Is the new George Miller action spectacular a masterpiece or a misfire Dear Listeners? Film reviewers Gareth Higgins and Jett Loe again agree to disagree about the merits of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, (or should it be called a Mad Max Myth?). Along the way they get into what the 'Beyond Vengeance' chapter of the film really means, invoke Monty Python and the Holy Grail, have thoughts about changing frame rates in the movies, and a life of rage that is born out of grief, as well as reminisce about Orson Welles’ “Box of Noses” and Dustin Hoffman’s lack of connection with the youth. Enjoy.
-
You're a winner, Max. You're on the top shelf. And I'm not going to lose you because of some crazy notion about quickly.
They say people don't believe in heroes anymore. Well, damn them! You and me, Max, we're going to give them back to heroes!
Oh my god, I can't believe it.
Ladies and gentlemen, we've lived to talk another day after seeing this astonishing film, Furiosa, Colon, A Mad Max Saga.
It's a fantastic, fabulous piece of cinema that soars the heights of the phantasmaglorally, if that's a word possible, Gareth, that asks, dear listener, that immortal question we've all had.
If we only had the power in our hands to clone actor Stacey Keech, would we do it? And the answer is yes, we would in the form of Tom Burke as Pretorian Jack. It's beautiful.
I'm Jett Loe.
I'm Gareth Higgins. The conversation never ends, although apparently I'm being spoken for, I'm being spoken for at the start of this episode. And I don't want to mislead, misguide, misdirect any of you dear listeners.
And so without wanting to begin the episode on the Note of Conflict, I'm not so sure that this is an astonishing film that leads us into a spiral upwards of the Phantasmagorilla. Is that what you're, the Phantasmagorilla?
Ask your doctor if Phantasmagorilla is right for you. Folks, before Gareth and I get into this Furiosa colon of Mad Max Saga, Masterpiece or Misfire? Quick note for folks, don't forget we're on patreon.com/ The Film Talk.
You can also subscribe to our bonus episodes there and on Apple Podcasts. We just did one a couple days ago on the astonishing Rolling Thunder.
Everything's astonishing these days. Everything's astonishing.
I'm continuously astonished. Maybe that's my childlike sense of wonder.
Are there any films you can think of that have the word astonishing in the title?
You know, it sounds like a really bad, possibly Bob Zemeckis adjacent Dustin Hoffman picture, or maybe he's like a Mary Toymaker. And it's the astonishing Mr. Mcglueth.
Mr.
who?
Mr. Ask your doctor if Mcglueth is right for you. The Mcglueth mystery.
It alternated with Columbo in the early 70s.
I had the privilege of speaking to a small group of college students about six years ago at the local university. And I was trying to tell him a story about something that Dustin Hoffman's career had represented.
And that was that he had not fired a gun in a movie since Straw Dogs and had still managed to have a critically acclaimed and box office successful career.
And so I said, I said to these students, you know, you know, Dustin Hoffman, and they looked at me blankly. And I said, anybody know Dustin Hoffman? And they looked at me blankly again.
And then one, one brave hearty soul put her hand up and said, um, uh, is he, is he the funny guy in Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium? To which the answer is yes, he is the funny guy in Mr.
Magorium's Wonder Emporium.
It's the only time the word funny has been used in conjunction with that film. No, I'm sure it's, I'm sure it's fine. That's from the director.
Is that Barry Sonnenfeld? Is that? Yeah.
No, it's not.
No, no. It's the guy who wrote Stranger Than Fiction. I'm sure it's good.
You've seen Stranger Than Fiction. It's fantastic.
Couldn't get through it. We've lost the audience already. Folks, uh, you can get our bonus episodes.
We did a lovely appreciation of the wonderful, wonderful Dabney Coleman.
The astonishing.
I don't know if I'd use the word astonishing. I don't, did anybody go out, leave like cloak and dagger and say that was an astonishing Dabney Coleman performance? I don't think that was his vibe.
You never, you never, you never forgot.
You never forgot Dabney Coleman.
Who? Folks, Furiosa, Colen, A Mad Max Saga. Tell us what it's about, Gareth.
Furiosa, A Mad Max Saga is a prequel to Mad Max Fury Road, which came out in 2014.
And it, it traces the arc of the story of a young Furiosa girl growing up in the green place, which is kind of an Edenic paradise in this post-apocalyptic world, but has managed to be hidden from the wasteland where, let's just say there are some
ruffians, some rapscallions and people you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley. She is kidnapped in a horrible way.
And then we see, I think the film takes place over the course of about 15 years as Furiosa grows up to be Anya Taylor-Joy and is enslaved in the wasteland. But, as all good mysterious heroines do, she has a sneaky plan up her sleeve.
And I believe we have a clip.
Whatever you have to do, however long it takes, promise me you'll find your way home. Plant this seed. Protect the green place.
Give me this one gift.
Thank you. And that was Furiosa, A Mad Max Saga. Jett, let's get the stuff that we can almost take for granted out of the way.
This is a George Miller film, of course, and George Miller has been making Mad Max films since 1979. That's intriguing in and of itself.
Forty-five years he's been working with this character, and I can't immediately think of another director who's done that with the same character for so long.
Spielberg worked with Indiana Jones for 40 years and then handed over the reins to James Mangold for that wonderful, wonderful, that's an astonishing film, that last Indiana Jones film, The Dial of Destiny.
I don't think we've released our special bonus episode on that film yet. We might do that.
I'm glad to see that you follow us on Apple Podcasts where people can get our bonus episode of Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny.
Well, Hitchcock, of course, did The Man Who Knew Too Much decades apart, so I would kind of put that in that sort of category if you want to be elastic. Like you have to be in the wasteland in the Mad Max movies.
But Gareth, I'm sensing we have differing opinions about Furiosa, a Mad Max Saga. What's yours? And we can talk about the artistry of the films and then we can talk about the meaning if you want.
What I was just about to come to, that it's a George Miller film and so it looks resplendent.
I mean, it's spectacular and every frame designed to within an inch of its life.
And of course, it has not only extraordinary action sequences, but it probably sets the bar for at least, I guess we could call them vehicular action sequences, just as Fury Road did nine years ago and the previous Mad Max films always set the bar
that way. It has some compassion and humanity to it. The story of Furiosa is a horrendous story of trauma and you'd almost diminish it to just call it resilience. She is a fighter up against the worst of odds imaginable.
Along with that, we have Dementus. The characters names in these films are not known for their subtlety.
Dementus, played by Chris Hemsworth, one of the truly great, I guess you could call it comic villain performances I've ever seen, almost unrecognizable.
Can I stop you for one second there? Are you- You can.
Are you pooing the names that George Miller uses?
No, there are archetypes.
You got your toe cutter in the first one, Knight Rider, you got Lord Humongous, there's been too much violence guy, Fifi, Max, we got to give them their heroes, more than Joe Domenis, Miss Kitty, and in this one, we have maybe the worst name I've
I know.
Well, yes, his brother is Rectus, but Scrotus takes the cake.
So the names are both archetypal and they're funny and there's, I mean, Miller's an Australian filmmaker and the film is explicitly set in future post-apocalyptic Australia.
And it's very influenced by British humour, particularly the Monty Python type. If you think about Monty Python, it could be that kind of classic scene in the Holy Grail when the knight is getting his limbs severed.
There's stuff in Mad Max is just a bit more serious than that. But Monty Python was always kind of as gory and as graphics. So the humour in this is not an American style of humour.
It's very much a British influenced Australian humour and the names are archetypal.
The most important thing in this film that I'm not going to say anything about till we hear from you and then I think we'll probably get into it, we'll get into it, is the last section of the film which, spoiler alert, dear listeners, is called
Beyond Vengeance. This film has chapter titles and I think there's five chapters. The last one is called Beyond Vengeance and there is something archetypal and mythical happening in that last segment that I am really confused by.
I'm suspending, I was suspending judgment until you and I get to talk about it because on the one hand I'm really disturbed by it, on the other hand I think there's something interesting happening here and if I had a third hand, the third hand would
say, if my hand could speak, I feel like I'm in a Mad Max film, I've got three hands, one of which can speak, Rictus, Scrotus and Higgins. And Higgins, yes.
Higgins, Higgins' third hand would say, I did come away from this film thinking that it was half-baked.
I did come away from this film feeling like there's bits there where things move too quickly or things move too slowly or scenes appear to be missing. It's really quite a long film.
I'm wondering if we're actually seeing George Miller's final intended put and I am perturbed, genuinely perturbed by what happens in the last few minutes of the film.
And I have to ask myself, based on my appreciation of George Miller's previous films, particularly his great underseen, underrated, close to masterpiece, and I'm not kidding, babe, by using the word masterpiece.
It's only close to a masterpiece, it does. There are some... Pig in the City.
The second babe film, Pig in the City. There are things about this guy's sensibility, which are far more humane than what appears to be on the screen in these last few minutes.
And yet, dear Jett, and yet, I await your education, your mentoring, your teaching, your illumination of what I may have missed in these last few minutes of this fascinating film.
I'm not going to say it's astonishing, actually, because, well, I'll get to that in a minute. We may have been spoiled by Fury Road's radical step forward. I don't think Furiosa actually adds a whole lot more to the kind of kinetic development.
I saw Fury Road the night after seeing Furiosa. I've enjoyed it a lot more than Furiosa. I felt the action was a lot more fluid and exciting.
But I'm still going to see it again. I still want to talk about it. I still want to hear what you have to say about it.
I'm really confused and perturbed by the last section of the film. Jett, my dear friend, I invite you to illuminate me.
Well, you said in high bar and you might be disappointed. Prepare to be disappointed just like those who are born into the wasteland. Don't get as much veggies as they would like.
I had a totally different experience than you. I absolutely adored this film. I far preferred it to Fury Road.
It's much more of a Mad Max film for me. And I'll tell you why. Here's the thing.
You go to the movies, you go to the cinema, and you have to engage with the picture, right?
You have to click in with the picture, I would say, at some level, where you have to sit forward even like some people were that came with me on the screening of Furiosa, a.k.a. a Mad Max Saga, where you're just engaged.
The problem I had with Fury Road, two main ones that prevented my engagement. Number one, of course, was Tom Hardy. I'm a huge fan of the Mad Max films.
I'm a huge fan of them, and Fury Road opens with Tom Hardy introducing himself as Max. For me, he was never Max. He had a certain vibe to him, like he had just stepped out onto the pavement after a heavy meal at Musso and Frank's.
You know what I'm saying? He was kind of beefy. He's well fed.
The thing with Furiosa is, as soon as I saw Tom Burke, who I mentioned at the top, who looks a lot like Stacey Keech, I was stunned because I thought, oh my goodness, if Fury Road were made today, this guy is Max. He has the world weariness.
He has the kind of beat up vibe, worn out, end of his tether, yet still going, a burnout husk of a man. This is the guy to play Max. So I never bought into Tom Hardy as Mad Max.
The other issue that I had with Fury Road is the color grading of it. It was so saturated that even though the film is rightfully lauded for its practical effects, it all felt like CG to me because it is so heavily graded.
And interestingly enough, there are scenes of Fury Road interspersed in the end credits of Furiosa, Colman, Mad Max Saga, and they desaturate them. And that to me is a far preferable vibe for the film. It felt much more realistic.
I completely disagree with you about the action scenes. The action is astonishing. I'll use that word again, astonishing in Furiosa.
The sequence with the paragliders and the octobos, I want to talk about the octobos in a second, is far more engaging to me than anything in Fury Road.
I gasped when people, they started paragliding around the war rig and then we have the octobos coming in and in the distance and that incredible like floating octopus sculpture was like high art.
The way that Miller is making this film, I feel like I'm watching an action painting come to life.
It's vibrant strokes of color, of action, of ideas and I will say this Gareth and please the film historians, people who know the history of cinema better than Gareth and myself out there can speak to this. Gareth, but tell me your opinion here.
Has anybody done what George Miller has done in terms of frame rates? Now in Avatar, the last Avatar movie, Cameron switched to 48 frames per second rather than 24 for some scenes is very distracting.
But in Furiosa, he's constantly changing the frame rate of what you're watching on the screen. And he's also cutting frames out to speed up the action where he wants. And I have never seen that before.
And in fact, when it first started, the frame rate was different. I thought, why is there something wrong in the projection, in the digital projection? Do they have the wrong setting?
And no, it turns out it's a stylistic choice. And I had always hated his speeded up frames like in Mad Max, colon two, whatever it's called. Great movie.
There's a scene where a tent gets ripped off and there's a couple copulating. And I hated it because, oh, that's obviously speeded up action.
And you always know speeded up action in action scenes because you can see the dust is going too fast or the wind is too fast, what have you.
It looks fake, like they didn't plan it out properly, or they'll slow it in post because they didn't think they would need slow motion, but now they're trying to fix it.
Arnold Schwarzenegger's The Six Days, as Ronald Donaldson directed, does that constantly. It's terrible. But here, he's using a new tool of cinema or a new something.
He's discovered something new in the toolbox of cinema, Gareth, that is amazing to me because it's something that could always have been done.
Just like the Matrix effect, that bullet time effect in the Matrix film with Keanu Reeves, that bullet time effect could have been discovered and used any time in the history of cinema.
In fact, it could have been used first before the linear frames we think of the horse galloping that could have been used to create bullet time. They just didn't think of doing it. And Miller is doing something new here, and that's astonishing.
So I just wanted to get that out of the way before we talk about the meaning. Thank you, Gareth, for letting me rant on. Was that too long a rant?
It was not too long a rant.
What's different for you about Furiosa's action compared with Fury Road?
Well, his use of the ramping and the clarity of the action set pieces. Right from the beginning of this film, there's action set pieces that are, to me, more exciting. Again, because I wasn't able to engage with Tom Hardy.
When Tom Hardy is getting his interceptor blown up and then he's pursued in the beginning of Fury Road, I'm like, oh, okay. Whereas in this one, right away, I'm there for young Furiosa with her mother pursuing her with a sniper rifle.
That whole sequence is so clean, so clear in terms of the placement of the actress, the placement of the action, how it's cut together, the speed it up, the change in the frame rates, the comedy elements, those two legs sticking out of the sand,
shots that look like they're from Lawrence of Arabia of a single motorcycle pursuing two other motorcycles. Really stunning. And again, something else I have never seen.
He goes to a nighttime shot, but he switches to nighttime where it goes day to night on a character's face while it's still daytime. And I've never seen that before. It's really something.
And doing that right at the start of the film combined with the frame rates tells you you're in, it's like you're in a piece of modern art that he is, he is crafting cinema that tells us that cinema is still young.
Even though you think maybe cinema now is just left for cut scenes and video games, it's been usurped in its young life by other forms like interactive, interactive games. It tells us that cinema is still young.
So I left the film invigorated because he's using his painting on this amazing broad canvas of a screen in ways that I haven't seen before. Does that make sense?
It does make sense. And he's already spoken about silent cinema being so much more worthy of attention than many people who maybe haven't been introduced to it yet.
And the filmmaker that I thought about the most while watching it was Buster Keaton, partly because the war rig, is that what they call it?
There's some shots of the war rig, this big truck that look very much like it's a steam train on tracks and some of the most iconic images of Buster Keaton are indeed on trains.
Let's talk about this last segment of the film and this is definitely going to require spoilers. Help me understand, Jett, help me understand. This is a segment of the film called Beyond Vengeance.
And I mistakenly thought that that meant it was going to be something better than Vengeance. And instead, you could read the ending as being something far worse than Vengeance, far worse than an eye for an eye.
In fact, the last few minutes of the film represent probably, I don't know, something like 20 years in the life of the villain where the villain is basically tortured without being allowed the release of the grave for the rest of his life.
That's one way you could read this last segment of the film. Another way of reading it is that this is his opportunity to give himself to something he's never been able to give himself to, which is to nurturing more life for other people.
But here's the problem. There is nothing in that sequence. There's nothing in that sequence that indicates that he's consented to this, that he's chosen it or that he's had any kind of positive experience while doing it.
I may feel differently when I go to see it again. I'm well aware that you can see the same shot twice and feel differently about it both times.
But to me, he looks like he has been tormented for at least a dozen years by the character who's supposed to be the heroine.
As one of the people who I saw the film with said to me a day or two later, did Furiosa ever step back and go, okay, okay, okay, he suffered enough. I'm actually doing something worse to him than he did to me.
Never mind the fact that we know that Dementis has suffered the unimaginable torment of, like everybody else in the Wasteland, having their closest loved ones ripped away from them. So I'm confused about what the intent of George Miller is here.
And I'm honestly not sure if the scene was written well enough or edited well enough to convey the information, the rather, the utterly profound mythical idea that a person could atone for their monstrous acts by choosing to devote the rest of their
life to doing something life-giving for everybody else. The problem I have with this last segment of Furiosa is it really looks like she just tortured him into doing it. What am I missing, Jett? What am I missing?
Well, we interpret it totally differently because in the end, he's joyous.
As I saw it, he's smiling and he's happy as a tear in his eye and he's full of joy, right? So we're seeing it. We're interpreting it differently.
As you say, this-
He does not look joyous to me.
Well, he looks a little thin. He's lost a few pounds, but let me get into it. Look, this could have been called Furiosa, a Mad Max myth.
They didn't call it that probably because the alliterations, it doesn't quite work. But these are mythical stories, so let's start off with that.
That's kind of an underpinning because it does have the power of myth, which is another reason why that ending just bumped up the whole film for me.
All of these films, famously the Mad Max films, can be interpreted as stories or myths passed on through the years.
There's that great part of the great twist at the end of Mad Max 2 where we find out the person narrating the film is the little feral child, and Max exists now as he says, only in my memory. These are just remembrances of things.
In the third film, you've got the character Savannah Nix who says that every night we must tell the tale, we must tell these stories. The whole thing is posited, it seems, as these are kind of mythical stories told after the fact.
That kind of dovetails also with the nature of the conflicts in these movies. In the first film, society is just breaking down. In the second film, it's explicit that there's wars over gasoline.
In the third film, it's nuclear war because we see the fallout surrounding the Sydney Opera House, InfuriRode, it's water wars. In this one, they say it right there at the beginning, I was always wondering, what's the war going to be this time?
It's about information. What do we believe? How do we interpret things?
Because there's a line put in right in the opening narration, we don't know what to believe. We're talking about the information.
And the narrator says that in that last segment, saying some people say this, some people say that, but I heard this from Furiosa herself.
That's right. Well, that makes it more compelling story when you're the storyteller, right? You say, yeah, that's what you say.
But here's the thing. So this character, Dementis, there's a line about rage being born out of grief, right? He is a comic figure.
He's a wonderful performer. The actor that plays him, Chris Hemsworth, he's a very funny guy. He's got hysterical lines, but he's also carries around a toy from his dead child or children.
So he's gone. He's gone insane with grief. He's not very competent and he's, we would in the old days, we would say he's mad, right?
And hence the name Mad Max, because what happens at the end of Mad Max? The man, Max Rakitansky, tries to extract vengeance on the people that killed his wife and child, but what happens at the end of the film? He's a burned out husk of a man.
There is nothing positive that has come out of this act and his suffering continues from movie after movie. You know, there's the character in Road Warrior, Mad Max 2.
I want to call him Papa Dough, like the chain seafood restaurant we have in the United States. Papa Dough's, no, it's Papa Doc, who says, do you think you're the only one that's suffered and you're in the audience?
You're like, come on, yeah, Max, but he can't get past it, his suffering is so great.
All right.
So Dementes is one of those characters, his suffering is so great and structurally this film is fascinating. You have all this action and then you have at the end this quiet part.
And you talk about that it's not consensual, but you have Dementes putting forward different ways for Furiosa to kill him. So to me, it seems consensual. It's like, okay, this is it.
You know, and again, he's a comic character. He says, I always wondered if this is how I would die.
And then, you know, he gets knocked out, but he can finish that sentence because he's so full of himself and yet so incompetent at the same time, which is, again, common allegory for the political situations we find ourselves in with authoritarian
leaders in the world right now. And at the end, this astonishing thing where he becomes the lifeblood for, I assume, is it the peach tree? Is it the seed that she's been carrying the whole time?
It is the peach tree, yeah, which is some, I mean, I think we actually see the peach. I mean, part of the gorgeous structure of this film is that I think we see yeah, the very first scene is Furiosa and her friend cutting peaches from a tree.
So it's all beautiful and magnificent. And our challenge here between the two of us is will we currently differ? Are they or not doementus is happy to be doing this?
I thought, now look, maybe we'll see it again, right?
At least I will. And I know you've mentioned you possibly might as well. To me, it looked like he had a smile.
Oh, I will too.
He had the beatific smile of a saint at the end.
He's given himself the lifeblood and that allowing creating that tree creates the sustenance for the escape of Furiosa with the wives that then leads to the downfall of the of the citadel in the previous film and or what happens later on in a
temporal sense. So that's what I get. He looks like an ascetic of the ancient stories of the saints that he has given himself up. So to me, I thought it was consensual.
Are you not in some respect an ascetic of old?
Well, you know, that Wigoby is really kicking in.
It's not Wigoby. It's a zembeck. No, no, no, no.
I'm not on either. But that's what that's what I that's how I interpret it.
Well, I mean, this is interesting because it really it's I feel a little bit you know what I feel like right now.
I feel like whatever it was called at the time, I don't know if it was called the MPAA or whatever, the ratings board, whatever they were called that that Hitchcock famously when you know they weren't going to they weren't going to pass psycho for
public exhibition unless he cut some things out of the shower scene. And so he said he would and then he sent it back to them without making any changes at all.
And the people in the ratings board that believed he had erred the first time changed their minds and the people who thought that it was fine the first time changed their minds. But the film hadn't changed at all.
So it's going to be interesting when I get to see this film again. I will look deeply into Dementis' eyes. I will look deeply into his eyes because of course if it is what you think it is, it's magnificent.
It is a mythic representation of frankly the only way that the making of a man's can happen in an integrated fashion that saying sorry isn't enough.
Now I'm not saying we all have to give our bodies to turn into peach trees, spoiler alert, but the the the amend, the reception of mercy, receiving mercy is a distinct reality from what are you going to do with your apology?
What am I going to do with my apology? It's not a form of retribution or punishment for me to offer appropriate proportionate amends to the people who I've negatively impacted or hurt.
And if that indeed is what is being conveyed by the end of this film, of course, it's extraordinary and it's deeply moving. I'm curious about why I felt that it wasn't doing that and I look forward to seeing it again.
Well, that's great.
You've always, you know, the tables have turned, you used to refer to me as your spiritual director and your ethical guide, but I feel like there's been an old switcheroo here. I have so much left to learn. I have so much left to learn.
We haven't even mentioned the fact that this did take me out of the picture.
I'm watching the movie and I'm going, hey, wait a minute. Is that Tim Burns? Yes, it is Johnny the Boy who gets killed horrifically with a saw in Mad Max is in this movie and he looks great.
So I'm really happy for him. Also this-
I want to ask you two things. Talk about the two lead performances. Talk about the two lead performances.
I've already said what I think about Chris Hemsworth, I'll say Anya Taylor-Joy, you get the sense that this is one of those performances that was as hard to give as the arc of the character itself was to live. This is an ordeal and she's great.
She's great. She's got a very serious face. A lot is demanded of her physically in this film.
And I believe that Anya Taylor-Joy grows up to be Shirley Smenthron in this film, but what did you think of those two set of performances?
Well, first of all, okay, first Chris Hemsworth to get that out of the way, as he demonstrated in the Marvel movies, regardless how you feel about those.
Did you just say events?
I did. Is that a word?
It is. Yes. It's certainly more of a word than phantasmagorilia.
Ask your doctor if events is right for you.
So, the thing is, is that Chris, he's an hysterical.
He's brilliant.
Well, at one point, they come across a warboy wandering in the desert. Again, this is slapstick, right? He's got like an arrow in his head, it's like something out of Blazing Saddles.
And Hemsworth asks, hey, like, where are you from? And the warboy goes, I'm from the Citadel. And it cuts, they don't leave a beat.
Right away, Chris Hemsworth goes, the Waterdale? He's never heard the word Citadel before. And then in the next scene, he's talking as if he was versed to this magnificent Citadel, you know, as if it's something that he's very familiar with.
So he's fantastic. I was worried the fake nose was going to bother me. Just like when I, as a kid, I loved Citizen Kane.
But then when I saw Citizen Kane as an adult, I realized that Orson Welles is wearing a fake nose all through the film. And it really bothers me when I watch Citizen Kane now.
And Chris Hemsworth is wearing what I can only call a confidential report slash Mr. Arkadin nose. That's Orson Welles.
Orson Welles, you ever see that photograph? He had a box of fake noses that he would bring out depending on his vibe for a particular film. But he is fantastic.
Now, the Anna Taylor Joy thing kind of reminds me, it makes me think of George Miller as Cameron, James Cameron as someone who's really inventive when it comes to technology.
Because I have never seen a transformation from two different actors, from the actress who plays a child to Anna Taylor Joy seems so seamless.
And Anna Taylor Joy said in an interview recently and, you know, you always got to take these as a grain of salt because, you know, they don't necessarily privy the actors, you know, in front of the camera, privy to what's going on behind the scenes,
that Miller digitally morphed to differing degrees as the film progresses, the young actor to her. So early on, you had like 20% Anna Taylor Joy and they were just kept, they kept changing the young actress's face.
Now, if that's true, I did notice it, all I noticed is how seamless it was. And this is interesting because the film is like Superman, Richard Donahue's Superman from what, 1978? We don't see Anna Taylor Joy for an hour.
Were you surprised by that?
Yeah, I was. I was. I actually, there were moments when I was thinking that first hour, oh, that's her, that's her.
No, no, it's not her.
I mean, because of this digital trickery, right? So I thought Anna Taylor Joy was great. And who's the actress who played young Anna Taylor Joy?
You know, it's Anya.
It's Anya Taylor Joy.
I know now. Thank you for that. See, you still are my mentor and spiritual guru.
At least her name's not Scrotus.
I don't know how to pronounce this name, but it looks like A'Lyla Brown, A'Lyla Brown, the young imperator for Furiosa. Should the Film Talk get an imperator? Can we have our own imperator?
Would you say someone that works with this?
I think imperators do a little bit more than work with you.
They drive to Gaston to get the supplies.
Can I just hear a huge shout out to actor, I don't talk about someone else whose name we don't know how to pronounce, Goran Klout, Klout, Klapped, as the Octoboss, because he looks just like Bruce Spence.
Bruce Spence is the guy that was the autodriver pilot in Mad Max 2, and then he's a fixed wing pilot in Mad Max 3 Beyond Thunderdome, and it's like he's different characters, and now a version of him shows up again as the Octoboss paragliding.
It's wonderful.
I think George Miller is just, he's just having family reunions and getting Warner Brothers to pay for it. And more power to you, sir, more power to you, sir.
Do watch, do watch Fury Road, the Black and Chrome edition, and I am assuming that Furiosa will be, I guess you call it, re-released in a few months in a Black and Chrome edition, just as Fury Road was.
It would be a shame if, I'm sure that will happen.
I'm going to disagree with you. I don't think it is. In fact, I think he's going to turn his attentions.
Apparently, he's already trying to prep a new Tom Hardy Mad Max movie. Here's a pitch for you. Regina King.
Regina King is Auntie Entity in Before Thunderdome, The Rise of Auntie, right? She could also direct. I'd see it.
Here's the tagline. Two men enter. One woman leaves before Thunderdome.
No?
I don't have certainty. I don't have certainty about that idea any more than I have certainty about the last segment of the film itself. But I'll tell you this.
Yes, sir.
Rare is the moment where I am more persuaded to see something again, feeling like I hadn't understood it the first time around.
So I thank you.
Well, that's why I'm here. And I'm also here for you, dear listeners. Don't forget, you can go to our Patreon page, patreon.com/ The Film Talk.
We're also on the Facebook. We got the bonus episodes. Oh, don't forget about that Indiana Jones episode, The Dial of Destiny that Gareth apparently did not know.
Have we released?
Have we released that episode?
Yes, it's a bonus episode. There's different tiers with the Patrons. So if you're a member of the...
There's so many tiers with TFT.
Like the tier at the end of Dementus.
Tears of joy.
Tears of joy.
The tear of joy seeing the peach that he could give back.
Tear of Dementus.
Can I just say about the Dementus? I had a smile on my face every time I saw Chris Hemsworth driving around in his chariot of motorcycles.
Yes. It was a good chariot.
I mean, come on, man. That's cinema right there.
Dear listener, this has been... This has certainly been a curiosity for me. I promise I'll report back in when I see the film again.
Once I reinterpret Dementis' face. We would love to hear from you. We'd love to hear from you and have some conversation with you.
How does the listener get in touch with us? Jett, how does the listener get in touch with us?
Can we rebrand the shirt to Curiosa, a Film Talk Saga? They can...
A Film Talk Saga.
They can email us if they want to at info at filmtalk.com. And they can also comment on our Facebook page. Just look for the Film Talk.
We're on Patreon. They can also leave us a message on, what is it, SpeakerPipe. That link is on our Patreon.
Special thanks to the folks that said... We put a little clip on, I think the Facebook page, maybe Patreon, saying that it made their day. We had hard problems, dear listeners, getting through our Rolling Thunder.
Dabney Coleman, appreciation. You said we had hard problems? We had hard problems.
That's the Wigovie. No, no, no, no. I'm just joking.
No medical advice. We had problems getting through, laughing, and for some reason, I thought I'd put a couple minutes online, but thank you all for watching.
You also managed, in that video, coincidentally, I'm sure this wasn't strategic, in that video, I look blurry and I'm at a terrible angle.
You're looking up at me like an Easter Island statue, whereas you look like a CNN correspondent with a professional video set up with the bookcases behind you, the angle's all perfect, a lovely kind of matte finish on your forehead, and the contrast,
Well, there's always room for improvement, isn't there?
That's one reason why I think we do the show. Thank you so much. I appreciate your thoughts.
I really do, Gareth. I know we disagreed possible. I guess the idea is we both have to see it again.
I know people are talking about the box office not being great for Furiosa.
So what's going to happen if you see it again and this time you think I was right?
We will never speak of it. Folks, I love doing the show. I hope Gareth does too.
Thank you so much for listening. I've been Jett Loe.
I've been Gareth Higgins. And whatever you do between now and the next episode, let's all move beyond vengeance. We'll keep talking next time.