Geoffrey Croker is a New Zealander who’s restoring a 1978 Land Rover for some reason or another. He is afflicted with the most delightful accent, but you can almost understand what he’s saying most of the time, which is a real plus. He’s offering more than the usual amount of charm and busted knuckles than you’ll find on the typical car salvage video. From time to time, he veers into the brilliant end of the repair spectrum, like the 20:30 mark where he fabricates tapered guide blocks to get the oil seals past the sharp edges of the engine block unscathed. Good on ye, mate, or something.
My life fades. The vision dims. All that remains are memories. I remember a time of chaos — ruined dreams — this wasted land. But most of all, I remember The Road Warrior. The man we called “Mario.” To understand who he was, you have to go back to another time… when the world was powered by the black fuel — and the desert sprouted great cities of pipe and steel. Gone now –swept away. For reasons long forgotten, two mighty warrior tribes went to war, and touched off a blaze which engulfed them all.
They remade Arthur with Russell Brand. They’ll remake Planet of the Apes on a bi-monthly schedule, until eventually they’ll be flying monkeys called up by a witch. There’s another Batman every half-hour, all of them bad, because all Batman anything sucks. They remade The Pink Panther, which is like eating leftovers from a meal you never ate. They remade Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner with Ashton Kutcher, for crissakes.
Remakes suck. They’re wrong and stupid. Do something new and creative. Maybe on the next version of Titanic, you equip it with deck guns and fire broadsides at the icebergs. That would be pretty sweet, but can’t you simply make a movie about the Lusitania instead? Sink something fresh. So let’s all of us agree. No more remakes!
Except Mad Max. They should remake that one. They should remake it while working on the script for the next one. They should have a line of succession like they do for royalty, but it’s just producers for Mad Max movies. When one gets blowed up real good while sitting in one of those deck chairs too close to the splosions, another one is immediately crowned and gets to work. Generally producers don’t get blown up on movie sets, because they hang around offices and let the directors sit around waiting for the actors to sober up enough to mumble their lines; but the Mad Max producer was there to complain to the director that he wasn’t spending enough money, and didn’t have enough splosions and hot rod races in the movie, and he better get cracking because there are 400 directors in line behind him that will have so many explosions they’ll make Michael Bay look like Woody Allen.
I need that level of commitment. I need a movie about a man that understands the value of gasoline, and uses it for everything, including cologne. I need Mad Max.