The best way to think of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior is if you took the original Mad Max, broke it down into its constituent parts (the Australian Outback, Mel Gibson, car stunts and leather), injected those parts with some experimental growth hormone, watched them all go crazy and then stuck them all back together. That’s a really ham-fisted metaphor, and I apologize – the point I’m trying to make is that The Road Warrior is big, bold and bloody brilliant, making its predecessor look like a weakling left behind in the dust.
The Road Warrior picks up a few years after the events of the original Mad Max. Max (Mel Gibson) is now living up to the branding the title has given him; he’s a broken shell of a man, with no family, no job, no home – nothing but his dog and his Pursuit Special. He spends his time scavenging for the two most crucial resources in the post-apocalyptic Australian outback: food and fuel.
Instantly this film improves upon the first by providing us with some contextual information about why Australia is now a wasteland where people will shoot others dead for a tank of petrol – there was a war. A big one. The opening narration explains that there was an all-consuming war that essentially destroyed society as we know it. I mean, I figured as much when watching the first Mad Max, but it’s nice to have that official confirmation now.
Anyway, Max is busy going about his business, fending off gang members, when he comes across what he assumes is an abandoned gyrocopter. After attempting to steal its fuel and being nearly bitten by a snake, Max meets the Gyro Captain (Bruce Spence), who takes him to the location of an oil refinery that is pumping out fuel at a constant rate. However, Max and the Gyro Captain are not the only ones interested in the fuel that this refinery produces. It has also attracted the notice of the Marauders, a biker gang similar to Toecutter’s gang from the first film, except different in the fact that they actually have a reason for causing terror this time around.
The Marauders are attacking the citizens of the refinery on a daily basis, wreaking absolute havoc on them. That’s where Max comes in – he rescues one of the attacked settlers and tries to strike a deal with the leader of the refinery complex, trading the spared man for fuel. Unfortunately the man dies, so the leader of the complex goes back on his deal. Oh, and he’s keeping Max’s car. To get it back, Max has to bring an oil tanker to the refinery, as they’ve got a plan of their own – they’re busting out of there and heading to the sunny coasts of Queensland, taking a tanker of fuel with them.
I won’t go into the nitty-gritty of the rest of the plot, but let’s just say poor Max finishes the film with even less than he started with. It’s a very engaging story, though, and one that is much easier to understand than the plot of the first film because all of the characters have clear motivations for their actions and the plot doesn’t just jump around all over the place.
The characters are also a lot more interesting this time around too. Max, who was definitely plain vanilla ice cream in the first film, has now been upgraded to a much more exciting flavour. Perhaps cookies and cream? Losing everything he ever loved and cared about may have been tragic for him but it’s a blessing for us, as it’s turned his character from “generic vigilante” into “world-weary-lone-wanderer-with-nothing-left-to-lose” (except for his dog and his car, which, spoilers, he does lose). Gibson’s performance is also a lot better in The Road Warrior than it ever was in the first Mad Max, but the real highlight is Bruce Spence as the Gyro Captain. He’s immediately likeable and has great comedic timing.
The members of the Marauders are all various degrees of delightfully insane, as are the outfits that they wear. It’s like the costumer designers took a look at the outfits from the first Mad Max and went “this, but as a Halloween costume”. There’s ass-less leather chaps, black feathers, and studs everywhere. Oh, and don’t forget the leather. Lots and lots of leather. This costume creativity extends to the citizens of the refinery compound as well, as everyone there has dressed in an aesthetic that can be best described as “post-apocalyptic desert 80s.” I love that nobody showed any restraint at all on this costume designs in this film, and they’ve become absolutely iconic and have inspired a whole host of other post-apocalyptic media such as the Fallout series.
Well, this write-up is coming to a close, and I’ve saved the best until last – let’s talk about the car stunts. They’re what Mad Max is most famous for (the first two films in the original trilogy, at least), and they’re what we come to The Road Warrior eager to see. Thankfully, The Road Warrior doesn’t disappoint, with its car stunts making everything that happened in the original Mad Max look like a leisurely commute to work. The Marauders speed by on motorbikes or a random assortment of cars specially modified to glide across the sand of the desert. They chase down Max in his V8 with their own, and every time he’s tasked with driving that damned oil tanker, they are there nipping at his heels. These sequences are fast-paced, exciting and is it bad if I just call them “high-octane” again? Well, they are. Nothing comes close to rivalling the finale of this film except for perhaps Fury Road, but we’ll get to that soon.
Poor old Max may end his time in The Road Warrior much worse for wear, but the Mad Max franchise was never looking better after this entry. I can recommend The Road Warrior whole-heartedly, and in my personal opinion it’s the best entry in the Mad Max franchise. It’s just a shame that it had to be followed with Beyond Thunderdome, which is… well, we’ll get to Beyond Thunderdome next week.
BEST BITS
- The better exposition at the beginning of the film makes the world so much easier to understand, which is good because it’s been expanded-upon a lot in this film.
- Just the sheer creativity in the design of everything on-screen.
WORST BITS
- The dog dying. It works thematically but… no dog death, please. Too sad.
FINAL RATING: 9/10
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