It’s rare I get to celebrate a movie milestone twice. However, Mad Max is no ordinary movie.

Last year, I wrote about the 40th Anniversary of Mad Max in all its dystopian-future glory. The original movie premiered in Melbourne, Australia, in 1979. No one really expected it to be great, but then… it was.

It was more than great. It was an iconic statement about Australian culture; from our love of wide-open spaces to the slightly crazed response we have to being told what to do.

Nevertheless, most of my friends in the USA have no idea why I rave about it so much. At first, I put it down to cultural differences, but if that were so, then why were the sequels so popular?

Why? Because the American version of Mad Max is different from the Australian version.

On February 15, 1980, Mad Max was released in U.S. cinemas with the entire Australian voice track overdubbed with American actors. To be fair, the storyline is still the same, and the grittiness of the low-budget film is still something DC can only ever aspire to.

The audio, however, is… to use the Aussie vernacular, bloody awful.

(There are a few videos on YouTube that compare the two versions, so if you’re not familiar with the difference, take a look here.)

Thus, my double anniversary celebration. For me, and for many Mad Max fans, they are two different movies. It may seem like a minor detail, but the integral “Australianess” of the film loses something when you replace the Australian accent and lingo.

In truth, no one has ever understood why an English-speaking film needed to be dubbed for an English-speaking audience. There is the usual lame excuse of “Aussie accents might be a bit thick for sensitive North American ears,” and that same racist view still applies when I see my local news service adding subtitles for the English-speaking people from overseas.

The good news is that film production and distribution have improved over the last 40 years, and that is definitely a milestone to celebrate. When Parasite won Best Picture at the recent Academy Awards, it smashed the window of language and culture, proving audiences are capable of far more than handing over a wad of cash to whatever Vanilla-Coke-and-popcorn you are offering us.

Subtitles are not scary and overdubbing voices is not necessary.

When the Mad Max franchise was reborn in 2015, Fury Road was lauded as one of the best films of the year (and potentially of the decade). New fans were drawn to the guitar flame while old-school fans were blown away by the continuity in George Miller’s vision (no matter how bleak it seemed).

It was weird seeing that popularity when there was so much apathy for the original. Looking back, I can now understand why. If my first offering of Mad Max had been the U.S. version, I probably would have turned away too. And yet, it prevailed. In spite of the dubbing, it still joined in the call for a franchise. It still has its place on Fury Road.

While we wait for more details about Miller’s upcoming fifth installment, Mad Max: The Wasteland, I’m going to keep my Mad Max celebrations going. If U.S. audiences can overcome the Americanized 1980 version and help build the franchise that gave us Fury Road, then I have hope for our survival in any dystopian future.

And maybe we’ll have a few more Aussie voices in the cast, just for good measure.