Hacker Cinema
Mad Max 2
1981 · Film · 96 min
Part of Mad Max Collection
Directed by George Miller
Max Rockatansky returns as the heroic loner who drives the dusty roads of a postapocalyptic Australian Outback in an unending search for gasoline. Arrayed against him and the other scraggly defendants of a fuel-depot encampment are the bizarre warriors commanded by the charismatic Lord Humungus, a violent leader whose scruples are as barren as the surrounding landscape.
2 positive4 neutralfrom 6 commenters
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6 comments on Hacker News
Let’s be real, the overwhelming majority of those 500 are straight up terrible. Netflix alone has produced well over 100 movies, and IMO at best some of them are worth finishing not that I can think of any off the top of my head.
Now I’m sure you’ve looked forward to many movies but off the top of your head list stuff you’ve either seen more than once and or actually recommend to someone that came our in the last 10 years vs…
(78) The Deer Hunter, Superman, National Lampoon's Animal House, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (79) Apocalypse Now, Alien, Life of Brian, Mad Max, Escape from Alcatraz (80) The Shining, Star Wars: Episode V, Airplane!, The Blues Brothers, Caddyshack, The Elephant Man (81) Raiders of the Lost Ark, Das Boot, The Evil Dead, Mad Max 2, Escape from New York, Time Bandits (82) Blade Runner, The Thing, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Poltergeist, Conan the Barbarian, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Tron (83) Scarface, WarGames, Star Wars: Episode VI, Trading Places, The Evil Dead
Obviously not all great movies but that’s ~30 classic movies in just 6 years and I’m sure I’ve missed a few as kids movies are largely missing from that list.
Some that haven’t been mentioned yet: Matinee, The First Great Train Robbery, Dave, Ghibli movies (Laputa, Mononoke, Totoro, Kiki, …), Mad Max 2, Nightmare Before Christmas, Edge of Tomorrow, Tremors, Godzilla Minus One, Watchmen, The Fly, Dark City, Passengers, Predestination, Strange Days, WarGames, Tron, Timecrimes, Sneakers, The Frighteners.
Tangentially, a bunch of movies have been filmed in and around Broken Hill[1], including Mad Max 2 and 4, Mission Impossible 2, Priscilla: Queen of the Desert, Wake in Fright, and my personal favourite cheesy Australian B-Movie, Razorback.
The landscape typically lends itself to that kind of dry post-apocalyptic look, however shooting for Mad Max: Fury Road was relocated to Namibia[2] as heavy rains had caused the area to break out into bloom.
[1] https://www.brokenhill.nsw.gov.au/Services/Filming-in-Broken-Hill/Filmed-In-Broken-Hill
[2] https://www.nfsa.gov.au/collection/curated/asset/99353-mad-max-fury-road-nsw-filming-announcement
https://whereto.stream/movie/8810?provider=hbo
Why does it claim that mad max 2 is streamable on hbo in denmark? Decided to watch the trilogy this weekend and had a laugh that only the first and the third was available here
Just for fun, I used ffmpeg's `minterpolate` (https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-filters.html#minterpolate) feature to raise the framerate of my Mad Max 2 Road Warrior DVD from 24 to 100 fps. The results were interesting.
If you pause the video and step through one frame at a time, it's very clear which frames are from the original film and which frames were conjured by the algorithm. There's no AI involved, so the algorithm doesn't really understand background from foreground, and objects in the artificial frames are distorted and unnatural. But at 100 fps you don't notice this, or at least I didn't, and motion seemed very smooth and fluid.
The soap opera effect definitely held. It didn't feel like watching a classic movie from 1982, it felt much more like watching a contemporary reality TV program. There was definitely a sense of realism, but the realism was not that you're witnessing an actual post-apocalyptic society clinging to survival. It was realistic in the sense that you felt like you're on a film set, and if you could just peek outside the frame you'd see George Miller and the camera and microphone operators with the lighting and rigging and make-up and costume departments hanging around the catering truck.
A lot of people felt that HFR ruined Peter Jackson's The Hobbit series (or was one of the many contributing factors) because it broke the pretense of fantasy. In my experience raising the frame rate did the same for The Road Warrior. Those outlandish costumes looked even sillier at 100 fps, but man those stunts are incredible! You do get a visceral sense of just how dangerous a lot of those stunts are. It's a miracle that nobody was killed.
> An autogyro is a small, helicopter-like aircraft made famous by the James Bond film You Only Live Twice.
I though it was made even more famous by Mad Max 2.