| Mad Max 2 | |
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Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | George Miller |
| Produced by | Byron Kennedy |
| Written by | Terry Hayes George Miller Brian Hannant |
| Narrated by | Harold Baigent |
| Starring | Mel Gibson Michael Preston Bruce Spence Vernon Wells Kjell Nilsson Virginia Hey Emil Minty |
| Music by | Brian May |
| Cinematography | Dean Semler |
| Editing by | David Stiven Michael Balson Tim Wellburn |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
| Release date(s) | 24 December 1981 |
| Running time | 91 minutes |
| Country | Australia |
| Language | English |
| Budget | A$4,000,000[1] |
| Box office | $23,667,907 (North America) [2] |
Mad Max 2 (also known as The Road Warrior in the U.S., and Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior) is a 1981 Australian post-apocalyptic action film directed by George Miller. The film is the second installment in the Mad Max film series, with Mel Gibson starring as Max Rockatansky. The film's tale of a community of settlers moved to defend themselves against a roving band of marauders follows an archetypal "Western" frontier movie motif, as does Max's role as a hardened man who rediscovers his humanity when he decides to help the settlers.[3] Filming took part in locations around Broken Hill.[4]
Mad Max 2 was released on 24 December 1981, and was critically acclaimed. Observers praised the visuals and Gibson's role. Noteworthy elements of the film also include cinematographer Dean Semler's widescreen photography of Australia's vast desert landscapes; the sparing use of dialogue throughout the film; costume designer Norma Moriceau's punk mohawked, leather bondage gear-wearing bikers; and its fast-paced, tightly edited, and violent battle and chase scenes. The film's comic-book post-apocalyptic/punk style popularized the genre in film and fiction writing. It was also a box office success and received several nominations at the Saturn Award ceremony. Eventually, Mad Max 2 developed into a cult film: fan clubs and "road warrior"–themed activities continue into the 21st century. The film was followed by Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome in 1985.
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Max Rockatansky, in his worn out leather police uniform with his knee in an improvised brace, roams the desert in a scarred, black supercharged V-8 Pursuit Special, scavenging for food and petrol, which is a very precious commodity. His only companions are an Australian Cattle Dog, and a rare functioning firearm—a sawn-off shotgun—for which the ammunition is very scarce.
After driving off a gang of marauders, led by biker warrior Wez, Max collects the petrol from one of their wrecked vehicles and checks an autogyro for fuel. The autogyro's pilot set a trap with a venomous snake; but Max outwits and overpowers the gyro captain. Bargaining for his life, the pilot tells Max about a small working oil refinery nearby in the wasteland and becomes one of Max's companions. Max witnesses the marauders, with a motley collection of cars and motorbikes, besieging the compound. They are led by a large, muscular man with a hockey mask over his disfigured face called "The Humungus". The Humungus convinces the settlers to back away.
The next day, the marauders chase down and capture four settlers' vehicles. After Max witnesses one such brutal treatment, he goes down to the wrecked vehicles and kills one of the bikers. Max makes a deal with a mortally wounded settler that if Max returns the man to the compound, he will get a tankful of petrol. However, the man dies shortly after Max enters into the compound and the deal is reneged on by their leader Papagallo.The settlers nearly execute Max just before the Marauders return. The Humungus again offers the settlers safe passage out of the wastelands if they leave him the facility and fuel reserves. Max offers another deal for Papagallo: he will retrieve an abandoned Mack semi-truck he knows of in return for petrol and his freedom. The settlers accept Max's proposal, but keep his car. Max sneaks out of the compound at night, carrying fuel for both the truck and the autogyro. He catches up to the gyro captain, who has decided that Max is his friend.
With air support from gyro captain, Max returns to the abandoned semi and drives it back to the compound, despite the efforts of Humungus' men to stop the vehicle. The settlers want Max to escape with the group, but Max opts to collect his petrol and leave. The settlers discuss holding Max by force, but he is vouched for by Papagallo, who calls him a man of honor for keeping his bargain. Max tries to break through the siege, but is chased down by Wez in The Humungus's nitrous oxide–equipped car, resulting in his Pursuit Special being wrecked and the driver severely injured. Max's dog is killed by a crossbow. One of the marauders unknowingly triggers a booby-trap when they try to siphon the car's gas, causing the car to blow up. The semi-conscious Max is rescued by the gyro captain, who flies him back to the refinery, where the settlers are making hasty preparations to leave.
Despite his injuries, Max insists on driving the repaired truck with the fuel tanker. He leaves the compound in the now heavily armored truck with a feral kid and several settlers in armored positions along the tanker. With Papagallo driving an escort vehicle, he is pursued by the wasteland warriors. Overhead, the gyro captain follows the chase. While the Humungus and most of his warriors pursue the tanker, the remaining settlers flee the compound in a diverse caravan of vehicles, leaving another group of marauders to seize it However, they discover too late that the compound has been rigged to explode. In the ensuing chase, Papagallo and the settlers defending the tanker are killed, and the gyro captain also crashes as his engine is hit by arrows from a dart gun. Max and the Feral Kid find themselves alone against the marauders, who continue their pursuit. Wez ends up boarding the truck to kill the two survivors, but a head-on collision by the Humungus' car results in the deaths of both Wez and the Humungus. Max loses control of the tanker and it rolls off the road. As the injured Max carries the Feral Kid from the tanker, he discovers that the tanker trailer contains sand, not fuel. The Gyro Captain manages to catch up to Max in his battered gyro copter.
The truck and its trailer are revealed to be a decoy, allowing the other settlers to escape with the precious fuel in oil drums inside their vehicles. With Papagallo dead, the gyro captain succeeds him as their chief, and leads the settlers to the coast, where they establish the "Great Northern Tribe". Max remains in the desert, once again becoming a drifter, alone in the wasteland. The narrator says that was the last time they ever saw Max, but the tribe will be forever grateful to him for ensuring their survival; he eventually succeeds the gyro captain as the tribe's leader.
The film's tale of settlers that have to defend themselves from a roving band of marauders transplants the archetypal "Western" frontier movie concepts to the post-apocalyptic desert wastes. In place of horses and stagecoaches, the film uses large number of cars, motorbikes, trucks, and custom-made vehicles which are often chopped up and hot-rodded with superchargers and engine modifications and geared up for post-apocalypse highway battles with armour plating, mounted pneumatic-dart weapons, and reinforced bumpers.
Max's powerful black-painted muscle car is a modified Pursuit Special, a Ford Falcon XB GT coupe with a V8 engine ("the last of the V8 Interceptors") that the fictional MFP (Main Force Patrol) customized for use as a police Pursuit Special in the first Mad Max film. The car is depicted with a supercharger protruding through the hood which can be toggled on and off, and its black body is scarred and scratched from Max's journeys in the wasteland. The precious contents of the Pursuit Special's petrol tanks are protected from thieves with an explosive "booby trap." A sheathed knife is hidden on the underbody of the vehicle, to provide Max with a concealed weapon to kill anyone who attempts to force him to disarm the booby trap.
The large Mack truck used to pull the oil tanker is a 1970s Mack R-600 with a "coolpower" engine setup (the coolpower setup uses an aftercooler on the cylinder head and a tip turbine fan) and a twin-stick transmission. The Mack has a massive cowcatcher mounted on the front to protect the vehicle from crash impacts, armoured plates welded in front of the radiator (with air slits for cooling ventilation), and armoured cages around the wheels. The trailer is protected with fortified, spike-encrusted turrets and barbed wire strung up along the sides of the tanker.
Humungus' bizarre vehicle is a heavily modified Ford F-100 Ute, which is depicted with a custom-made Nitrous Oxide booster system. The marauders use an early 1970s red F-100 with a cobra painted on the doors, and a cut-down boat-style windshield during the final chase scenes. Humungus's lieutenant Wez drives an early 1980s model Suzuki GSX1000 motorbike in the film, and later is seen riding on a Yamaha XS1100E motorbike with a sidecar. Most of the solo and side-car dirtbikes used in the film are XT and TT500 Yamahas. Most of the dune buggies used in the film were VW-based modified "sandrail" kitcars, with single-axle drive train and suspension.
The settler leader Pappagallo's vehicle, which was captured from the marauders in an earlier battle, has two Ford 351 engines. The front engine is turbocharged, and the one on the back boasts a Roots-style supercharger similar to the unit on Max's Pursuit Special. Other vehicles used in the movie include a variety of Australian muscle cars, including a 1974 ZG Fairlane, with LTD front guards; a custom-made vehicle with open engine bay and half of its roof chopped out, and a 6/71 supercharger; a Holden Monaro with a custom front and a roof opening; an LC/LJ Holden Torana which has been custom-modified into a Speedway car; a Ford XA Falcon, a Valiant VH coupe; a VW Kombi; a Ford Landau; and various Valiant Chargers.
The main gate of the settlement is a Commer School Bus with jury-rigged plate metal armour. This bus is also the main escape vehicle for the settlers at the end of the film.
Mad Max 2 was well received by critics and is regarded by many as one of the best films of 1981.[9][10] The film currently holds a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.[11] Film critic Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four and praised its "skillful filmmaking," and called it "...a film of pure action, of kinetic energy", which is "...one of the most relentlessly aggressive movies ever made". While Ebert points out that the movie does not develop its "...vision of a violent future world ... with characters and dialogue", and uses only the "...barest possible bones of a plot", he praises its action sequences. Ebert calls the climactic chase sequence "...unbelievably well-sustained" and states that the "...special effects and stunts...are spectacular", creating a "...frightening, sometimes disgusting, and (if the truth be told) exhilarating" effect.[12] In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, "Never has a film's vision of the post-nuclear-holocaust world seemed quite as desolate and as brutal, or as action-packed and sometimes as funny as in George Miller's apocalyptic The Road Warrior, an extravagant film fantasy that looks like a sadomasochistic comic book come to life".[7] In his review for Newsweek, Charles Michener praised Mel Gibson's "easy, unswaggering masculinity and hint of Down Under humor may be quintessentially Australian but is also the stuff of an international male star".[13]
Gary Arnold, in his review for The Washington Post, wrote, "While he seems to let triumph slip out of his grasp, Miller is still a prodigious talent, capable of a scenic and emotional amplitude that recalls the most stirring attributes in great action directors like Kurosawa, Peckinpah and Leone".[14] Pauline Kael called Mad Max 2 a "mutant" film that was "...sprung from virtually all action genres", creating "...one continuous spurt of energy" by using "...jangly, fast editing". However, Kael criticized director George Miller's "...attempt to tap into the universal concept of the hero", stating that this attempt "...makes the film joyless", "sappy", and "sentimental".
The film's depiction of a post-apocalyptic future was widely copied by other filmmakers and in science fiction novels, to the point that its gritty "...junkyard society of the future look...is almost taken for granted in the modern science-fiction action film."[3] The Encyclopedia Of Science Fiction says that Mad Max 2, "...with all its comic-strip energy and vividness...is exploitation cinema at its most inventive."
Richard Scheib calls Mad Max 2, "...one of the few occasions where a sequel makes a dramatic improvement in quality over its predecessor." He calls it a "kinetic comic-book of a film," an "... exhilarating non-stop rollercoaster ride of a film that contains some of the most exciting stunts and car crashes ever put on screen." Scheib states that the film transforms the "...post-holocaust landscape into the equivalent of a Western frontier," such that "...Mel Gibson's Max could just as easily be Clint Eastwood's tight-lipped Man With No Name" helping "...decent frightened folk" from the marauding Indians.[3]
The film received much recognition from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films. It won the Saturn Award for Best International Film. It received additional nominations for Best Director, Best Writing, and Best Costume Design. Mel Gibson and Bruce Spence received nods for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor, respectively. George Miller won the Grand Prize at the Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival. Mad Max 2 was also nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation and was awarded the Los Angeles Film Critics Association award for Best Foreign Film. The film was also recognized by the Australian Film Institute, winning awards for best direction, costume design, editing, production design and sound. It received additional nominations for the cinematography and musical score.[15]
In 2008, Mad Max 2 was selected by Empire magazine as one of The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time.[16] Similarly, The New York Times placed the film on its Best 1000 Movies Ever list.[17] Entertainment Weekly ranked Mad Max 11th on their list of The All Time Coolest Heroes in Pop Culture.[18]
The film score was composed and conducted by Australian composer Brian May. The 35 minute-long recording is available on CD on the Varèse Sarabande label, catalog number VCD 47262. The music is presented out of order and sometimes retitled; part of the track titled "Finale and Largo" is actually the main title, "Montage" was written for the truck chase scene (and as such would fit between "Break Out" and "Largo") and the "Main Title" is actually the post-title montage. The sound effects suite that concludes the disc has two cues, "Boomerang Attack" and "Gyro Flight," that do not appear elsewhere on the album (the former is actually presented without any overlaying effects).
The soundtrack begins with the music for the "Montage/Main Title" sequence, which gives the back-story to the descent into war and chaos. The next selections accompany the action-packed sequences as Max and the settlers battle with the gang ("Confrontation"; "Marauder's Massacre", "Max Enters Compound"; "Gyro Saves Max"; and "Break Out"). The final tracks include the "Finale and Largo" and the "End Title" music, which is used while the narrator describes the settler's escape to the coast to start a new life. The recording also includes a suite of special effects sounds, such as The Feral Kid's "Boomerang Attack"; "Gyro Flight"; "The Big Rig Starts"; "Breakout"; and the climactic effects for "The Refinery Explodes", when the booby-trapped oil refinery turns into a fireball.
Mad Max 2 grossed $10,847,491 at the box office in Australia,[19] which is equivalent to $35,145,871 in 2009 dollars.
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