew? What's going on, man?

[00:00:20] Matthew Blevins: Hey, how we doing movie, movie wars folks. It's great to be

[00:00:23] Kyle Castro: back on movie wars, man. I'll tell you what, Matthew Blevins, my friend in comedy and a fellow movie guy, a former [00:00:30] film critic, and a lot of you met him for our Friday the 13th special and people loved you so much.

[00:00:34] Kyle Castro: They, they asked me to bring you back. So, and I was like, Hey, I want to do a Mad Max franchise. And you were

[00:00:38] Matthew Blevins: all in heck. Yeah, dude. I'm here for Mad Max, man. And I'm and I'm surprised to hear that your audience loved me and stuff. I, I don't know how to feel about that. Uh I I don't take love easily or well, you can ask all of my family about that.

[00:00:53] Kyle Castro: Yeah Yeah, well, I tried to call them and they pretended they didn't know who you were. So it was weird. That's that's smart Yeah, [00:01:00] it was weird mine too though. So it's we're we're orphans. We're two orphans in a boat here So or uh, what would a daniel playing view say bastards in a basket? So, from there will be blood.

[00:01:11] Kyle Castro: You're a bastard in a basket! Um, but yeah, we're talking about Mad Max, and I'm so stoked to get to talk about Mad Max. I've been looking for a reason. It's funny, I'm doing two different series right now. I'm doing this with you. I'm doing The Crow with comedians Drew Davis and Seth Keys. And, uh, you know, because they did some reboots, or, you know, different [00:01:30] versions this year, I was like, this would be a good opportunity for me to finally do two franchises I love.

[00:01:34] Kyle Castro: 'cause I'm not like a big MCU guy. You know, I'm not like franchises have kind of been keeping theaters open through the MCU. I don't like the MCU. I'm not trying to be that guy. I am not like trying to be so pro Scorsese in that opinion. But, you know, I just, it's not my thing. It's too big. Um, there's too many hands in the pot.

[00:01:50] Kyle Castro: There's too much money. There's too. Pop culture and cliche built it into it. And I'm a, I'm a contrarian and I think Mad Max and the crow are two very contrarian, uh, you know, [00:02:00] counterculture type of things to love this day and age. And, um, you know, where I got my love for Mad Max is my dad. My dad, most of our audience know my dad was not a good dude.

[00:02:07] Kyle Castro: He was a cop, but he was a drunk. But one good thing I always got from my folks is good music and good entertainment. I watched movies way too young. You and I, uh, we, what, We talked a lot about Robocop last week and Mad Max was one of those. And, um, all of those movies that were, you know, basically through Thunderdome, cause that's what we had, um, would, uh, you know, we're on repeat in the house.

[00:02:26] Kyle Castro: And I just always found them to be very hypnotic. [00:02:30] Almost. And, uh, my research actually verified this. Yeah. Because the way that George Miller, Miller wanted to film some those scenes childhood, you're seeing the lines. And he purposely my research because he wanted it actually out of each other was kind of soothing.

[00:02:43] Kyle Castro: Anyway, the camera to hit the childhood

[00:02:45] Matthew Blevins: trauma recipe, it, it looks like a conventional Saturday where my folks would hang out.

[00:02:57] Mm-Hmm? . Yeah. . [00:03:00] Oh yeah.

[00:03:02] Matthew Blevins: That is such, oh man, it is such free entertainment too. You can just throw an entire Saturday. Empty McDonald's bags. I might do that this weekend. Drive

[00:03:10] Kyle Castro: by the trailer type of thing, you know? You know, just like, yeah. That is, that is a Saturday. It's possible.

[00:03:21] Kyle Castro: I swear, are we neighbors? Were we neighbors? I feel like we were neighbors and we didn't know it growing up. Neighborhood sounds very familiar. [00:03:30] Yeah. Well, very cool. So some other reasons I really love Mad Max isn't, and this is pretty well known, but I had some interesting thoughts about this. I'd love to bounce off you.

[00:03:38] Kyle Castro: One of those is that Mad Max is a, um, you know, it's, it's known for kind of breaking the norms in terms of dystopia, you know, it kind of broke that genre open and it's not that films in the past hadn't focused on dystopia, but because we had world war two, the cold war, Vietnam, people were really concerned with, you know, What could lead to the end of the [00:04:00] world.

[00:04:00] Kyle Castro: And I don't know if you agree, but it feels like compared to the commentary films of today, which are kind of caked in bias and they, they tend to go in with a point of view, the artist, uh, during those times, I would lump, you know, poetic truth, maybe, uh, uh, Oliver stone, some of these people, you know, some of these filmmakers from the era were.

[00:04:18] Kyle Castro: in a way, not that they were telling a whole truth. I would compare it more to Thompson, like a Hunter S. Thompson type, a little bit, a little bit of gonzo. Yeah, a little bit, but still almost felt like real time reporting in movie [00:04:30] format and the, the films that depicted dystopia. We're typically depicting some kind of power, you know, powerful government entity.

[00:04:39] Kyle Castro: I think of Philip K. Dix, you know, the man in, uh, what is it, the man in High Castle? I always forget the, the man in the High Castle. We had Metropolis in 1927, Fahrenheit 451, and things to come in 1936, the H. G. Wells novel. Welles was really good at this, but they're all kind of depicting almost this government power overreach happening, [00:05:00] whereas Mad Max is kind of like, it was kind of one of the first movies to say, yeah, we got dystopia, but there's not this government entity, it's just gangs, it's just violence,

[00:05:10] Matthew Blevins: and it's just crazy.

[00:05:11] Matthew Blevins: And then you've got supply chain issues. You've got, uh, I mean, any of this sounds familiar. You've got, you know, fuel shortages and that sort of thing. And then, uh, what happens to society when those kind of fundamentals break down? So, um, yeah, it's, it's not, and it's not a farfetched. It's [00:05:30] not farfetched from the truth.

[00:05:31] Matthew Blevins: And,

[00:05:38] mm hmm.

[00:05:45] Kyle Castro: And of course, it goes without saying, some of the biggest impacts that it had was the stunt work, obviously. Miller talks about how the stunt work, and the cars, and the motor gangs, dystopia was almost chosen as the thing to move it forward. So they didn't start with a [00:06:00] premise of dystopia. They had this influence, what you referred earlier, of this oil.

[00:06:04] Kyle Castro: And this oil shortage, and this gas shortage, and kind of thinking that like these road gangs would do anything for the oil. That was kind of where it started. It's like, well, how do we find ourselves in that situation? And that's where the dystopia was kind of introduced. But one of my favorite things is that this one, not so much, uh, it's, it's a little bit this, but it's not, but not as much as the others.

[00:06:23] Kyle Castro: Eventually these become a Western, you know, and that's what's pretty wild. A stranger walks into town and, uh, well, you know, we're going to go through [00:06:30] the whole franchise, which is really exciting. And we're going to see a lot more.

[00:06:33] Matthew Blevins: Well, even, even the first one, I feel like is, is, is very much rooted in those Western tropes.

[00:06:38] Matthew Blevins: Uh, you know, you've got that, those crumbling halls of justice, like some sort of frontier, uh, Wild West jail cell where, you know, uh, yeah, a saloon where, you know, you've got these hero cowboys that are kind of wandering the, the desert with their, with their trusty, you know, cars. It's, uh, it's very much rooted.

[00:06:58] Matthew Blevins: And, and I, and I feel [00:07:00] also, uh. like transitively or it's rooted then in the Japanese samurai films that were then rooted in those American Westerns and especially the Italian spaghetti Westerns as well. So it's like a mishmash of all of these world influences. Combined with George Miller, uh, you know, working in a hospital and witnessing all of these auto sides a lot.

[00:07:22] Matthew Blevins: Like what we were talking about with Tom Savini on the Friday, the 13th episode is feeling a necessity to pay [00:07:30] homage or bring some sort of truth to the screen. And those experiences,

[00:07:33] Kyle Castro: I love that. Yeah. And what's interesting too, is like, if you look at my favorite Western, it's funny, I didn't grow up liking Westerns, but I actually love them now.

[00:07:40] Kyle Castro: And my favorite is the dollars trilogy with Clint Eastwood. Clint Eastwood was in those movies. He's almost. The, he's almost a smartass. Like he, he's a stranger that walks into town, but he kind of likes seeing the chaos he can create. He's like, let's see what I can do here. Max is more. I think he would just rather disappear, you know, and the further you get in the franchise, especially when you hit Fury Road, I [00:08:00] think he would rather, the way his character's painted, he would rather not have been in that situation, especially compared to the other ones.

[00:08:05] Kyle Castro: Like, he's always reluctant, he's always trying to just, I want to get out of here and move on, but he gets sucked in no matter how, you know, he's not, he's no matter how reluctant he is.

[00:08:14] Matthew Blevins: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. When max cannot avoid being sucked into helping and then, uh, being heartbroken all over again. Yeah.

[00:08:22] Matthew Blevins: So, you know, poor max, but, uh, we need our stoic heroes that just emerge from kind of [00:08:30] typical circumstances. You've got Matt that that's why I love max so much. And then I hated. Furiosa so much is, you know, you've got an everyman, uh, not, this isn't, uh, rooted in misogyny or anything like that, but what I'm saying is you've got an everyman that came from a relatively normal life who had to adapt to these circumstances versus the Furiosa story who, uh, came from these exceptional circumstances and then, uh, you know, turned out to be your hero.

[00:08:56] Matthew Blevins: Well, obviously, it's like Yeah, you would be. Yeah, [00:09:00] you're gonna be. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:09:01] Kyle Castro: Yeah, it's gonna be crazy. It's gonna be interesting going into the Furiosa discussion because I did see that in theaters and, um, I didn't have my Movie Wars eyes on on the time. So I'm gonna put my Movie Wars eyes on for that one.

[00:09:13] Kyle Castro: Um, so yeah, what are your impressions of this one? We're gonna go through the whole franchise, but just focusing on 1979. What do you? What is this? What are your? How do you associate with this film? What are your feelings about it?

[00:09:22] Matthew Blevins: Well, so for me, I've got to kind of contextualize what was happening in Australian cinema at that time, uh, [00:09:30] because Max, or Mad Max was very much a product of what was going on in Australian cinema at the time, uh, is particularly films like Stone, uh, with, let's see, Sandy Harbutt, 1974.

[00:09:43] Matthew Blevins: It's a biker movie. It has some of the most absurd, insane stunts you've ever seen. It's like life threatening, you know, you, and you're just wondering why anyone would be willing to push themselves this far for like a B [00:10:00] movie, but that's what makes it so special. And, uh, the other cool part about that particular movie is you've got a Hugh Keyes Byrne as a character named Toad in that movie, and so, uh, it's kind of rooted in those, uh, those early Mad Max movies and, uh, and Fury Road again.

[00:10:16] Matthew Blevins: And then a movie like Wake and Fright, uh, directed by, uh, Ted Kotcheff in 1971, it kinda kicked off a lot of the, the artier Australian movies, but, uh, very much rooted in, [00:10:30] in exploitation, uh, you've got a, a, a, like a schoolteacher Who is literally fist fighting a kangaroo in the outback, and there's no tongue in cheek there.

[00:10:40] Matthew Blevins: It's all played very straight, and it's a thriller, and it's like nothing you've ever seen before. And, you've got movies like Dead End Drive In, where, 1986, Brian Trenchard Smith, where it's a concentration camp for, for, uh, youths, disaffected youths, but it's in a drive in [00:11:00] movie theater. And, uh, it kind of, yeah, and it's got all of that action as well.

[00:11:05] Matthew Blevins: And it's, so Mad Max is part of this, like, rich tapestry of Australian cinema that was kind of happening at the time, that was kind of just emerging. Uh, you know, they, they didn't have a very, you know, Like deep movie tradition in Australia that some of their earlier movies that came out, they were all just comedies.

[00:11:26] Matthew Blevins: They were broad comedies, and no one had kind of messed with [00:11:30] that artier stuff until you get these directors who were doing these biker movies, kind of emulating what was going on in American cinema at the time. And I, and I imagine that something like Easy Rider had a huge impact on what was going on at the time in the counterculture cinema.

[00:11:44] Matthew Blevins: But if you want to know a lot about what was happening in Australian cinema check out not quite Hollywood It's a great 2008 documentary. It'll send you down some really awesome rabbit holes So Mad Max is is definitely a part of that tradition and [00:12:00] It's it's one of the best examples of movies of that time primarily because of the The cast, in a lot of ways, he, Mel Gibson was just like a film student at the time, and it was just this outrageous find to find this guy that could say so much with so little.

[00:12:18] Matthew Blevins: He could emote everything through his eyes, and it brought so much, To that movie, um, which otherwise, you know, if you're dealing with like the biker characters and whatnot, it can [00:12:30] kind of, it goes into goofy student film territory at times because of the way that these guys are playing their characters.

[00:12:37] Matthew Blevins: But I, you know, I don't begrudge it. It's, it's very much a product of the movies of the time.

[00:12:43] Kyle Castro: This would probably be an anecdotal thought, but what do you think societally? And like, I guess, combine the idea of cinema in America, um, we kind of touched on this a little bit. I think. Some of this time period you're talking about, not all of it, but some of it kind of rubs elbows with what was considered to be a decline in cinematic history in the [00:13:00] United States, because, you know, the cinemas were going bankrupt, um, there was a lot of private equity happening with the, you know, with like this, how Paramount happened was, you know, acquisition mergers, buying up defunct and, uh, and broke, uh, production companies was happening.

[00:13:15] Kyle Castro: What was it you think societally and artistically happening in the United States? Comparatively to allow like such an explosive because I mean those other movies are great. Everything you're talking about is great, but Mad Max is the one that jumped over and you know it. Yeah, [00:13:30] that's the one that changed things.

[00:13:32] Matthew Blevins: Yeah, why that one versus any of the others? I'm not sure. I mean, the AIP logo at the beginning of the movie might be an indication of how it was able to get American distribution and maybe Corman was able to, you know, Uh, get it distributed over here, get it seen by American audiences and it was able to translate in a way that maybe some of those others couldn't because it says so much with so few words.

[00:13:58] Matthew Blevins: It's, uh, you know, [00:14:00] it's not, it doesn't feel like an Australian movie necessarily. It feels like, oh, just a Western movie. Cut from the apocalypse, you know, it's, it's the, the first movie isn't necessarily of that apocalyptic world. The only thing that kind of hints at it is that crooked you on the halls of justice and just the crumbling, uh, you know, infrastructure.

[00:14:21] Matthew Blevins: Um, but seemingly it's still fancy enough to have cabarets out of a clockwork orange. So, you know, it seems it's not quite fully decayed.

[00:14:29] Kyle Castro: [00:14:30] Maybe this is another anecdote. The, we were, our art was dealing with what could cause the end, not necessarily investigating what the end would look like at the time.

[00:14:38] Kyle Castro: Now we have a surplus of those. But at the time, that's what, and maybe it's because it answered the question. Maybe it's not. realistic or maybe it is that's not the question we're answering it was just like all of a sudden we got a film that's nodding to those instincts saying for decades of war from world war ii cold war vietnam all that you know we're worried about the end but here's a movie i mean i think [00:15:00] dr strange love almost kind of answers that question right but here's a movie that says hey here's one idea of what that could look like here here's a possible end result of all the shit that's That you've been dealing with.

[00:15:11] Matthew Blevins: Yeah, yeah, it's, it's interesting to, uh, to watch these movies now through the lens of someone who's lived through the actual book of revelations now. So, it's, it's like, it's like, uh, it, it seemed like Mad Max 1 all the way to Fury Road was this huge presumptive leap. [00:15:30] Uh, but it's like, no, that's not that far off from what happens.

[00:15:33] Matthew Blevins: I've seen it happen. It's not that far off. Things have gotten really technical around. I mean, we got

[00:15:37] Kyle Castro: a, all you have to look back to is COVID with the toilet paper. And then any, anytime there's been a possible gas shortage, you know, people get in fights and now in the era of social media, I don't know if you remember the last gas shortage we had in Nashville a couple of years ago, but people were like getting in fights, like cutting in line.

[00:15:51] Kyle Castro: Some guy was, had a tarp in his truck and he was filling the entire back of his truck with gas. You know, with no, like, like [00:16:00] it's, it gets rough pretty quick around here, man.

[00:16:03] Matthew Blevins: It does. It does. It's interesting to see what the Immortum Joes look like before they get their major costume upgrades though. You know, you just some, some idiot at a Nashville gas station, you know, you don't know what his future is.

[00:16:15] Matthew Blevins: He's going to be a despot one day. He's going to monologue the shit out of

[00:16:19] Kyle Castro: somebody. I've been working a bit actually about, uh, about cannibalism, you know, basically how effective it is. Like the apocalypse happened. I don't know. Like my best shot is to be a court jester for a warlord, like, uh, like I'm in a mortem [00:16:30] Joe and, uh, but I say like, you, you know, these people, like the people that are leading the cannibal cults and the death cults and the war, like you're working, these people are the janitors.

[00:16:40] Kyle Castro: In your office building or maybe even your account. Like you just don't know, but these people are there. They're already amongst you. Like,

[00:16:47] Matthew Blevins: yeah, I think that are producing comedy shows largely based on my personal experiences. Yeah.

[00:16:53] Kyle Castro: Yeah. It's us. It's it's us. Welcome to, I hope you taste good. Yeah. It's uh,

[00:16:58] Matthew Blevins: actually, no, you know, I'm not [00:17:00] talking about the artists.

[00:17:02] Matthew Blevins: I'm talking about the producers who actually get full shows. Those are the ones who are, who are dangerous. They're going to be, yeah, they're already almost there. Amazing.

[00:17:13] Kyle Castro: Well, awesome. I love that. I love that information. Thank you. Um, so quick, uh, just a quick call to the audience. So we're back. Movie Wars is back.

[00:17:21] Kyle Castro: Took a little bit of a break and I'm loving this format to have my comedian friends doing interviews with people in the industry, having just guests hosts. It's been so fun [00:17:30] because I'm. Experiencing all these flavors. But the best thing you can do is share an episode and all the podcast forums, especially Spotify, Apple.

[00:17:38] Kyle Castro: It's so easy to share to your social media, to your Instagram stories, to send to a friend, just telling a friend. It may seem really basic, really simple, but honestly, that is the most. Easy and most fun way to grow is telling your friends whether it be digitally or in person or your grandma You know, we're great with the grandmas.

[00:17:54] Kyle Castro: We have a huge grandma demographic, especially with the Cold War stuff a couple series I got going on so I have this amazing [00:18:00] series with my friend Matthew that we're doing with Mad Max We're gonna do the whole franchise. I've got starting on the 29th We're gonna start recording the crow with Drew Davis who's a comedian here in Nashville and Seth Keys who's also a comedian He's also in the film industry Um, and then next week I'm interviewing, I think it's gonna be next week, still nailing down the details, but I'm interviewing, uh, Alan Powell, who's a friend of mine.

[00:18:18] Kyle Castro: Alan works for a production company, he's actually part owner of Monarch Media, and they were the, one of the main producers of the Hitman movie, that took, really, that really took off on Netflix with Glenn Powell, who's kind of this new, almost [00:18:30] Matthew McConaughey Jr., he was in Twisters, and he was in, Maverick and all of a sudden he's in everything.

[00:18:34] Kyle Castro: And so, um, it's funny. I hadn't talked to my friend now in a while, and then I saw Monarch Media and I was like, Oh my gosh, like that's my friend. So he's going to come on and, uh, he's going to talk about that process and what it was like to be a part of that movie. And in a couple of weeks, um, I'm doing, there will be blood with my friend, Zach Hoffman, Zach Hoffman's an actor.

[00:18:51] Kyle Castro: He was my voice coach when I was doing voiceover work. And he's actually, uh, he's going to be, uh, voicing in the new Batman animation. He's one of the [00:19:00] voices in that. So he's incredible guy and his favorite movie of all time is there will be blood and it's one of mine. So we're going to do that. So again, just share with your friends.

[00:19:07] Kyle Castro: And, uh, that, that helps us the most. We're going to go to randos now bringing back the randos. Uh, so the cast and the crew threatened to quit several times because George Miller was so inexperienced that he just, he kept, and he's not, he wasn't arrogant about it either. He was very open. He had no idea what he was doing, you know, and he was funding this with his medical career.

[00:19:25] Kyle Castro: He was going through his. Uh, what do they call it? He was a doctor, but he was, what do they call it when they're doing their, [00:19:30] like he was doing residency, or he was doing his residency and he was, he was filming all these film projects with his residency money.

[00:19:37] Matthew Blevins: That's incredible. He is. He was like Australian Tommy Zu over there.

[00:19:40] Matthew Blevins: Yes.

[00:19:40] Kyle Castro: Yeah. And the, and the casting crew, including Mel Gibson, they just kept trying to quit and he just like, wow. This is Australia, this is a movie, what are we gonna do? Um, so they made it through. And you said this earlier, but Mel Gibson did not go in to audition for Max. He was hopping along with a friend of his that was a fellow drama student, and they saw him and said, why don't you audition?

[00:19:59] Kyle Castro: And he [00:20:00] did, and he got it over his friend, so he had zero intentions of Trying to get this role. And now we know Mel Gibson, for better or for worse, but we know Mel Gibson.

[00:20:08] Matthew Blevins: Yeah, absolutely. And it in a lot of ways, I think for better, I mean, the guy was a brilliant actor, if not a twat in real life. Yeah. But you know, he just has, he's had iconic roles.

[00:20:19] Matthew Blevins: This series is just one example. So, yeah.

[00:20:22] Kyle Castro: And he really, he's really gifted. He's a gifted director. He's a, he's a very gifted visionary. I love. The, the camera work and the cinematography [00:20:30] he inspires in a lot of his films. I think of Apocalypto, Passion of the Christ. These are movies, whether or not you're, you know, a Christian or not, you can't watch the movie and think, you know, damn, this movie has some imagery.

[00:20:40] Kyle Castro: And, uh, I think he's a very, and Lethal Weapon, we did a Lethal Weapon episode a couple of months ago. Uh, before we shut down for a little while. I just was reveling in his performances. Like, he was Mad Max, but he was actually a little crazier in Lethal Weapon than he is in Mad Max. Yeah,

[00:20:53] Matthew Blevins: absolutely. Yeah, because he was actually suicidal.

[00:20:56] Matthew Blevins: Max is just kind of surviving. That's [00:21:00] his base instinct, is just survive. You know, uh, Riggs is, is the opposite of that. He doesn't want to survive at all. And this self destructive quality, it's one of my favorite characters.

[00:21:09] Kyle Castro: So good.

[00:21:10] Matthew Blevins: In

[00:21:10] Kyle Castro: fact, I got to go back again, man. And Joe Pesci is one of my favorite actors

[00:21:13] Matthew Blevins: of all time.

[00:21:14] Matthew Blevins: I love it when he enters the series. They

[00:21:15] Kyle Castro: fuck you in the drive thru.

[00:21:19] Matthew Blevins: It's just, it's so obnoxious and it's so infectious. They're just fun, man. It's like, if you don't like lethal weapon, you can just kiss my ass. I guess that's, I'm going on record.

[00:21:29] Kyle Castro: I think we have [00:21:30] to arrange that actually. We need a public.

[00:21:31] Kyle Castro: Kissing of the ass if you don't like Lee the weapon both of us every inch one kiss per square inch of my ass All right. This film was used what George Miller referred to as guerrilla filmmaking. They weren't getting permits So and this takes place on public roads streets highways They were literally, they had people patrolling areas looking for cops.

[00:21:53] Kyle Castro: And sometimes they had to get out of tickets and argue the way out of, out of getting violations. And, you know, Australia, even then was still pretty [00:22:00] heavily, you know, regulated, um, not compared to today, but, you know, they were sneaking around making these scenes happen. Um, that's pretty wild. To, to think about, uh, someone in film not getting permits to do a movie.

[00:22:12] Kyle Castro: I mean, today that seems with today's Hollywood, that's so outlandish.

[00:22:16] Matthew Blevins: Yeah, I, I respect that kind of just go make it attitude. Uh, you, I don't know. You, you don't get a lot of that anymore. You, you, you, you want to independent movie where people were willing to go [00:22:30] to jail or. Maybe die to make it happen.

[00:22:33] Matthew Blevins: People aren't, aren't that passionate about art anymore. And maybe that's just what's missing

[00:22:37] Kyle Castro: art with permissions. Always a weird thing. Right? Like go back to when Pearl Pearl got their first Grammy and they're like, I can't believe you're giving us an award to make art, you know, like, and that's seriously what they said from the podium.

[00:22:48] Kyle Castro: It's like, this is music. Like I have a statue, a trophy for music. Um, and I agree with that. Uh, the bikers were real bikers, uh, from real biker gangs and they were paid in beer. So if you thought they were [00:23:00] authentic, which. You know, they weren't the rowdiest, but maybe it's because real bikers aren't as rowdy as they're depicted.

[00:23:04] Kyle Castro: I mean, although I've read, I've read hell's angels a couple of times by Hunter S Thompson there. Those are pretty wild. Yeah.

[00:23:09] Matthew Blevins: That, Hey, I bought my first motorcycle after reading that book in 2003, you know, it sent me on a whole life path, man, I had to stop reading books for a while, you know, I'd read a Kerouac book and then drink a bunch of Christian brothers port and puke all over my X Box.

[00:23:25] Matthew Blevins: It's like. Come on. Yes, I took 10

[00:23:29] Kyle Castro: years off of reading. [00:23:30] I won't record this, but I'll tell you what I did after I read Silence of the Lambs and Red Dragon. It was wild. It was a wild night out. Yeah. Dude, that is hilarious. I just got to say, side note, like that is one of my, that's probably a top five book is Hell's Angels.

[00:23:44] Kyle Castro: And

[00:23:45] Matthew Blevins: Oh, yeah, absolutely. It, yeah, it's, it's, I mean, it not only just kind of captures this, this counterculture that nobody knew anything about, but, uh, just kind of launched Hunter himself as this [00:24:00] character who is willing to put himself on the line for anything and, you know. By far my favorite writer.

[00:24:07] Kyle Castro: Not necessarily my favorite author, but in terms of just reading his voice, my favorite.

[00:24:11] Kyle Castro: Just, you get two pages in and you've lost all sense of whether or not you're in reality or not. And I love that feeling.

[00:24:18] Matthew Blevins: Absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, it, again, the, the, the, Biker culture was a really big thing in the 70s. It was kind of that post [00:24:30] war, that post Vietnam War thing. Or actually, I guess biker culture goes back as far as World War II, where you got these guys coming back and, you know, they had these old bikes and they, they made them work out of necessity.

[00:24:41] Matthew Blevins: And then, You know, they, they were like, screw your rules. We've already, we've been to war and you know, you're not going to tell us what to do. And so that attitude kind of permeates Australia and American culture of the seventies. And you'd have to think it's because you got wide open spaces and [00:25:00] affordable gasoline.

[00:25:01] Matthew Blevins: So, you know, let's go on a, let's go on an adventure and. You know, in Australia, I guess it's going to be lined, the highways are going to be lined with marauding outlaws, I guess, from everything I've seen.

[00:25:13] Kyle Castro: Yeah, I mean, that's one thing I didn't touch on in the opening, but it's interesting to me, like, once the dystopian thing broke, just kind of responding to your comment, it's very focused, like, you know, zombies, it's basically biker gang or, you know, road gangs, Mad Max, zombies.

[00:25:29] Kyle Castro: [00:25:30] Or some sort of contagion, you know, is kind of like they have to focus the most, um, general version I can think of in modern writing and filmmaking. That's a more general approach to the apocalypse was the road, both the book, you know, in the movie Cormac McCarthy, I felt like that was kind of an interesting generalized, like, yeah, they had some possible cannibals, some, you know, some groups, but it kind of just felt like we were in the apocalypse.

[00:25:51] Kyle Castro: Whereas a lot of other, they can't really do the apocalypse without having. It's like, we gotta have a niche apocalypse here. We can't have like a multi, you know, [00:26:00] faceted thing. They got to have some zombies or it's got to be a contagion or it's got to be biker gang, whatever it is. Like, that's, it's kind of an interesting thing.

[00:26:07] Kyle Castro: I don't know why. I maybe it's cause it wouldn't be interesting if we just had like, Hey, we're in the apocalypse now, like we're reopening the banks, you know, we're going back to the gold standard.

[00:26:18] Matthew Blevins: We're not going to tell you what happened. We don't like talking about it. It was kind of traumatic. Well, you're kind of a dick for bringing it up on this post apocalypse.

[00:26:26] Kyle Castro: Now we're good. We're, we're trying, you know, we found the satellites. We're good. [00:26:30] So, uh, all right, well, we're going to start the war score now. So I wanted to kind of reintroduce this because this is the first time I've done it on the podcast since, uh, we came back. It used to be that we did two movies at a time, so we had two movies competing, um, so that's how the categories were formed.

[00:26:46] Kyle Castro: Now we do one movie at a time. There's a lot of reasons for that. First of all, it's easier. And, and it's not that I'm trying to be a pansy and say I don't want to like, like to prepare. That's the problem is I, I prepare too much. And by preparing for two movies, It took a lot of time, so it's hard to make a lot of content, and [00:27:00] to make a lot of shows.

[00:27:01] Kyle Castro: Uh, and I like the idea of doing more, and doing one movie at a time helps. So, we kinda tweaked the war score, so we're still doing seven categories, um, but instead of picking one movie or the other because there's not two movies, we're doing a yes or a no. The end result is basically gonna be an approval, an affirmative or a negative.

[00:27:17] Kyle Castro: And what's fun is the yes is always gonna be associated with some theme from the movie or some quote, and the no, uh, will be associated with some quote or some theme from the movie. Maybe in this case. Positive is shiny and chrome. Yes, that's right. We're [00:27:30] going to Fury Road. We're sorry. Yeah, Fury Road We're gonna use that as our yes But if it's a negative, it's just a blood bag.

[00:27:35] Kyle Castro: Yeah, that's a blood bag No, and in the case because Matthew and I are just two if we split we're gonna give half points So it's just gonna split between the two and that'll go in as a half point when we have three when it's me Drew and Seth that's not gonna be a problem because we're gonna always probably have you know We're gonna always gonna have two versus one and we'll be able to nail that down But that's how the new scorecard works So I had to take a moment to kind of explain the technicality of that You ready to get into it?

[00:27:57] Kyle Castro: Let's go. First category, top bill [00:28:00] cast. What do you think? Blood bag or shiny and chrome?

[00:28:03] Matthew Blevins: Shiny and chrome, man. You've got, you've got goose. You've got, you know, Mel Gibson and in his first role, it's pretty fantastic and it's iconic. What are you going to say?

[00:28:13] Kyle Castro: Yeah. Yeah. I think I think it's a strength here.

[00:28:16] Kyle Castro: Um, and Mel Gibson is not doing a lot. You know, George Miller described this as a silent movie with sound. That's exactly how he described it. And it is that, you know, it's, um, it's got a lot of that, that silent movie technique to it, where There's so much action [00:28:30] and maybe because there was so much action and it was new, this was a new type of filmmaking.

[00:28:34] Kyle Castro: It was a, and maybe because of the guerrilla nature, they didn't want to get too lost in dialogue. I don't, if you're trying to avoid the police, you probably don't want to get into a hundred takes, you know, Joaquin Phoenix style, you know, you want to get in. And a couple of

[00:28:46] Matthew Blevins: eyebrow raises and then let's go.

[00:28:49] Matthew Blevins: We got, yeah, it's like, I, uh, but yeah, he was able to do so much with so little though, it, that you just can't be mad at that performance with, you know, if it had more dialogue, [00:29:00] I don't think we'd be talking about it.

[00:29:01] Kyle Castro: And I think the biggest thing you have to assess is if the premise is, is this is a person that was normal and then turns mad.

[00:29:07] Kyle Castro: You know, how is that depicted on screen and, uh, and this really became, what's interesting is this kind of became his moniker, you know, and once his wife and child die when he's in that hospital leaning against the wall listening to the doctor's talk, he's sweating. His eyes are unblinking and, um, he looks mad.

[00:29:24] Kyle Castro: I was thinking that last night when I was rewatching it, I was like, he looks mad there and that was his job and he over delivered on it. [00:29:30] So, all right, we got one on shiny and Chrome supporting cast. What do you think?

[00:29:33] Matthew Blevins: Uh, you know, the, are we talking the primary bikers? Would they be part of that supporting cast?

[00:29:40] Matthew Blevins: Because the three primary bikers all, I think all did a pretty fantastic job.

[00:29:45] Kyle Castro: I can read them off if you want. Uh, Joe N. Samuel as Jesse Rockstansky. Uh, Hugh, uh, Keys. Burn as Toe Cutter, who also played Joe in, uh, Fury Road. Steve Bisley, Jim Goose. Tim Burns was play, uh, played Johnny the Boy. Roger Ward as Fifi [00:30:00] McAfee.

[00:30:00] Kyle Castro: Uh, Lisa, Lisa Alderhoven is the nurse and from there it's, it's general bikers. And

[00:30:05] Matthew Blevins: yeah, this is shiny and chrome for sure, dude, the, the Fifi character that what he was able to bring to that character, just standing there shirtless with a scarf and leather pants on, but bringing that kind of like Mick from Rocky sensibility to the character.

[00:30:20] Matthew Blevins: It had this nurturing thing about him. Uh, the wife was fantastic. She did everything she needed to do. I don't know if she spoke at all. She played saxophone really well. So that, you know, [00:30:30] I'm definitely shiny and chrome on the supporting cast. And can we

[00:30:32] Kyle Castro: just talk about how, like, the, the end is so abrupt and dark and he finally kills the last guy and then it cuts right to that fucking saxophone, it's just like the saxophone's back.

[00:30:41] Kyle Castro: It's like, I'm in, I'm into it because I love the movie and I'm biased, but I mean, zoom out. It's like, that's kind of weird.

[00:30:49] Matthew Blevins: Yeah, absolutely. But it, it kind of, it invented its own little cinematic language all throughout, because even when the wife and kid get ran over by the biker gang, you had the, [00:31:00] the, the shoe, the ball, and then you heard the crow, which was a constant refrain throughout the movie, if you noticed there was that crow.

[00:31:08] Matthew Blevins: So it's like George Miller is, he was a nepter, he was just starting, but he already knew how to invent that little cinematic language and then speak volumes. And, uh, your brain was able to imply the massacre was so little.

[00:31:22] Kyle Castro: Yeah, for a guy, that's such a great point. What you kind of brought to my mind for a guy that the cast and crew kept walking out on because he didn't know what he's doing.

[00:31:28] Kyle Castro: He's doing a lot [00:31:30] here. He's doing

[00:31:31] Matthew Blevins: a lot of it. You got the halls of justice with, you've got the signs on the highway that are kind of spread out. Telling the whole story. You've got the, the little inner cuts to bulging eyeballs that are just, you know, insinuating all of the, the terror and the action it, you know, he's, he's doing a lot with very little.

[00:31:48] Kyle Castro: Yeah, I go shiny and chrome here too. And I, it's honestly the same exact thing. You said the scarf, the no shirt, the leathers, um, just these guys are establishing personas. Um, there's no backstory. [00:32:00] We're not getting biographies of these guys, but I feel like once I meet them, I'm in like, and that's a huge thing

[00:32:06] Matthew Blevins: Yeah, you know who they are.

[00:32:07] Matthew Blevins: You know who they are They I mean they're archetypical characters and you know They could you could take the you could take the goose character and make him a sidekick in any western and we all know who That guy is and we're all gonna be heartbroken when he dies

[00:32:20] Kyle Castro: You're right. That is another big western thing like a lot and that happens in the dollar trilogy Like you don't get a backstory, but there's a certain look the way a person talks how they handle their business like I'm into this.

[00:32:29] Kyle Castro: I'm [00:32:30] down. Like, I like this guy.

[00:32:31] Matthew Blevins: You know who this guy is. You know who this guy is. But you know if his name is Goose, he's probably gonna die in a fire.

[00:32:38] Kyle Castro: That was one funny thing. And I started to wonder, like, did Scott, was he, when he was naming the characters in Top Gun, was there some weird, they both have the hair, they, you know.

[00:32:48] Kyle Castro: Yeah, not a very common name.

[00:32:49] Matthew Blevins: What, what, what side dishes do you serve with barbecued goose? That's all I need to know. Airplane parts.

[00:32:57] Kyle Castro: All right, we got two, uh, two shiny and chrome [00:33:00] zero, uh, blood bag here. Vehicular manslaughter. This is a category for just describing the road vehicles because that's the constant theme.

[00:33:07] Kyle Castro: And by the way, side note, one thing I didn't mention in teaching the crew about the new The way this works. Now we're going to use this across the whole franchise. We've never tackled whole franchises in movie wars history. I'm so stoked to do that now. And so the goal is, is to identify categories that move across the whole franchise.

[00:33:22] Kyle Castro: So we'll be using these for everyone at the end. We'll do a total and we'll give closing remarks. We'll stack rate the franchise, but [00:33:30] also we'll talk about kind of the end results of all the categories when combined. So, um, but vehicular manslaughter, what do you think about the vehicles, the road warfare?

[00:33:37] Kyle Castro: It's kind of hard because we're watching number one and we have all this other data, you know, afterwards. So you got to kind of, yeah,

[00:33:43] Matthew Blevins: it's playing a different game, you know, but if you're, if you're putting it up against all of the other Australian cinema at the time, you know, it's, it's a top contender for one of those road movies.

[00:33:54] Matthew Blevins: It's up there with all of those others that I was talking about. It, And, you [00:34:00] know, that, that interceptor, you're basically creating another iconic character in and of itself with, so, yeah, I'd have to go shiny and chrome on that just because you have to take things in the context for, in which they were made.

[00:34:15] Matthew Blevins: And, uh, you know, for, uh, Again, for an inept director who is kind of on his debut feature with, uh, you know, a first time actor and these, these are, these are trusty chariots there. [00:34:30] I mean, it's amazing. So yeah, shiny and chrome for sure. I agree.

[00:34:34] Kyle Castro: And this what you said, this actually hits on something that annoys me about modern culture and society with social media.

[00:34:40] Kyle Castro: I'm a guitar player. I moved here to play guitar originally before I got into comedy and podcasting. And, uh, I follow guitar players, and there's this, this craze with online guitar players, and that's what they do. They shred, they're great, they're fantastic, but they play on social media, they're not in a band, they're not posting themselves playing with other people, they're just really great shredders.

[00:34:58] Kyle Castro: And you'll read the [00:35:00] comments, and if you see a Hendrix video, it's very popular to bash Hendrix. And I got, as you can see, I, I got my vinyl back here, that's a picture of Jim Morrison, that's my, that's my music, it's Hendrix, The Doors, that's my shit. And people, it's very public, oh Hendrix wasn't, you know, just cause he was the first, he was really sloppy, duh duh duh, duh duh duh, and it just annoys me, um, to no end.

[00:35:22] Kyle Castro: So technically speaking, yeah, he wasn't even Steve Ray Vaughn was a more technical player than he was, but just the loss, [00:35:30] I don't know where this loss in the ad or this lack of adoration for the classics and for the first comes from. And I think you and I really hit this. I think we, what do we kept saying on the Friday, the 13th, uh, the time, time and context, and.

[00:35:42] Kyle Castro: People lose that frame. And so I, whenever I watch a movie like this, whenever I go back, um, to a, to a film from a while ago, like I, I try to tune out what, what I'm seeing now and try to tune into the context. This is brave. This is a brave film, especially when you learn about the guerrilla aspect. They don't have permits.

[00:35:58] Kyle Castro: They're trying to get it done. [00:36:00] They hired a guy that's a drama student. This, it seems, compared to especially like Fury Road, the, the road tactics and the road warfare seems kind of tame, but at the time. Yeah,

[00:36:11] Matthew Blevins: people nearly died. I mean, a guy got hit with the wheel of a motorcycle and started bleeding out of his ears and nose.

[00:36:19] Matthew Blevins: I mean, yeah,

[00:36:20] Kyle Castro: come

[00:36:21] Matthew Blevins: on.

[00:36:21] Kyle Castro: And you mentioned the Pursuit Special. Um, my favorite iconic vehicle of all time. I love the Batmobile. I love the Ghostbusters car. Those are two of my favorites. Uh, I like, I like the plain [00:36:30] RoboCop, just police car, the Detroit, but this one, it, it's so simple. But that engine block poking out the hood.

[00:36:36] Kyle Castro: I know nothing about cars, but I know that is super cool. Did you see bellflower, the indie film? Um, no, you should see. It's really interesting. Like they're there. It's, it's kind of a very ephemeral, very crazy visual film. Like they actually used a camera that's made of like random parts. So the film looks very like frayed and it's really crazy.

[00:36:53] Kyle Castro: You'd love it. But their goal, these two main characters that are trying to build. Like a modern pursuit special, um, [00:37:00] because they, they think the apocalypse is coming. And so they're actually trying to prepare by, but they're alcoholics. They're just crazy alcoholics that are just trying to build this pursuit special.

[00:37:07] Kyle Castro: But I love that modern kind of call back to it. And I love that. I don't know a lot of Mad Max fans. I'll be real. Like, you know, I don't run into them like people in my circles don't bring the movie up as much as I do. But. The car does come up, and they do love the car, and I think, again, Miller's doing a lot here, and one thing, I don't even, I don't know if he did it intentionally, but he created an icon, and when you accidentally create an icon, that's pretty cool, so this is shiny and chrome for me.

[00:37:29] Kyle Castro: [00:37:30] Alright, next category here. I titled this, How Great Is This Apocalypse, huh? Uh, heh heh heh heh, um, this is where we're gonna evaluate the settings, so one of the major themes, if, so, if you're watching Mad Max with us, and you haven't gone through the whole franchise, one thing really important to pay attention to, Uh, and whether Miller's again, we keep having to say that whether he knew it or not, cause he was such a noob, um, the gradual each film gradually, um, is more dilapidated, more apocalypse is setting and less greenery, more desert, more crazy, more mutation, more radiation.

[00:37:59] Kyle Castro: Everything is [00:38:00] just amping up more budget. Um, so the category here is like, uh, what is this? Is this a good apocalyptic setting to you? Are you feeling, are you feeling the end of the world here?

[00:38:09] Matthew Blevins: Yeah, absolutely. Australia already looks like the end of the world. They just had to put a camera there. I mean, it's, it makes a lot of sense.

[00:38:16] Matthew Blevins: And for, and then to go into the Road Warrior from that, it was just a natural, easy progression. So if you put the movie in the context in which it was made, that's, uh, it's, it's pretty easy. And you've got [00:38:30] these kind of weird Shakespearean bikers that are, you know, they're, they're not quite as pontificating as a Mortem Joe quite yet, but they're on their way there.

[00:38:41] Matthew Blevins: So the only, the only note that I, uh, that I had on the bikers though, is like, you have to be careful of the pretty biker. Um, it's like, he's the most dangerous one of the bunch primarily because he has time for moisturizer. So like, where's he getting moisturizer in this apocalyptic landscape? Maybe [00:39:00] that's the, the.

[00:39:00] Matthew Blevins: The one part that's, that's a problem is that, uh, he was, he was, yeah, you don't, you don't look that good. You got it though. Yeah. I

[00:39:09] Kyle Castro: mean, especially when you're the competition just changes, it just lessons, you know, like a post apocalyptic bar, like you and I are tens now, you know what I'm talking about?

[00:39:17] Kyle Castro: We're nines, tens. We're swooning, we're swooning the radioactive women in there, you know, that's our new thing. It's actually something to desire, you know? The apocalypse? Why? Why not? What else you gotta do? Right? Comedy? [00:39:30] Well,

[00:39:31] Matthew Blevins: okay, and then on the, I forgot there was a point I had with the pretty biker, uh, is that If you watched a lot of Australian cinema at the time, it was very homophobic, very misogynistic.

[00:39:42] Matthew Blevins: Um, George Miller did not get into, kind of, females in lead role, kind of, heroic, uh, capacities until later. But this pretty biker character, these kind of gender ambiguous characters, these, uh, you know, they would be called poofters. In [00:40:00] other Australian movies, but George Miller has them in his movie, in his, in this movie as badass characters that are dangerous.

[00:40:08] Matthew Blevins: So, in that enough is, is kind of a subversive, uh, it's different than all of the other Australian cinema at the time.

[00:40:15] Kyle Castro: Yeah, I love that. And, and that laid the groundwork for, you know, James Cameron. You know, it's like James Cameron shares almost the, and it's, it's with them, it's not even a gender message.

[00:40:23] Kyle Castro: It's a, you know, from this type of rubble can sprout strength, and whether or not, you know, we're going to talk about [00:40:30] Furiosa, so we can dissect it, you know, at the end of the, at the franchise. But, you know, one interesting thing about it, if you want to say there's an interesting thing about it, whether you like the film or not, is that It felt very organic, you know, for, for Ephirios, a type two, at least.

[00:40:42] Kyle Castro: The, the foundation's there in a way he's designed it. It's not odd. I think a lot of external people called it, if you want to call it woke, or whatever the word is, people used it. There is that in cinema that's out there. I would not accuse George Miller of that. I think if you say George Miller is that, you haven't paid attention to Mad Max.

[00:40:56] Matthew Blevins: Yeah, his entire body of work has been hinting at these [00:41:00] themes throughout, and it's very important, and it's very, uh, seminal to his work, and I think it probably came from, I mean, this is a guy who's educated, who was, uh, pursuing a medical, you know, field, and, uh, who got into filmmaking, so he probably had maybe a progressive bent on things, but, uh, he was able to, uh, hide it in these, like, misogynistic things.

[00:41:22] Matthew Blevins: Biker marauding characters, if you look right below the surface there, there's some things that weren't [00:41:30] happening in other Australian

[00:41:31] Kyle Castro: cinema. I hate to be the first to break blood bag here on the card here, so this is one area where I do try to zoom in the context. My thing is, is that My modern view of the apocalypse is that, seeing as we've been through some, some things in our real history recently that have hinted at, you know, let's get there, let's get, we got three wars going on in the world, I mean, it's crazy, I mean, we're, we have Twitter now where you can open up and see soldiers being blown up in, uh, you know, in Gaza or in Ukraine, I mean, it's crazy.

[00:41:57] Kyle Castro: Things ramp up pretty quickly, um, and I [00:42:00] think, you know, you got the mechanic who's still just wearing that mechanic outfit, and he's like, Oh, there's an ice cream place down, you know, and it

[00:42:06] Matthew Blevins: There's, yeah, oh man, and by the way, if you're going to an ice cream shop, like, go to another one. This one's surrounded by murderous bikers.

[00:42:15] Matthew Blevins: It's not even good ice cream. What's wrong? Yeah, and I haven't seen an animal.

[00:42:19] Kyle Castro: Like, I haven't, like, I haven't seen a cow. Where, where is the milk? Is this the mother's milk already? Is this, you know, from Fury Road? Is this, are we, is this a hint? Like, hey, this is, we're already making ice cream out of this stuff.

[00:42:28] Kyle Castro: It's a whole industry. [00:42:30] Um, but, you know, I, I just didn't, it just didn't feel, and again, I give them credit for what they've accomplished here. It's still great. The setting's still great. It's just. I, I think if you had, if you, you could almost miss the oil thing, like you could almost miss that. And it almost could feel like, wait, are these just angry people in vehicles?

[00:42:49] Kyle Castro: You know, like why, why are they mad? Like, why are they, you know, you could almost miss it because the setting isn't necessarily giving you a lot. It's very green. Um, again, that's a slight blood bag. I don't want to say it's bad, but I'm just [00:43:00] saying I didn't get, I just feel like, like, Personally, that the real apocalypse is going to ramp up pretty quick and there's going to be bodies.

[00:43:06] Kyle Castro: And I mean, look at, you know, LA and New York riots and everything that happened, I mean, how fast was glass getting shattered to the Chaz zone in Seattle that happened during COVID they literally like a couple of months into the, the pandemic, they had their own tent city set up in the middle of an intersection and the like, it's this stuff happens, like, I'm just thinking the greenery is not going to be great, you know, like, you know, I know that's just my own [00:43:30] personal opinion, but again, still a fantastic setting.

[00:43:32] Kyle Castro: I just don't get major apocalypse vibe from it.

[00:43:34] Matthew Blevins: Yeah. And you have to also consider that a portion of it took place at a farm and then another portion of it took place in this cabaret that seemed just completely out of place. Um, yeah, there, there are some disparities in that for sure, but, uh, you know, the halls of justice and then what they were able to do with little more than, you know, They were basically able to, uh, posit the entire downfall of, of [00:44:00] like the ju the ju the entire judicial process, um, some tattered suits and, you know, just a little decorum and, and whatnot.

[00:44:10] Matthew Blevins: And, and it told an entire story. So from what he was able to do, you know, it's, it's not as epic. Or it's not as concise as, as, as later ventures. But, uh, there's also something I like a lot about this one where it doesn't feel like every moment of it was drafted on a storyboard. Yeah.

[00:44:27] Kyle Castro: Oh, true. And they didn't have time for that.

[00:44:29] Kyle Castro: No, they did have the [00:44:30] knowledge. Apparently Miller's a noob. So, you know, he's doing a lot of good stuff here. Uh, one thing, so our next category, one thing that's so distinct, probably my favorite element, I, I, I don't know why I like villains. Um, like, this is why I love the crow, because the, the first crow, each villain was so unique, but not, like, not unrealistically unique.

[00:44:48] Kyle Castro: This has that too, and one thing I, I love about Mad Max is that the villains are often poetic, uh, slightly Shakespearean, uh, almost worshipped as a cult figure. These are some unique characteristics that are kind of shared [00:45:00] across, and obviously they get more mutated, more crazy across, uh, once you get further and further into the franchise, but, um, I like Toe Cutter, and Joe, and, uh, and, you know, Humongous, it's Lord Humongous, right, did I say that right, or is it Humongo?

[00:45:13] Kyle Castro: I always forget. Lord Humongous.

[00:45:14] Matthew Blevins: Uh, I thought it was Humongous from Furiosa, right? Yeah, but uh, and then I'm trying to remember who the pretty boy was. I, I can't remember what his name is. But you've got a trio in that first movie of iconic villain characters. And they're, and, and then you're starting the movie with [00:45:30] that, uh, Knight.

[00:45:31] Matthew Blevins: Knight Rider. Shoot. Knight Rider. Johnny the Boy, you know, and even Johnny the Boy, you had Knight Rider, you know, you had these iconic villain characters, they were all psychotic and out of their mind, and they were pontificating all of these, like, soliloquies, and, you know, these, you know, these weren't just bikers, they were, I don't know, they were already off their rocker.

[00:45:52] Matthew Blevins: Yeah,

[00:45:52] Kyle Castro: very, it's very unique, and it's very cool, and I'll kick off on this one, I give this, I go straight shiny and chrome, and, It's, um, it's, it's the start of something [00:46:00] beautiful and it's, it's abbreviated in this one and it gets a little more expanded, uh, in the future films in terms of the scope and the size of the gangs and, um, the influence and their personalities.

[00:46:11] Kyle Castro: Um, but it's a trait throughout the whole franchise that I think is unique to Mad Max and kind of set the, the groundwork for other franchises is to say, Hey, it's not just about the good guy, you know, the bad guys need to be interesting too. And they're interesting. And Toe Cutter is interesting. He goes from being very.

[00:46:26] Kyle Castro: Poetic and, um, you know, he shows moments of [00:46:30] sensitivity right before he shows absolute tyranny, but then he'll hiss. You know, he hisses at Max on the bike like a badger. I mean, he sounded like some kind of badger creature. I don't even know if badgers hiss, but if a badger did hiss, it would sound like toe cutter.

[00:46:42] Kyle Castro: It's these frantic, and it's funny because the environment doesn't give me apocalypse as much in this movie, but the toe cutter does. Um, the fact that that. This guy's been through something. Yeah, because he's brilliant, but he's hissing at people. He was

[00:46:54] Matthew Blevins: educated, yeah, yeah, it's like he was already educated, he already had this like, there was [00:47:00] a, there's this weird aristocracy about him, maybe, like he'd come from a higher class, and now he's, uh, he's in the dregs of society, and he's just going feral.

[00:47:09] Kyle Castro: Yeah, and it's something that like, if you even take a modern version of this with The Walking Dead, this is something they try to do, you know, and The Walking Dead has just, it's been on too long, and it's just been a trash fire, but. The, the thing that Miller does in the way they're, I don't know how he, with his lack of experience, directed these, these actors, but to me, Toe Cutter is also, feels organic, and, you know, some of the future entries we'll get [00:47:30] into feel the same way, like, I feel like these villains are not over the top, like, for some reason, it feels like, this is This is kind of how this would look.

[00:47:36] Kyle Castro: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

[00:47:37] Matthew Blevins: I know people like these guys. I mean, they're, yeah, most of them are doing open mic comedy, but if the apocalypse really kicks off, man, I'm going to have to pick one of these assholes.

[00:47:49] Kyle Castro: Yeah. It's like you bombed last time I was like, but now you have an actual bomb and you're threatening to, you know, Throw it at people.

[00:47:54] Kyle Castro: So, but, uh, anyway, I go shiny and Chrome all the way on this one. Big time.

[00:47:57] Matthew Blevins: Yeah, I do too. And not to be like a [00:48:00] broken record on the shiny and Chrome, but it's like, what more can I say, dude? I mean, it's, it's George Miller's directorial debut and he was able to create something in 1979. This thing's a year older than I am.

[00:48:12] Matthew Blevins: And it's just as fresh today as it was then. It's, you know, it's not without flaws, but it's also. Just a seminal example of what was going on in Australia at the time, and I do encourage people to go out and check out some of the other stuff that was happening, just so you're aware of all of the other cool shit that [00:48:30] was out there, but uh, you know, Mad Max, 1979, you're, it's like, you're always gonna know about that movie.

[00:48:38] Matthew Blevins: Yeah.

[00:48:38] Kyle Castro: All right. Well, so far we got, uh, we have four and a half on shiny and chrome and we have 0. 5 on blood bag here. I think this is looking pretty good so far, but we got to finish these categories out. Next category is, uh, a stranger walks into town and that's kind of how you describe the Western. And even though this is kind of an early, early version of [00:49:00] that, you did say early, and I agree with you that it hinted at it.

[00:49:02] Kyle Castro: What do you think about the Western qualities here? Are they here? Are they here in a big way?

[00:49:05] Matthew Blevins: Yeah, they are. And, uh, Millar himself had talked about how the French were the first to pick up on this, which I find very strange because it was like, it is so obviously an American Western. The tropes are all there.

[00:49:19] Matthew Blevins: You've got the, you know, the troublemaker, Johnny the Boy. Uh, you know, gets picked up by the, the law enforcement and, you know, they're going to ride into town and avenge [00:49:30] their, their boy and, you know, it's, it's all of the tropes of the American Western. They're all simple tropes, but they're still here because they work.

[00:49:38] Matthew Blevins: So, yeah, it's, it's not, it's not as overt, uh, of a Western influence as some of the others, I would say, but it's, I would have to go. Maybe I'll go. Just for the sake of hedging my bets a bit, I'll go half a shiny and chrome on this one because it's not as ensconced in [00:50:00] that kind of western mythos. It's, it's, uh, the influences are obvious.

[00:50:05] Matthew Blevins: But they could have, it could just as obvious if you were comparing it to a samurai film, or if you were comparing it to anything that's like a Joseph Campbell, like heroic journey story, it would all qualify, I guess.

[00:50:19] Kyle Castro: Yeah. Yeah. And I'm, I'm in the same boat, you know, I would go, I would split this as well.

[00:50:23] Kyle Castro: Um, I think the qualities are there. I think, um, he's because he starts off as the protagonist here and, [00:50:30] um, Uh, you know, this is where we see him turn into the other person, turn into Mad Max. Um, I think those qualities, the western qualities kind of come out more in other films, and I think here it's very subtle.

[00:50:40] Kyle Castro: The parts where it does pick up a half and where it's really good to me is, uh, the way he's picking out people one by one. You know, he's having to isolate people. The, the car is the horse that he's riding the desert, in the desert. Um, and there are those elements and I do like that because that's another thing I just thought of like he's got a horse, his car is his horse and they're galloping, he's [00:51:00] galloping from place to place to pick out these people that he's avenging and that is the western format.

[00:51:04] Kyle Castro: And so I think, I think there are areas of it where it's not fully, uh, fleshed out yet. And I think we see more of that in the future, but I split with it as well. So I agree. One more category here, and it is five to one, uh, in terms of shiny and chrome. So it's, it's gonna be a positive, but we do have one more category to explore and strangers in need.

[00:51:23] Kyle Castro: That's the other half of the Western eca, uh, of the western equation. A stranger walks into town, but strangers in need. And we're not really [00:51:30] honing in on the western aspect, but one thing that's very unique to the Mad Max franchise is that Mad Max, Max is mixing it up, he's entering town, he doesn't want to be there, but somehow he gets sucked into a conflict, whether it's a, you know, someone's being bullied by the local villains, or they're out of gasoline, or whatever that is, and they're all Bearing, you know, once you start getting exposed to the bigger and bigger groups over the course of the film, you start to meet more types of characters and I start asking myself and I don't know if you, if you think this is like, if I'm max, like, is this [00:52:00] worth my time?

[00:52:00] Kyle Castro: Like these people are nuts. Like some of them are cool, but some of them are comedians and probably doing open mics. Very weird. Uh, very weird. So, but this is a very abbreviated thing. And in this one we have to modify a little, we have to include max in this a little bit because at the beginning he's kind of, uh, But then he does have people throughout towns and he's almost preserving justice across the board trying to be still at the end.

[00:52:21] Kyle Castro: He's still part cop part mad. What do you think in terms of strangers need of these people we want to protect and save?

[00:52:27] Matthew Blevins: So, no, I, I [00:52:30] think, I think I'd have to go blood bag on this one because, uh, Max's needs and motivations are deeply personal in this movie, and they have to be to establish the mythos of this character.

[00:52:42] Matthew Blevins: So, yeah. It's not, it's not necessarily strangers in need that he's after, or, or helping most of the time. A lot of times he's being driven by the death of his partner, uh, by the death of his wife and child. Um, you know, it, these are all deeply personal motivations that are, that are character building. Um, [00:53:00] but, uh, you know, other than a couple of teenagers that, uh, they seem to want to get, In on the action, they were excited by the bikers until the shit got too real.

[00:53:11] Matthew Blevins: So I, I'm not sure if there's, you know, other than some of the folks in the bronze, I don't know if there were redeemable characters in that max universe, you know, I mean, there were, there were certainly victims, but you know, if you're, if you're chasing after the thrill and you're in one of the, you know, [00:53:30] you're, you're going to just be asking for trouble.

[00:53:32] Kyle Castro: Yeah, I went blood bag here, too, because there are people to save. There are strangers. Uh, we don't get to know them as well, but I'll, I'll, I'll classify his wife and child here. If this is the apocalypse, and maybe this is where my apocalypse sentiment came from in the first one, even though this is an environmental, if this is really a, a dystopian world, like, his wife and kid don't seem too scared or worried about it, for the most part, until trouble finds them, but she's playing saxophone, they're making jokes, they're resting in the grass, like, they're on the [00:54:00] beach, like, Where's the threat?

[00:54:02] Kyle Castro: Like, how much,

[00:54:04] Matthew Blevins: where's the imminent threat? They obviously have no sense of threat at all. If she's just going into an ice cream shop surrounded by murderers with her baby, It's like you, you, you're, you have no maternal instincts for sure. I mean, they named their kid. What was it? Sprog. I think that they, they had whatever, whatever ill will was befell upon them.

[00:54:26] Matthew Blevins: They earned it from that alone. Don't name your kids. [00:54:30] Sprog

[00:54:30] Kyle Castro: just randomly play. Like I like the saxophone, but come on, it's late. You know, like I've, I've been, you know, I've been chasing vigilantes all day. Like I could use some, I could use some silence and quiet, you know, can you just shut up with the saxophone?

[00:54:42] Matthew Blevins: Yeah. Take your shit to the mixed open mic and just let me have my peace.

[00:54:47] Kyle Castro: I know you're good at this. That's fine. The boat, the, the beat poet and the bongo guy, you know, like right there in the middle of that mixed open mic, you know? Oh man. And by the way, you can see me there next Thursday. [00:55:00] Yeah. Let's start inviting people to civilians.

[00:55:04] Kyle Castro: You want to invite civilians to open mics here. That's a threat. Is that a threat?

[00:55:09] Matthew Blevins: Oh man. It'll change your life, people. It's worse than Mad Max. I would give that a shiny and chrome on its post apocalyptic qualities for sure. Oh yeah,

[00:55:19] Kyle Castro: absolutely. Especially when the homeless guy Have you ever been a part of one?

[00:55:21] Kyle Castro: This used to happen in Nashville all the time. Like, there was this crew of random hobos that would come in and do time. And like, one of them would talk about how they stole a TV from a [00:55:30] trash can. And that was their five minutes. And they'd always go over. Flight, you know, it's like, and then I,

[00:55:37] Matthew Blevins: I missed the authentic, like, you don't get the authentic characters anymore.

[00:55:41] Matthew Blevins: We're all working on our kill Tony minute or whatever. It's like, screw all that. I need crazy people. Yeah. Maybe those were the George Miller's though. We just didn't know it, you know?

[00:55:49] Kyle Castro: Yeah,

[00:55:51] Matthew Blevins: we, we, we were the, we were the cast and crew where they're like, these fucks don't know what they're

[00:55:55] Kyle Castro: doing. Yeah. And now their name is Tony Hinchcliffe.

[00:55:59] Kyle Castro: I don't know. [00:56:00] I don't know who people like anymore. Amazing, well we just finished our first scorecard in the Movie Wars 2. 0 era, 5 2, this is an affirmative, so 5 2, and this is uh, this is getting a shiny in chrome, so in terms of the uh, franchise stack rank, we're giving this a go, this is a good one. So uh, this was fun man, what'd you think about that, your first war card?

[00:56:18] Matthew Blevins: That was a blast. You know, it's, it's kind of fun to get those little things to, uh, kind of break it down in a way that I hadn't thought of because people don't want to hear you break down the [00:56:30] emotional context of characters for a half an hour. They'd rather have a fun scorecard. So, you know, I appreciate that.

[00:56:36] Matthew Blevins: Was

[00:56:36] Kyle Castro: it a touchdown or not? You know, that's what they want. Well, cool, man. Well, we're going to do Mad Max. This is funny too. I always have a hard time saying the next one because it came out as one movie and then they renamed it Mad Max road warrior. I always just call it road warrior. Some people call it road warrior, Mad Max two.

[00:56:55] Kyle Castro: Some people call it Mad Max two road warrior. I just call it Road Warrior, um, but we're going to do that [00:57:00] one next. So, and that's the one that, uh, isn't not just considered to be the most beloved by a lot of people. Um, but it is probably on a lot of all time lists. If you were to go find a hundred, you know, greatest films of all time, it's on some of those, um, for good reason.

[00:57:13] Kyle Castro: So it'll be interesting to dive into that one and see what we think and where it goes in the stack rank, which we'll do in the last one, but dude, this has been a blast, man. Thank you so much for hopping on again.

[00:57:20] Matthew Blevins: Dude, Kyle, I had a blast. Thank you so much for having me back. Man. And, uh, yeah, let's do it again.

[00:57:26] Matthew Blevins: Thank [00:57:30] you.