Wednesday 20 May 2015

Road Warrior Backwash

Mad Max: Fury Road is as great an adventure scenario and visual production as everyone says it is. But did it ever show out the concept of backwash: when an idea developed in one medium (say, fantasy literature) incubates andmutates in a derivative medium (say, roleplaying games)  until the mutant breed becomes the new standard and washes back into the originating medium.

The derivative medium is, as others have pointed out, Games Workshop's 40K and in particular its Orks and their Gorkamorka subgame, spawned from the unholy union of The Road Warrior and football hooligans. But damned if by parallel evolution or homage over 35 years, George Miller hasn't returned the dividend in the form of tribal skinheads called Warboys (or is it Warboyz?) and even a musician stand.

Now you get it.
Indeed, the way 80's and 90's franchises are clawing out of their shallow graves these days, I'm wondering if the keepers of the Aliens world wouldn't do well to inject a little Space Hulk and undo their last few regrettable outings.

The "Citadel": just me overreading, or a really high pitched dog whistle for nerds?

6 comments:

  1. Would love to see "Aliens: Dark Future" in which the 'hulk' of an ancient colony vessel comes floating into some sort of neo-feudal hard-luck planet, and they put out the call to the Terran Hegemon (or whatever) which shows up with a ship full of weird bio-engineered space solider types (described as Crusaders or whatever by the feckless space peons of planet 1066) who invade the hulk wearing massive suits of baroque space armor and face the Aliens. Add some cold stasis Ripley Clones if you must, or maybe just make the space knight boss a Ripley Clone (Sigorney Weaver would make an awesome Ultramarine Chapter Master and it would through the 40K fanboys into conniptions).

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    1. So, fast forward 1000 years and reveal the link-up between Aliens and Dune?

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  2. I've not seen Fury Road yet, but when I saw the 'Noize Warrior' on the front of the post-apocalyptic Battlewagon I figured that surely someone involved in that had at least read 40K stuff.

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  3. The noise warrior seemed more an evolution of the huge car mounted speaker stand Humongous(?) had in the second movie.

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    1. There's a fair bit of visual homeage of thiings in the earlier films. The main villain is both Toe Cutter and Lord Humungous. To Noise warrior and the drummers are definetly supposed to remind the viewer of Humnuogous and his crew and show how the people of citadel have reduced themselves to the state of property in service of their elites.

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