Image by Frank Browning
The Road Warrior (Mad Max 2)
Written by: Jesse Gable
Blogger: Mr. Gable's Reality
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The Road Warrior tells the tale of Max and his life in post apocalyptic Earth. The world is a dried up wasteland and the only people with any sort of power are the people that control the oil. The only people that have survived are the people with oil. Oil gives you the power of mobility, and in the world of Mad Max: mobility is the key to survival.
So the movie starts with Max, low on fuel, high on ass kicking. He comes upon a road leech whom he promptly whips ass upon but not before he is told about a giant tanker filled with fuel. Max decides to check it out. They climb up a small mountain and take a night to check out the situation. There is a small…village, you could say…in the middle of nowhere. It’s an oil drill surrounded by a giant wall and protected with flame throwers and a small band of people. (A security system I am currently saving my money to purchase) Unfortunately, there is a gang of murderers trying to get in and take the fuel for themselves. They give these people 1 day to clear out or there will be a whole heaping pile of hell about to come down on them.
Max then joins them with the sole intention of getting himself fuel. He helps them fend off the gang, he drives a bunch of awesome vehicles really fast, and so much great things happen from that point on.
What I enjoyed most about this movie is the directing. I really got into it. This movie has an Evil Dead cult type direction to it. Let’s see if I can try to explain that. You look at the things in this movie and you just know they have tight pockets. The budget is tight but somehow the director manages to make it seem larger than it is. Like Sam Raimi. He can make an abandoned cabin in the woods seem like it’s the final showdown at Mount Doom . All this movie is, is a bunch of cars, a stretch of highway, and a village in the middle of nowhere. But it FEELS bigger.
The musical score adds a lot to this feel too. I don’t know that much about music, I honestly don’t care for it that much, but the low budgetedness of it tied in with the framework of the camera just blows this movie out of the water. It’s really basic. The music is quite simple but mixed in with close ups of cars speeding down the highway, cars pinballing off tanker trucks, and close ups of (young and mostly sane) Mel Gibson, it’s just incredible.
The stunts. There are so many crazy stunts performed in this film. Like this one where a biker hits another vehicle and the stunt guy flies off ass over teakettle. Awesome. (I was reading that was an accident…he was actually just supposed to fly over the car superman style but he hit it wrong and flew the way he did on accident. He survived with a broken arm….worth it) So, if you’re into cars exploding, launching off ramps, being torn apart, run over by tanker trucks, mangled and thrown about the road (and who doesn’t?) then this movie is for you. The sheer amount of destruction has to be legendary. And they look really cool. All the cars are outfitted with spikes and weapons and all kinds of awesome things. Twisted Metal cars have nothing on these bad boys.
I love movies like this. Movies that are larger than they should be. Movies that take one simple storyline and follow through with it. (Max lives in the post apocalypse, he needs oil. These people have the oil, he’s going to help them so he can have some in return) If this would have been made now, there would have been more explanation of the rest of the world. They would explain everything. They would TRY to make it bigger than it is…and that’s why it would suck. This movie keeps its focus on these people in this world. They set up the world they live in and it really feels like this world exists. It makes sense. It’s not absurd or ridiculous…it just makes sense.
What you could call ridiculous, if you wanted to call something ridiculous, is the costumes. HAHAHA I love the 80s. All the bad guys are dressed in S&M, football gear, or some manor of the two. Maybe that doesn’t make an entirely large amount of sense…but who cares. They look BADASS, crazy, people you generally do no want to fuck with and that’s really the point.
Take the leader of the bad guys for example: LORD HUMONGUS. He’s basically naked aside from thin straps of leather holding together what appears to be a dead rabbit over his crotch and then lovingly placed over his face is a stainless steel hockey mask. (OH FUCK YES THIS GUY IS AWESOME.) But you’d think he’d be a really rough and tough guy, someone you definitely don’t want to start a fist fight with but he’s logical, reasonable, UNDERSTANDABLE. He allows the people with the oil to clear out before they come and kill them all. He has a heart. He speaks eloquently. Always thinking ahead. But the one guy he didn’t take into account…Mad Max.
I’d like to talk about the character Max for a moment. I love how he’s portrayed in this movie. I don’t know him. I don’t remember anything about the first movie so I don’t really know his past. (Beyond a brief recap at the beginning of the movie, which I promptly forgot completely after the opening credits) I think The Road Warrior is a pretty great standalone film because of the way they portray him. He is a rogue, a drifter, a man out for himself. His motivations are all headed towards one goal: His own survival. He captures the road leech (whom is actually a gyro pilot) because he needs oil. He helps the people in the village because they need to defend their oil and in return they will give him all the oil he needs to survive for awhile. There is only one point in this movie that he does something that isn’t for himself.
Let me lay it out for you. Max has his oil. He gets in his car and leaves. On his way out he runs into the bad guys and they wreck his car, kill his dog, and beat him up pretty bad. In his defense, he had to blow up his car. The people of the village come and save him. When he wakes up, he tells them that he wants to drive the tanker truck. (Earlier in the film, they had decided that they are leaving for a better place…to get away from the bad guys. So they loaded up a tanker with oil and they need to get out of there…unfortunately, they don’t know how to drive the tanker as well as Max)
Now, you can really spend some time interpreting this if you’d like. I’ll throw out some of my theories. Maybe Max wants to steal the tanker for himself. Maybe Max feels he owes them for coming to his aid. Maybe Max knows this is a suicide mission because of the number of bad guys they are up against and he would rather kill himself then see someone else die instead. Or maybe he just really wants to drive that god damn truck and kill some people.
I like the idea that Max has a death wish and is looking for a way out. It makes sense in a lot of ways. He doesn’t get close to people. He’s a drifter in this crazy world. He’s always in the fast lane looking for a way out. So the tanker makes perfect sense that he would climb aboard and go out in a blaze of glory. But…I prefer to see him as an honorable guy. Maybe he does have a death wish but making that decision to help them I felt was based off a sense of honor. He knows they wouldn’t be as good as him at driving the tanker so he tells them that he’ll do it. If he dies, he dies. But I think he really felt a debt to them and wanted to repay them for that. But that’s me.
I won’t spoil the ending for you. I had it spoiled for me and it would have been pretty mindblowing and awesome but it was kinda, meh, after knowing what happened. But what I will say is that it does end with Max, alone, and on the highway back to the only life he knows.
The way it should be.
I can’t really explain anymore how amazing this movie is and how much it affected me. I had really put this movie off for a long time and it wasn’t until recently that I gave it a watch and I really hate myself for that. The Road Warrior is many things and even though it doesn’t look like it on the surface, it can be viewed through so many eyes. Action, Post Apocalypse, A Rising Hero, 80’s Cheese, A ‘How the Grinch Stole Christmas’ interpretation, or as I like to think of it…timeless.
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