Mad Max 2 (The Road Warrior) (1981)
AUSTRALIA --- science fiction

Dir: George Miller

Has humanity ever been optimistic of the future? My answer is a resounding NO. Utopian futures in all sparks of imagination has never really been explored in literature, film, or even religious beliefs. Most religions don't view this earth as a place that can be redeemed. Most revolutionaries and dictators with Utopian ideologies were bent on bringing their reigns about through devastation. Wherever a idealistic future is depicted  their is still another darker side to it. Logically speaking, for every utopia must be a dystopia for someone. In the "Mad Max" series, the only ones enjoying the desolate future are the ones of complete moral decay.

Quite possibly one of cinemas very best sequels, writer/ director George Miller's "The Road Warrior" doesn't just repeat the same old story from the original film, it extrapolates on the theme of the dystopian future that eventually deteriorates into a completely blasted wasteland. In the previous film, "Mad Max", we had a glimpse into an uncertain future that clearly wasn't very comely, and was in such disrepair our hero became something of an anti-hero just to survive. Now catching up with him after the horrific life-altering events of the last film, we find Max Rockatansky a lone drifter and a shadow of the man he was. His only companions is a loyal Shepherd dog (I believe may have been the puppy from the last film), a two-gauge sawed-off shotgun, and of course his suped-up Interceptor which is no longer the shiny black vehicle of the last film but a dusty sun-bleached vehicle that looks just as worn-out as its owner. He isn't alone for too long, however, as his ever-present biker adversaries appear very early on in the film, and are just as much a threat as they were in the last film.

He has a very short confrontation with the biker gang when he scavenges some fuel from a wrecked vehicle, but the encounter ends in peace. To add to the collection of allies, the film throws in another player. When Max spots a one-man gyro copter on the side of the road, he approaches it in hopes of siphoning some fuel. A quirky drifter (played by veteran Australian character actor Bruce Spence) gets the drop on him, but Max quickly turns the tables. The gyro captain reveals that he knows where to find an entire refinery of gasoline in a fortified compound of men and women fighting of the biker gangs. Max agrees to let him live if he leads him to the compound. When they arrive on a mountaintop overlooking the makeshift fort held up with around thirty individuals, Max stakes out the area to observe an opportune time to get to the oil without alerting the gangs. He and the gyro captain witness the biker gang ruthlessly kill some of the inhabitants who tried to escape, Max heads out to save just one as his entry into the compound. They obviously distrust him and see him as a threat, until the marauders and their muscles-bound leader Humongous gives them an ultimatum. Max sees the makeshift community, which includes a resourceful burrowing feral child with a razor-sharp boomerang could use some assistance. He offers to help the group in exchange for a full tank of gas for his car and whatever he can haul with him.

He goes on a night-bound mission to get them a truck to haul an oil tanker out of the compound, and meets up with the gyro copter captain again. On a very dangerous and breakneck drive back to the compound, due to him being atacked by the marauders just miles within destination, Max makes good on his deal. He then later goes back on the road on his lonesome, and is once again attacked by Humungous' ruthless biker gang, destroying his car, and leaving him for dead in a scene which mirrors the ending of the first film complete with a biker gang member adorned in a highway police uniform. The gyro captain rescues him, and takes him back to the compound, where they come up with a last ditch effort with their gasoline, and Max comes in as a good Samaritan one last time.

In this film, Mad Max becomes more of a mythic hero than a one-dimensional vengeance seeking man above the law. The law clearly has failed him, and in this film, George Miller clearly takes his cues from American Westerns such as "Shane", "Fort Apache", and of course "Fistful of Dollars" and it's Samurai progenitor "Yojimbo". No such flavor is wasted in this film, as Miller raises the mythic level by adding inspiration from Joseph Campbell's "Hero With A Thousand Faces" (a book Miller says he read between filming Mad Max and this film). Multiple storytelling techniques are added to make the character of Max Rockatansky much more fleshed out, if by only fleshing out the characters surounding him such as the gyro captain, the feral child, and the community within the compound. George Miller continued his "Mad Max" trilogy with "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome", which concentrated specifically on what the first two films had been hinting at, the future is in the children.

Though, the entire trilogy has one giant flaw in the fact they have nary a hint of Aborignines. Oh sure, the children in the third film even look like they're painted to be Aborigine, but they are not. So, it makes you look at the films with another eye, in wondering if the film is about the fears and regrets of Anglo-Colonization rather than a fear of nuclear destruction as other films. Interestingly enough, John Carpenter's "Escape From New York" was released the same year, but "The Road Warrior" kinda had a chance to be about more than that. In one of the undercurrent themes of the film, Max represents a lone anti-hero, cynical enough to not really want to get involved in the last vestiges of what appears like the human race or a decent community. On the outside is everything that goes against community; men on motorcycles (since "The Wild One" and "Easy Rider" a symbol of rebellion), men with men as sexual partners (homosexuality, this was actually brought out in the first film but has even been alluded to more bluntly in copycat films like "Warriors of the Wasteland"), and the lack of starvation not so much of food but gasoline, (the precious juice as the narrator once put it), which fuels our crutch of machines. Miller is supposed to return to the Mad Max universe with "Mad Max: Fury Road", which we will wait and see what Max will get into this time.

Сталкер (Stalker) (1979)

RUSSIA --- science fiction

Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1979 science fiction film, “Stalker”, is based on a novella called “Roadside Picnic” written by sci-fi Russian novelists Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. The original story deals with aliens having visited earth and left behind various equipment and such of advanced technological nature. The places these things reside in have become danger zones, as some are affected by the alien’s visitation. People have begun straggling around the areas around the “Zone” and some venture within illegally to recover these alien artifacts; they are called “Stalkers”. One in particular is called the “golden sphere”, which is rumored to be able to grant anyone his or her greatest desires.

The film adaptation changes things a little, as it follows three men in search of a room that will grant their greatest wishes. They are led by a “stalker”, one who illegally traverses the “Zone” on a regular basis and hires himself out as an escort to the “room”. He tries to provide for his wife and child named Monkey who has no legs. We meet the “stalker” in his humble abode with his wife and child as he prepares yet another trip into the “Zone”. He is hired by a scientist and a writer to journey into the “Zone” in search of the room, meeting them in a bar and from there they evade the police constantly patrolling the vicinity around the “Zone. After finally crossing into the “Zone”, the “stalker” warns them to be careful and to respect the It, for It can kill them. He throws out metallic nuts to test areas for safety on their journey, when they finally do reach the room the scientist and the writer begin to disbelieve in its power to grant anyone anything, and the scientist reveals he plans to destroy it with a bomb for the simple logic that if it can will anyone their greatest desires, then in the wrong hands it would be detrimental to all of mankind. The writer agrees with the scientists, but the “stalker” tries to stop them, for the “Zone” and the room itself are literally all he has in the world to live for. It is his livelihood. In the end, they decide to leave it alone.

Like any Tarkovsky film, this is a very long drawn out sci-fi epic, not suited for impatient audiences. The film remains a prophetic sci-fi cautionary tale for Russian society, as it predates the Chernobyl disaster by about seven years. Tarkovsky is a master craftsman of cinema, as he doesn’t just make films, he makes thought-provoking works of art. The first time it was filmed the original negatives were destroyed in a lab, so the whole film was shot all over again. It features amazing poetic fluid shots of desolate landscapes, the most unsanitary water ever to be photographed, and gritty sepia-toned passes into the post-apocalyptic world outside of the “Zone”. He captures a distant life of contemporary society with songs like “Ode to Joy” billowing from a passing train.

There aren’t actually any conclusive science fiction ideas in the film like alien visitors, but you are left, as the director wants to leave you, questioning whether it was ever real or not. Andrei Tarkovsky had a recurring theme in his films that show men searching for God or meaning of life. With that rationale, you can see perhaps what his message with this film was. As I look at it, it is layered to mean many things to many different people, but the simplest approach is to see the “stalker” as a believer in faith, and the writer and scientist as many of us in society are cruel realists too much in this world. As the ending may seem to prove, even a little beacon of hope remains vitally important.

Delicatessen (1991)

FRANCE --- science fiction


Dir: Marc Caro, Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Quirky as quirky gets. This is the debut film for two very interesting French directors Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Who, together, made some visually stunning science fiction and fantasy films, which eventually lead to their collaboration on the follow-up "La Cité des Enfants Perdus" (City of Lost Children). Having said that, it all began here with this black comedy full of whimsy, cartoonish verve, and a matter-of-fact macabre pessimism peppered throughout. Even that description is unable to do the film justice.

Taking place in an undisclosed post-apocalyptic future where the currency is divided among seeds, grain, and other food, the tale properly begins with a man named Louison (director pet Dominique Pinon) being dropped off in front of an isolated rundown tenement. He inquires about an ad looking for a building handyman with the owner and manager, a butcher of the delicatessen named Clapet. He is quickly blown off. However, Clapet, quickly changes his mind and takes on Louison anyway. From the opening we see that the butcher gets his meat from people, yet interestingly enough, no one seems to notice or ask questions in this dim future world. It's possible everyone (the few tenants left) is just turning a blind eye.

The tenants consist of two guys who make those cow-mooing noisemaker cans, a suicidal wife who devises who believes she is hearing ghosts, the beautiful Ms. Plusse who happens to to be the mistress of Clapet, a married couple with children who the father makes condoms, and a man who has his apartment halfway a swamp complete with frogs and snails. While Louison works, he runs into a neighbor, the unassumingly beautiful daughter of the butcher, Julie Clapet. Louison is also hiding a slight secret about himself. He was apparently a well-known clown who performed with a monkey. In the meantime, a group of covert troglodytes, who in an almost cartoon-like manner, are running around in greasy wet suits through the sewers in search of food.


The film is a basic love story between Louison and Clapet's daughter Julie. Throughout the film, we peek into the lives of the strange tenants of the building, while Louison goes to war with Clapet over his daughter. desI won't go into detail about the plot into this film, because I feel it will kinda ruin the fun little moments that make up the sum of its parts. I will say see this innovative sci-fi French film, and judge for yourself. For me, though, the film kinda comes off with a tinge of Popeye sentiment with Louison standing in for Popeye (Doesn't he look like Robin Williams a little), for Olive Oyl, and her brute butcher father for Bluto. The post-apocalyptic setting is so strange and credible, that you feel a little desensitized to the random bits of violence and threat that come upon the denizens.

"Delicatessen" is a somewhat delightful though quirky film to watch. I have enjoyed Jean-Pierre Jeunet's films so far, and it's always an interesting study to return to the fast and loose early days of his cinematic resume. This film in particular floats through a whimsical Bernard Hermann-esque score and a myriad collection of funny noises and music from that joyous kind of circus music to the a classic scene with bed springs in tune to Hawaiian ukulele music. I would also note that this film has a sense of inspiration from a classic Hong Kong film called "House of 72 Tenants", with a similar story set in contemporary times, but no sci-fi elements at all.

Akira (1988)

JAPAN --- science fiction

Dir: Katsuhiro Ôtomo

After the so-called "Golden Age" of anime struck the U.S. in the 1960's through such television series as "Speed Racer", "Astro Boy", or "Kimba: The White Lion", the imports kinda slowed. Americans still received t.v. series, but we seldom got Japanese animated films. If we did get them, they were re-edited, renamed, and dubbed over to horrendous porportions such as Hayo Miyazaki's "Nausicaa".

When films like Akira (which I might add was much tamer than most stuff) came along in the late 1980's, they completely changed the landscape. Blockbuster Video actually made a section for their flood of Anime films and series being released on VHS. We were getting all the violence and sexually oriented fare that we just didn't get in the resurgent days of Disney-ized America. Film critics also took notice, and Akira was one of the hallmarks.

Based on his award-winning manga series of the same name, director Katsuhiro Otomo adapts his post-apocalyptic tale of a delinquent teen biker gang caught up in a government conspiracy of tampering with psychic research. The film takes place in the year 2019, thirty-one years after a nuclear explosion that causes World War 3. The motorcycle gang known as The Capsules, are in a gang war with a rival biker gang called The Clowns. During a high-speed brawl through the streets and on the highway, best friends Kaneda and Tetsuo get separated. Tetsuo, nearly runs down an elderly looking little boy, and crashes his bike. Surviving the accident, Tetsuo and the boy are spirited away by soldiers in a helicopter. The rest of the Capsules are arrested and taken in for questioning by local authorities.

Meanwhile, in a covert government facility, Tetsuo is found to be very special by a Colonel Shikishima and Dr. Onishi. He happens to possess extra-ordinary mental faculties, above and beyond ESP. They also happen to equate his power to another boy named Akira, who apparently had nearly omnipotent mind powers.

At the police station, Kaneda falls for a girl named Kei who is involved with the terrorist group. The two eventually strike up a friendship that leads to him uncovering what happened with his friend Tetsuo. Testsuo escapes from the government facility to see his girlfriend Kaori and steals Kaneda's bike as they plan to leave the city, but are ambushed by the Clowns, until Kaneda and the gang show up to rescue them. Tetsuo is captured once again by the government, and eventually begins to display and discover his new found powers, to which point he goes power mad. It leaves Kaneda in a situation where only he can attempt to rescue him.

Akira is a complex character study with visually arresting scenes. As an Anime film, it is one of the first more adult ones I've seen which left me with a feeling of something great just happened and I was too young to get it. Anime films have since followed in the tradition to keep up with the mature adult subject matter, even surpassing it in some instances. It, however, remains a visual masterpiece in animation.