| Ben Jarman |
Threads plays at the Trylon Cinema on Saturday, June 7th, and Sunday, June 8th as part of Bleak Week. For tickets, showtimes, and other series information, visit trylon.org.
Nobody is surprised when it happens; it’s been coming for a long time, before written history. One argument turns into conflict after conflict. Sometimes the conflicts bring us to the brink, but never over the edge. The scholars warn and the media antagonize our leaders. Just like that first argument all those years ago, both sides try to find peaceful resolution. But this time is different; nothing is solved. It’s just a day just like the last. Grocery shopping, carpools to school and work, and babies born. Then the bombs, mushrooming over the skyline. There is shock, disbelief, fear, and pain. If anyone gets out of this, things might be worse than this burning sensation. Dry wells, zero shelter, a cancer. The scholars and media and leaders are gone; no infrastructure. What happens next is pure fiction.
Here lies the movie Threads; it’s not about the carnage that follows, but the buildup or the “why” apocalypse happens. Fiction usually skips the buildup to doomsday, however in this case, the initial doom is more horrifying than the aftermath. Threads shows up in 1984, three years after George Miller’s hit, The Road Warrior. A lot of the success of Miller’s film stems from the meticulously choreographed action scenes, but the other factor that drove the audience comes from the images of a failed Earth. Humans like to see wicked futures and the suffering of others, but they don’t want to live it. We also want to know how Mad Max’s world come to be. There are clues in the original Mad Max and a brief introduction at the beginning of The Road Warrior, but the reasons that lead to the apocalypse in that world are vague. Many Road Warrior rip-off movies arrived after 1981 to capitalize on the film’s success, however, no movie touched on the origins of the apocalyptic Earth like Threads. Threads provides connective tissue that could explain the jolting time jump between Mad Max and The Road Warrior, making the three films a trilogy.
The Mad Max property isn’t the first piece of fiction to visualize the apocalypse, but it is one of the few able to capture the attention of audiences through the years. To begin, the series lets everyone know the events in the films take place “A few years from now… .” Right away we know the action is happening beyond the present, but not by far; we can recognize many things in Mad Max, but some things in the world are starting to look sour. There is a heavily updated road sign counting highway fatalities. Covered in vines, the Hall of Justice sign at the police station is rusting away, the letter “u” about to dangle to the ground. From this come the maniacal biker gangs. With little to no law, the disenfranchised find meaning in the lack of infrastructure through theft, rape, assault, and murder. If there is nothing within grasp as the world fails, many will find camaraderie as outlaws. Those who do fight back, like Max, fight with the same violent outlaw spirit because the courts no longer work. In the end, Max pursues the remaining gang members to an off-limits part of the countryside. Signs ominously warn him to stay out, but he is not phased when there is nothing left to lose. What happened to the land? Is it polluted with waste, signaling another sign of the end? This is a world we recognize, but not completely.
Chronologically, Threads happens next. Now, instead of watching the world deteriorate from the countryside, Threads shows the fall of humanity in a bustling city. Abstractly, the film begins with a close-up of a spider spinning a web. The threads move outwards and split, creating different pathways. Everything is somehow connected, and if one part of this infrastructure fails, other parts of the web fail. We saw the remains of the police crumble in Mad Max, leading to chaos in the streets. In Threads, we see other ways connections break. Early on, protesters take to the streets, marching for peace and the end of nuclear escalation. Several scenes later, these protesters are censored by the government to avoid general panic and violence. By repressing free speech the government is covering up the actions that are really taking place, making citizens less aware of the nuclear risk ahead. International trade ceases, leading to a lack of essentials in stores. Looting begins just like we saw in Mad Max, bringing humans one step closer to extinction.
Then the bomb drops in Threads. The film cuts between different characters previously established reacting to the moment with the growing explosion. A mother is scarred by the intense light, her son buried under his home. Buildings explode, firing concrete shrapnel at pedestrians hunting for cover. Bodies burn on sidewalks. Threads is establishing our needs as humans and ripping the connections apart. Not everyone believed the day would come, but when it did, all threads separated. Even if the military was warned, a bomb could still slip by, seeing as though lines of communication were already stressed in the basement headquarters. Mad Max never gets to this point, but it didn’t need to; Mad Max implied it was coming soon, which is part of the anxiety the film produces.
Threads ends with failed attempts to return society to normal. Looting continues, but this time the remaining law enforcement officers shoot desperate citizens. The medical system is overwhelmed due to the large number of survivors who are beyond saving. Time passes as everyone from nameless babies to world leaders die of poisoning and disease. “Back to survival of the fittest I suppose,” states one of the few people of power left. Anyone that can rebuild can eat what remains and anyone that can’t help dies. Reconstruction proves impossible with nuclear winter blocking out the sun. Any children born into the world are not healthy. This aligns with the future in The Road Warrior as Max and the rest of the fittest fight for survival in a post-war wasteland.
This new trilogy with Threads as the second film ends back with Max in The Road Warrior. The film opens with black and white images and a voiceover covering what’s happened between the first film and now; Threads is the feature-length version of these images. Max and a few others survived doomsday, but these few survive by the skin of their teeth. There is nothing but an endless desert, anything green turned to dust. These deserts are ruled by savage gangs, led by Lord Humungus, a leader scarred by radiation (maybe this is the baby at the end of Threads). Gasoline is the most wanted commodity because it is no longer manufactured, and it can supposedly help anyone find an oasis untouched by the wars. Conflict over this gasoline continues just as wars before the bomb did, but there is hope in The Road Warrior. After some struggle, Max becomes hell bent on stopping Humungus and attempts to help all with hope. This might be the one part of this film that is not realistic after watching the bleakness of Threads.
The time gap between Mad Max and The Road Warrior leaves a lot up to the imagination. There are hints of the future in Mad Max, and the opening of The Road Warrior vaguely summarizes what happened, but audiences can only fantasize about the effects of all-out nuclear war until the release of Threads in 1984. Using the word “fantasize” feels crass, but part of the reason people love The Road Warrior is due to the heroics Max embodies in a completely obliterated world. There is entertainment, watching Mel Gibson suffer in these conditions, and then rise. In reality, there is no rising up after a nuclear war. Threads’s ending scenes prove this. Perhaps if Max really is that resilient, he would survive, and that is why we champion him.
Edited by Finn Odum