Mad Max 2

• (Released as The Road Warrior in the US)
• Directed by George Miller
• December 24, 1981 (Australia) / May 21, 1982 (US)

“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 ‘Max.’ 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. Without fuel they were nothing. They’d built a house of straw. The thundering machines sputtered and stopped. Their leaders talked and talked and talked. But nothing could stem the avalanche. Their world crumbled. The cities exploded. A whirlwind of looting, a firestorm of fear. Men began to feed on men. On the roads it was a white line nightmare. Only those mobile enough to scavenge, brutal enough to pillage would survive. The gangs took over the highways, ready to wage war for a tank of juice. And in this maelstrom of decay, ordinary men were battered and smashed…men like Max…the warrior Max. In the roar of an engine, he lost everything…and became a shell of a man…a burnt-out, desolate man, a man haunted by the demons of his past, a man who wandered out into the wasteland. And it was here, in this blighted place, that he learned to live again.”

In the post-apocalyptic Australian future, a cynical drifter helps a gasoline rich settlement escape a group of bandits.

The Road Warrior is the movie that set the template we are all familiar with in not only a Mad Max film but in the look and feel of a post-apocalyptic movie. It is a world of scavengers and gas guzzling vehicles. And heavy use of black leather. I love the Mad Max films. They are a unique vision of a devastated future but not without things fans can lovingly poke at.

We get a little bit more information on what’s going on with the world and how things came to the state they are. At least, as much as the narrator can remember. Two groups (implied to be the United States and the Soviet Union given the era) went to war and the ensuing decimation cut off fuel supplies which led to the fall of civilization. There is perhaps an environmental message of getting off gasoline in those opening words.

We find “Mad” Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson) barely eking out an existence and surviving on whatever scraps he can find. It is a brutal place with scarce resources where the fight for survival occurs on mostly on the open road.

And the resources are clearly scarce. Clothing is whatever can be found. Aside from eating dogfood, Max wears what he ended the last film with as well as shoulder pads (presumably as armor for protection). The Gyro Captain (Bruce Spence) wears raggedy long johns. And the marauders that are the threat of the story stopped by an S&M shop for their gear.

Seriously though, resources are hard to come by here. They don’t magically pull anything out of their butts but rather what they need is laid out and they make the most of it. The truck they find isn’t perfect. Their weapons aren’t fantastic.

As an adult, I can’t help but notice that the costuming of the bad guys is very leathery. I’m not sure what was going on there, but I’m left with the feeling this was some kind of fetish thing either on the parts of the characters or in someone’s thinking. Do you see a woman in that group?

The Road Warrior would’ve been a generic action film if it was just two sides facing off, but there is more here. In the last film, Max lost his humanity. In this film, he gains it back by finding himself having to help the settlers at the refinery. The story touches on mythology as well since it is basically a flashback of a man in his twilight years recalling a larger-than-life character he met in his youth. I guess you could almost consider this a science fiction folktale.

What also helps this stand apart from other films is that elements from Mad Max carry over to here. I am not referring to the car or clothing but rather Max’s leg injury acquired towards the end of the first film. He has a noticeable limp in the story but is not crippled. This is important because in real life without appropriate care that leg wound would not heal properly and Max would, well, have to deal with it. Not many sequels regardless of the environment would hobble the hero to any extent.

And it’s edited unlike any other action film before or since making it looks like no other action film. There are nightmare-ish visuals as the hordes of Humungus torment the settlers. And I didn’t realize it until my most recent viewing, but they actually sped up the footage at points. I have seen this movie dozens of times, and I only now just realized it.

The biggest star in this movie is Mel Gibson, and he wasn’t even a big star at the time. He was just making his mark. But that’s part of the magic of this movie and its effectiveness. There are no huge names. It allows you to better identify with each character. You can place yourself more in their shoes. And even now after Mel Gibson Has become a known commodity (whatever you may think of him) he plays the character not as some powerful hero, but a damaged and broken man which takes Mel Gibson out of it and allows you to feel for the character of Max.

Very few characters get a real name. Some don’t get named at all in this movie but rather identified by their role when the credits come. Aside from Bruce Spence as The Gyro Captain there is Mike Preston as settlement leader Pappagallo (a parrot), Emil Minty as The Feral Kid, and Virginia “Pa’u Zotoh Zhaan” Hey as Warrior Woman on the settlers’ side. On that of the marauders we have Kjell Nilsson as The Lord Humungus. The Warrior of the Wasteland. The Ayatollah of Rock-and-Rollah. We also get Max Phipps as The Toadie and Vernon “Bennet from Commando” Wells as Wez to name a few without real names.

While an interesting narrative technique it is also a simple way to demonstrate the devolution of the world. They aren’t individuals and people anymore but a lot closer to animals or simply crazy. We do not get a great deal of background on anyone nor is it necessary either. We get enough about them and their thinking to make them characters.

George Miller knows how to make a stripped-down action film. There’s not a lot of dead here. Something is always going on. The narrative just builds and builds to an epic climax. And that chase at the end is unlike anything else. Nearly 11 minutes of adrenaline-soaked action. And no matter how many times you see it you are left with some doubt that the good guys will actually make it out to any extent. That is how well this is done. You are sucked into this fiction each time you watch.

Max regaining his humanity is slow. He’s not a saint by the end, but he’s certainly a better person having helped these people. By the end of Mad Max, he was a shell of a man who had given into the madness that was consuming the world-just like he feared. Here he reconnects a touch with what it means to be a person. Why else would he be okay at the end being stuck with an overturned tanker of dirt?

Mad Max was a failure in the US but a roaring success elsewhere. Most likely because it was dubbed for its American release over fears the Australian accents would not be understood by Americans. Oops! The overseas success spawned this sequel which was renamed The Road Warrior for the US rather than Mad Max 2. Wise move as this sequel became a hit.

Which leads me to something else. This film extends the Mad Max mythology and builds upon Max’s story and his world, but you don’t need to have seen the first film to enjoy it. Every sequel does not need to be intimately connected with its predecessor. It’s a standalone story and that’s just fine.

Max doesn’t save the world. He doesn’t restart civilization with anything he does in this movie. But heroes don’t need to do that. He makes a lifechanging impact on the world of the characters. He keeps their lives going and allows them to start anew. That is just as important. And it’s also something uncommon in action or adventure films. The reflexive thing to do narratively is to have a hero save everything and put things right. That does not happen here. Rather his actions allow things to get better-at the most.

Mad Max 2 or The Road Warrior or whatever you choose to call it is not only a post-apocalyptic action classic but a movie unlike few out there. It’s the hero’s journey as well as a great action film. This is something everyone should see!

“And so began the journey north to safety, to our place in the sun. Among us we found a new leader-the man who came from the sky…the Gyro-Captain. And just as Pappagallo had planned, we traveled far beyond the reach of men on machines. The juice, the precious juice, was hidden in the vehicles. As for me, I grew to manhood, and in the fullness of time, I became the leader…the Chief of the Great Northern Tribe. And the Road Warrior? That was the last we ever saw of him. He lives now…only in my memories.”