Mad Max Virtual Panels

Collaboration
Name:	Mad Max Virtual Panels
Members:
Date(s):	January 2019, April 2019
Focus:	Meta, fanfiction
Fandoms:	Mad Max
External Links:	Virtual Panel information on Mad Max Fanfic Awards
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

In 2019, the Tumblr community Mad Max Fanfic Awards (community) gathered questions for creators of Mad Max fanworks, which were then answered on Tumblr and Discord.

Mad Max Fandom Virtual Panel #1

• Topic: The Original Trilogy
• Date: January/February 2019
• Moderator: Kalashnikorn
• Panelists: Weirdness_Unlimited, Vanfu, Tyellas, Owlship, Kalashnikorn, and Jaetion
• Questions:
  • Question 1: Who’s your favorite character from the original trilogy, and what led you to love this character?

So many amazing characters! Jessie! Fifi McAffee! Toecutter! Lord Humongus! The Warrior Woman! The Gyro Captain! My absolute favorite is Aunty Entity, for so many reasons. Her magnificent look, her great lines, her subtle ties to Australian history, the difficulties she has running Bartertown as a woman. Gyro Captain is a solid second place. His heedless wit, his courage and cowardice, his relentless libido, his choices – all that and he’s dealing with the apocalypse in a onesie. -Tyellas/thebyrchentwigges

I’m a big fan of Max himself. He’s an interesting protagonist - Especially for a male action hero. Other people have written about how Max functions as a supporting character in the movies, and I agree. He’s a far cry from other action films that feature a a dude who quips, fights, and kills his way to the top, reclaiming his wife, his child, or possibly his job from his nemesis, thus reclaiming his masculinity as well. None of that for Max!

But I think I have two characters who really stick with me and inspire me more than Max: Auntie Entity and Savannah Nix. Thunderdome isn’t the best film in the original trilogy, but it’s my favorite. Entity and Nix are interesting women, both leading their people but doing it in completely different ways. They’re both in charge of communication/information (women being vocal!) and both make decisions that affect the direction of their society (and they’re the ones with power!). At the end of the movie, Entity vows to rebuild and Nix becomes the voice of Sydney where she is essentially remaking the city.

And come on, Tina Turner is amazing. -Jaetion/Jaesauce

Oof, favorite characters are tough to choose. Aunty Entity has an iconic style (and C'MON. She’s portrayed by Tina Turner.) The Gyro Captain dude in Road Warrior with those WILD leggings/onesie was pretty great too, a slick trickster. Our Lady Archer, also in Road Warrior. We all love Feral Kid to the very end of time. Then there’s Toecutter.

I guess I have to stick by Aunty, and MAN I’m loving the Aunty love I’m seeing from my fellow panelists! Aunty Entity definitely radiates that same over the top potential dictator energy as others we’ve seen in post-apocalyptic drama. She’s got serious style and speaking skills which made her incredibly charming, but she is not kind and she treats Master-Blaster as an objects rather than a peoplerson. Let’s face it, I think Master and Aunty had a beef that went far deeper than “who run Bartertown?”. I think my fondness for Aunty came about because of one line, and I may be butchering it or misremembering the line from another film.

“Before the bombs fell I was nobody. After they fell I was somebody, because I was alive.” - Weirdness_Unlimited/burn-your-face-upon-the-chrome

Roop is my absolute favorite original trilogy character. Of course, I think he’s cute, but I love Steve Miilichamp’s performance. I like how he seems like the most socially awkward person in the movie – just look at how he deals with Fifi whenever they interact. - Kalashnikorn/main-force-patrol

Johnny The Boy is my number favorite, I’m not entirely sure why. Something about him being the newbie and not knowing what Toecutter sees in him that no less seems to. There’s no character in the original trilogy that I truly hate. They’re all wonderful in their own ways. - crunkmouse

• • Question 2: The original trilogy was released respectively in 1979, 1981, and 1985. How to you feel that the musical scores in each film have held up? Do the soundtracks feel out of place when you watch these films? The question submitter feels that the 80’s had a kind of cinematic soundtrack style that wasn’t seen before and sort of died out completely by the mid nineties.

Well, I’m old - I’m 48 - so I feel they’re fine. They’re part of that period of film and of science fiction. At the time the 80s-soundtrack-like-other-films, and the big-name single for Beyond Thunderdome, gave the films a sense of being legitimate. It’s also great to sing along to “We Don’t Need Another Hero” in the car. -Tyellas/thebyrchentwigges

That’s a fascinating question! I never thought about the effect that the music has on the films. I think that the soundtracks are great - They compliment the action and stories of the movies. In fact, I think they’re a testament to Miller’s talent as the movie’s creator: everything fits together perfectly. -Jaetion/Jaesauce

Ambient sound and instrumental usage is kind of important to me to give tone to a situation I’m watching on screen. Beyond Thunderdome seemed to have an inappropriately chipper sound, especially during scenes involving the tribe of children. It could have been darker, considering all of those kids were waiting around for parents/adults who are most certainly dead to come back. This may have been intentional, and it may have seemed like some feverish vision to Max at the time. It may also have been intended to reflect the exuberance and glee of the children thinking (much mistakenly) that their savior had come for them at long last. Mad Max, and Road Warrior I need to watch again when I have the willpower to sit still long enough to do so. I can’t say their soundscapes embedded themselves into my memory the way they probably should have since I sat in front of a TV as a munchkin watching them for the first time in the early 90’s. - Weirdness_Unlimited/burn-your-face-upon-the-chrome

Great question! I’m a film score buff, so here’s my take on the matter.

The original Mad Max was an incredibly ambitious movie, especially for its budget, and its score was no exception to that. Miller was going for a harsh, strident, Hitchcock-esque vibe. It’s not melodic, it’s about enhancing tension and action, and IMO, it’s pretty effective at that when Jessie’s running through the woods, fleeing the gang. It also uses a lot of diegetic sounds, which is a cool way to mesh the score with the onscreen action. And while it’s not the kind of score I’d put on for drawing, writing, or getting pumped to lift, it’s wonderfully impactful in its intended context.

The Road Warrior’s soundtrack was more melodic, and had some western vibes. It wasn’t as harsh and atonal, and overall, fit the movie really well.

Thunderdome’s score is very “Hollywood,” like the rest of the movie, so yeah. - Kalashnikorn/main-force-patrol

Pass as I haven’t watch enough to really compare music scores. - crunkmouse

• • Question 3: If you could change anything about the original trilogy, what would it be? What would you add and subtract?

I’d wave a wand and change history. George Miller’s co-producer Byron Kennedy died while scouting for Beyond Thunderdome locations. If Kennedy had been alive at the time, Miller and Kennedy could have produced Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome the way they intended. Miller would have been happier, too. Miller went ahead after Kennedy’s death, but he has said of the production, “I don’t remember the experience because I was doing it to just… You know, I was grieving.” I’d like to see the movie Miller and Kennedy together had in mind. -Tyellas/thebyrchentwigges

The rape. Oh god, I’d take out the rape scenes. The one in the second movie is so horrifying. I can’t even watch that part. The one in the first film too. They’re both so graphic. I hate hate hate when women’s bodies are used as canvases to illustrate a society’s cruelty. It’s unnecessary and exploitative and gross. MMFR has such a better handle on portraying the violence directed toward women by men and the patriarchy in general. -Jaetion/Jaesauce

If I remember correctly, the first film was produced on almost no budget. The one thing I’d change, if I could, would be the budget of the first film. I’d like to see what George and the team would have done with more cash to throw around. I think the original film would have maintained this foreboding feeling that Jessie and Sprog simply weren’t going to make it to the end of the story, but I imagine we might have seen even more in-depth details about Max’s relationships with everyone else. - Weirdness_Unlimited/burn-your-face-upon-the-chrome

I’d make the Interceptor a manual instead of an automatic! lol

First off, the whole MM1 script wasn’t filmed, and it feels like it. But that’s a double-edged sword – while the movie can seem weirdly paced at times and at times, lacks flow, those gaps are fanfic fuel! So I don’t mind the gaps.

It would have been nice to see more of the MM1 world, though. What are the rich doing? What’s the urban/rural divide like? What’s entertainment like in the MM1 world? Where do the Armalites spend their time, other than beaches? Stuff like that.

In TRW, some more time with Wez and GY would have been nice.

For MM3, keep Tina Turner, but replace the rest of Thunderdome with something… Less cartoony. Just. Ahh. - Kalashnikorn/main-force-patrol

Thunderdome with a little less Max screen time, more for the Planet Erf children and Bartertown world building. - crunkmouse

• • Question 4: How has the Mad Max original trilogy influenced you as a creator?

I love tying into the apocalyptic themes of it. You get to see society sliding down, mores and ethics changing. We go from uniformed police officers starting to give up to warlords in full BDSM regalia. There was also such exuberant language in the original three. You can see the way the characters speak whittling down the longer the end of the world goes on.

The weirdness and resilience is fantastic, and it’s great to think of the Citadel in Fury Road as a refuge from it all. One of my stories, Citadel Nights, is very much about that original-trilogy Wasteland colliding with the Citadel. The characters draw on the original-trilogy’s archetypes: tough women, winsome ferals, leather-clad bruisers, blonde bait, and more. -Tyellas/thebyrchentwigges

I credit the Mad Max movies with both sparking my love of the post-apocalyptic genre and inspiring me to write it, too! There’s something cathartic in destroying the world - and rewarding in rebuilding it. I’d also never written anything as long as the fics I wrote/am still writing in this fandom. -Jaetion/Jaesauce

I certainly appreciate anyone who survives in situations with little to no available resources much more. I enjoy reading, writing, and watching survival drama a great deal more, too. - Weirdness_Unlimited/burn-your-face-upon-the-chrome

It’s gotten me stupidly invested in writing fiction. Not just fan fiction, writing fiction in general. I love the idea of a world on the brink of collapse, but still clinging to its comfortable consumerism, law, and power structures.

I like exploring the idea of someone coming of age in an affluent society that’s just absolutely going to shit, with economic collapses, oil wars, and tyrants. Wow! I wonder why a millennial author would be interested in exploring all that? ;D

While I love the MM2-onward apocalypse desert punk aesthetic, it hasn’t figured into my writing. So it’s mostly MM1 vibes that I mix in to my stories. - Kalashnikorn/main-force-patrol

Ummm…It’s inspired me to create lots of different things from fanfics to drawing to arts and crafts. I’ve made a few of the characters in felt form and I have a lot of fun setting up photo shoots for them. I love seeing everyone else’s creativity exploring this wasteland world, too. It’s so different for me to take part in a big fandom other than mostly observing it. - crunkmouse

Mad Max Virtual Panel #2

• Topic: All About Max
• Date: February 9, 2019
• Questions:
  • Is Max of Fury Road the same character as Max in the original trilogy? If so, what do you think of the differences in his characterisation?
  • Who is Max at his core?
  • Discuss Max and Aunty Entity as foils for each other.
  • Of [sic] you are a music person, share some of your Max anthems.
  • What are some of your Max headcanons?
  • Are Max’s ghosts real?

Mad Max Virtual Panel #3

• Topic: Immortal Max: Mythology and Mad Max
• Date: April 13, 2019