Action Junkie: Mad Max 2 – The Road Warrior

The beginning of The Road Warrior proper opens in the middle of a chase sequence.  Max is being pursued by a highway gang.  In an ironic twist the first member we’re clearly shown is wearing an altered, fetishized version of the MFP’s helmet and face protection.  The action, like in Mad Max, starts the movie setting a precedent of entertainment spectacle that will be continuously outdone over the film’s duration.  After taking out two of the three pursuing vehicles, one of which crashes into a semi-truck and trailer left in the middle of the road, Max stops and quickly races to salvage the vehicles leaking gasoline.  On the horizon sits the remaining pursuer, Wez, one of the film’s main antagonists, and his male companion.  The first villains of the film and already they are more primal and punk rock than the villains in Mad Max, making some viewers ask, “How do they find time and resources to dye their hair and style it into Mohawks?”  To an outright obvious degree this is a valid question, but it is also one that ignores the theme the visual aesthetic is used to incur throughout the entire Mad Max series, intimidation.  As Wez revs the motorcycle they sit upon, Max stands fast, placing himself between them and the gas he is retrieving, drawing a sawed-off shotgun he has holstered at his side.  This is another significant factor of intimidation, as we learn later that Max at this moment in time has no bullets for the gun.  He too must use elements of fear to survive in a land driven by such emotions, but here we see him turning the tables and using this against those that made intimidation the factor it is.

With the villains costume design we again have a film that capitalized on modern day film goers’ association with the punk rock music scene.  The idea of style is not one of function, but attitude.  Like in George A. Romero’s classic horror film Night of the Living Dead, the force of the other in The Road Warrior, is physically represented only, there are no reasons of explanation.  Here instead of the undead with rotting flesh and an appetite for brains, we have hairstyles, clothing, and an appetite for destruction.  Where Romero’s zombies made for a cultural reference to the world it was theatrically released to in 1968, so do Miller’s gangs of the wastelands, here in 1981 their representation is rooted in the similar concepts of anti-establishment sentiment.  However, unlike in Mad Max where the villains were currently engaged in a battle against society, in The Road Warrior they have achieved their goal and roam the land doing as they please.  There is no longer an establishment, not any official one.

After the opening scenes’ climax, in a similar plot structure to Mad Max, we are presented, albeit for a brief moment, with Max’s current state of being.  As far as we can tell Max’s life consists of a simple philosophical existence, driving around looking for gas, so he can continue driving around looking for gas.  His life, all of it, is in the Interceptor, which has been shown to us by the stripping and altering done to its’ interior.  As the movie progresses and Max meets other people he seems adamant in his reproach of joining anyone or their goals, this is the life he wants.  His existential status quo is quickly interrupted however with his encounter of the Gyro Captain, who essentially sends him on his path to learning to live again, as foretold by the narrator in the prologue.

At the center of The Road Warrior’s plot is a theme briefly touched upon at the end of Mad Max, fuel, gasoline, energy, it is what makes the world go around.  This is broadly expanded upon at the beginning of The Road Warrior as the narrator explains that fuel caused the world war that brought upon the apocalypse.  When the fuel production stopped, so did society, indicating that the two are inextricably linked.  When Max meets the Gyro Captain, in exchange for his life, the Captain tells Max where he can find all the fuel he’ll ever need.  The fact the Gyro Captain offers this to Max as his first resort further indicates the overall desire of the war’s survivors to find fuel, and with it perhaps civilization, or at the very least create an illusion of the comfort society could provide.  The fuel refinery compound is the film’s strongest and most important example of the connection between fuel and society, as now in the aftermath of the war for oil it is oil that will by society’s salvation, or rebirth.

Telling a story in a Post-Apocalypse environment is typically about the “What if?” of society starting anew, rebuilding better what once was before, as if society before was broken or damaged and needed to be wiped clean to start over.  In the instance of The Road Warrior the case is not so much to rebuild better as it is to just rebuild something, anything resembling what was lost.  The idea of societal improvement during rebuilding is the core issue of the third film Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, and helps complete the development of character in relation to their environment, as a linear narrative progression in a trilogy.  In this movie that core philosophy is mainly concerned with finding a way to exist, the connections to the past serve as a hope to the possibility of going back to what once was.  When taken in this perspective, the people of the refinery and Max are of similarity, they are both doing what they know immediately to do to exist, at least on the surface.  Inside the refinery we find out they have gone past that first step and have proceeded to a plan.  One based on hope for future survival, away from the torment of the gangs.

(Cont.)

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Benjamin Nason is a writer, film-maker and critic from the Pacific Northwest, where he lives with his cat Lulu.

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