person or book cover
Screen cap from promotional trailer
form y separately published work icon Mad Max single work   film/TV   science fiction  
Is part of Mad Max 1979 series - author film/TV (number 1 in series)
Issue Details: First known date: 1979... 1979 Mad Max
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

In a post-apocalyptic Australia, law and order has begun to break down due to energy shortages, despite the efforts of Main Force Patrol (MFP) officers like Max Rockatansky. After Rockatansky encounters Toecutter's motorcycle gang, who are running runshod over isolated communities, he grows disillusioned with his role in the MFP. At first convinced by his superior officer not to resign, he is driven into a state of cold-blooded revenge when Toecutter's gang murder his wife and young son.

Exhibitions

15866441
15826549

Notes

  • This film is included in Australian Screen's collection 'Horror in Australian Cinema'.

Affiliation Notes

  • Preppers and Survivalism in the AustLit Database

    This work has been affiliated with the Preppers and Survivalism project due to its relationship to either prepping or prepper-inflected survivalism more generally, and contains one or more of the following:

    1. A strong belief in some imminent threat
    2. Taking active steps to prepare for that perceived threat

    • A range of activities not necessarily associated with ‘prepping’ take on new significance, when they are undertaken with the express purpose of preparing for and/or surviving perceived threats, e.g., gardening, abseiling.
    • The plausibility of the threat, and the relative “reasonable-ness” of the response, don’t affect this definition. E.g., if someone is worried about climate change and climate disasters, and they respond by moving from a riverbank location in Cairns, or to a highland region of New Zealand, this makes them a prepper. If someone else is worried about brainwashing rays from outer space, and they respond by making a tinfoil hat, that makes them a prepper. 

    3. A character or characters (or text) who self-identify as a ‘prepper’, or some synonymous/modified term: ‘financial preppers’, ‘weekend preppers’, ‘fitness preppers’, etc.

    As a tier two work, this text has been identified as key to prepping in a broader, more conceptual relationship. These texts have been classified as ‘key’ prepper-adjacent texts that are important to prepping, even if they themselves are not about prepping or do not include preppers. These texts have been identified in the database through various means such as interviews with preppers, scholarship on preppers, and online prepper forums.
     

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Works about this Work

y separately published work icon Trauma and Disability in Mad Max : Beyond the Road Warrior’s Fury Mick Broderick , Katie Ellis , Oxford : Oxford University Press , 2019 18451060 2019 multi chapter work criticism

'This book explores the inter-relationship of disability and trauma in the Mad Maxfilms (1979-2015). George Miller’s long-running series is replete with narratives and imagery of trauma, both physical and emotional, along with major and minor characters who are prominently disabled. The Mad Max movies foreground representations of the body – in devastating injury and its lasting effects – and in the broader social and historical contexts of trauma, disability, gender and myth.

'Over the franchise’s four-decade span significant social and cultural change has occurred globally. Many of the images of disability and trauma central to Max’s post-apocalyptic wasteland can be seen to represent these societal shifts, incorporating both decline and rejuvenation. These shifts include concerns with social, economic and political disintegration under late capitalism, projections of survival after nuclear war, and the impact of anthropogenic climate change.

'Drawing on screen production processes, textual analysis and reception studies this book interrogates the role of these representations of disability, trauma, gender and myth to offer an in-depth cultural analysis of the social critiques evident within the fantasies of Mad Max.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Mad Max and Disability : Australian Gothic, Colonial, and Corporeal (Dis)possession Dawn Stobbart , 2018 single work criticism
— Appears in: Studies in Gothic Fiction , vol. 6 no. 1 2018; (p. 65-72)

'The Australian landscape has a long Gothic history, as Gerry Turcotte writes: “long before the fact of Australia was ever confirmed by explorers and cartographers it had already been imagined as a grotesque space, a land peopled by monsters” (10). This grotesque space is brought into focus through the films, the graphic novel, and the videogame of the Mad Max franchise and transposed onto this landscape are survivors and remnants of society, many of whom are coded as disabled. These characters are set against the omnipresent Australian landscape, an unwelcoming land that opposes their very existence, yet whose presence compliments it. This paper will focus on the literary understanding of disability to explore the preponderance of physical differences in the Mad Max franchise. It will focus primarily on the latest releases, dealing with the Fury Road portion of the series, where living with physical impairment is a banal reality. This paper will ask whether the Gothic landscape of the Australian Outback in Mad Max codes the characters as disabled, or whether it is the able bodied characters that are outside the norm, as well as considering the positive (or negative) implications of representations of disability in the franchise.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Leaving Home : Kennedy Miller in Melbourne James Robert Douglas , 2017 single work essay
— Appears in: Senses of Cinema , December no. 85 2017;

Kennedy Miller has been located in Sydney since the early 1980s, when its reputation as Australia’s most successful production house was established. But its origins and trajectory as a company are intimately tied to Melbourne. Drawing on textual, historical, and archival sources, I argue that Melbourne’s screen culture and industry at the time of the Australian film revival played a fundamental key role in shaping the abilities and sensibilities of the company’s founders, George Miller and Byron Kennedy.

Mad Mix : V8s and Vintage Synths Paris Pompor , 2017 single work column
— Appears in: FilmInk , 27 December 2017;
Killing Time With Damien Power Dov Kornits (interviewer), 2017 single work interview
— Appears in: FilmInk , 22 August 2017;
Iconic Moments in Cinema : Australia, Part 1 : [Mad Max] Aaron Goldberg , 2008-2009 single work review
— Appears in: Senses of Cinema , no. 49 2008-2009;

— Review of Mad Max James McCausland , George Miller , 1979 single work film/TV
y separately published work icon The Mad Max Movies Adrian Martin , Strawberry Hills : Currency Press ScreenSound Australia , 2003 Z1040121 2003 single work criticism "Martin compares the three Mad Max movies and shares his views on which works best and why. In a chapter dedicated to each film, he looks at their critical reception and their themes, examines Miller's shooting techniques and provides a shot-by-shot analysis of integral scenes."--Currency Press Newsletter, April, 2003
y separately published work icon Not Quite Hollywood : The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! Paul Harris , Collingwood : Madman Entertainment , 2008 Z1636275 2008 single work criticism (taught in 1 units)

Not Quite Hollywood is the story of Ozploitation.

More explicit, violent and energetic than anything out of Hollywood, Aussie genre movies such as Alvin Purple, The Man From Hong Kong, Patrick, Mad Max and Turkey Shoot presented a unique take on established cinematic conventions.

In England, Italy and the grindhouses and Drive-ins of North America, audiences applauded our homegrown marauding revheads with their brutish cars; our sprnky well-stacked heroines and our stunts - unparalleled in their quality and extreme danger!

Busting with outrageous anecdotes, trivia and graphic poster art - and including isights from key cast, crew and fans - including Quentin Tarantino - this is the wild, untold story of an era when Aussie cinema got its gear off and showed the world a full-frontal explosion of boobs, pubes, tubes...and even a little kung fu!

Dying to Come to Australia : Asylum Seekers, Tourists and Death Jon Stratton , 2007 single work criticism
— Appears in: Our Patch : Enacting Australian Sovereignty Post-2001 2007; (p. 167-196) Imagined Australia : Reflections around the Reciprocal Construction of Identity between Australia and Europe 2009; (p. 57-87)
Battlers Take Top Spot in Movie Poll Rosemary Lentini , 2010 single work column
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 7 October 2010; (p. 13)
Nitrate Overload Frank Bren , 1993 single work column
— Appears in: Arena Magazine , August/September no. 6 1993; (p. 53-54)
Last amended 13 Feb 2024 13:19:57
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