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Mad Max 2 (also known as The Road Warrior in the U.S., and Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior) is a 1981 Australian apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic action film directed by George Miller. This sequel to Miller's 1979 film Mad Max was a worldwide box office success that launched the career of lead actor Mel Gibson. 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.^[1] Reviewer Richard Scheib stated that Gibson's role could "just as easily be Clint Eastwood's tight-lipped Man With No Name" helping "...decent frightened folk" from the marauding Indians."

Noteworthy elements of the film include cinematographer Dean Semler's widescreen photography of Australia's vast desert landscapes (primarily the Mundi Mundi Plain in Silverton, New South Wales); the sparing use of dialogue throughout the film (which is almost non-existent during the opening and closing scenes); 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 post-apocalyptic genre in film and fiction writing. The film eventually became a Cult Classic: fan clubs and "road warrior"-themed activities still occur in the 2000s.

Contents 1 Plot 2 Vehicles 3 Soundtrack 4 Critical reception 5 Trivia & Notes 6 References

PlotEdit

In the original Mad Max (no backstory was offered in that movie), uprisings and social dis-order due to energy shortages proved to destabilize the country, marauding biker gangs began to terrorize the townspeople in the Outback. The crumbling remnants of the government created a tiny, underfunded group of special highway patrol officers in an attempt to restore some form of order in the outback.

By contrast, Mad Max 2 features a much more pronounced breakdown of civilization. In the prologue, a narrator informs us that the world has "crumbled and...the cities have exploded"; and that "two mighty warrior tribes" had gone to war over "oil". Life has become a "whirlwind of looting and a firestorm of fear, in which 'men began to feed on men.'"

Max Rockatansky, the former police officer who sought vengeance against the gang that in the first film had killed his family, has now become "a burnt out, desolate" shell of a man. Clad in his torn and dirty leather police uniform, Max roves the desert in a scarred, black, supercharged V-8 Pursuit Special, scavenging for food and, especially, gasoline, which has become a precious commodity. He also has a pet dog (a blue heeler), who has been his only companion, and a rare functioning firearm — a sawed-off shotgun — the ammunition for which is also scarce.

The film begins as Max clashes with a team of marauders, led by biker warrior Wez (Vernon Wells). After driving off the gang, Max collects the gasoline from one of their wrecked vehicles and continues on. As Max continues to comb the desert wastelands, he comes upon a seemingly abandoned autogyro and investigates. The autogyro's pilot (Bruce Spence) has in fact set a trap with a poisonous snake; but Max and his dog outwit and overpower the Gyro Captain. To stay alive, the pilot tells Max about a small working oil refinery nearby in the wasteland.

Encamped on a cliff overlooking the Oil Refinery, Max watches as a gang of marauders piloting a motley collection of cars and motorbikes besiege the compound. They are led by the grim, charisma tic warrior called "Lord Humungus" (Kjell Nilsson) — a large, muscular man with a hockey mask over his disfigured face, who commands a vicious, rag-tag band of biker-berserkers. Humungus' speeches to the settlers exhorting them to surrender are articulate and convincing; he uses his eloquence as psychological warfare, and a number of the settlers begin to believe his seemingly peaceful offers.

The next morning four settlers' vehicles roar out of the refinery. The marauders chase them down and kill or capture their people. After the Gyro Captain and Max witness this brutal treatment, Max goes down to the wrecked vehicles and slays one biker. A settler is still clinging to life, and Max strikes a bargain with the man: he will return the critically-wounded man to the refinery compound in exchange for petrol. However, the deal falls through when the man dies following Max's entry into the compound. He is accepted without condition, though, by the "Feral Kid" who wields a sharp-edged steel boomerang.

The marauders return and Lord Humungus uses a public address system to offer the settlers and their leader Papagallo (Michael Preston) safe passage out of the wastelands if they leave him the facility and fuel reserves. Max has an alternative bargain for Papagallo: he will retrieve the abandoned semi-truck he came across earlier in return for petrol and his freedom. This vehicle would be sufficient to haul their tanker-load of fuel out of the wastelands. The besieged settlers accept Max's proposal, but retain his car. Max sneaks out of the compound at night, carrying fuel for the battered truck and the autogyro.

With air support provided by the Gyro Captain, Max returns to the abandoned Mack truck and drives it back to the compound, despite the efforts of the Humungus and his men to stop the vehicle. The settlers invite Max to escape with the group, but the psychologically-scarred Max opts to collect his petrol and leave. As Max tries to break through the siege and is chased down by Wez in Humungus's nitros oxide-equipped car, his car is wrecked and he is badly injured, and his loyal dog is killed by a crossbowman. However, by trying to tap into his fuel tanks the marauders trigger an explosive booby-trap, blowing up his car and discouraging them from searching further. 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 freshly-repaired truck with the fuel tanker. He roars out of the compound in the now heavily-armored truck, with the feral kid hanging on for dear life on the back of the truck, several settlers in armored positions on the tanker, and Pappagallo driving a powerful escort vehicle for company, he is pursued by the wasteland warriors in their heavily modified cars and motorbikes. Over-head the Gyro Captain follows the prolonged and violent chase in his gyro-copter. One by one the settlers on the tanker are killed, as is Pappagallo. The Gyro Captain also crashes as his engine is hit by arrows from a dart gun.

Back at the refinery but intercut with the tanker pursuit, a handful of marauders seize the empty compound, and discover to their misfortune that the refinery is rigged to explode.

Max and the feral kid find themselves alone against the marauders, who continue their savage pursuit. Wez boards the truck and almost slays the two survivors, but a head-on collision with Humungus obliterates both villains. Max loses control of the tanker and it rolls off the side of the road.

As the injured Max carries the feral kid from the tanker, he discovers that the contents of the tanker was just sand..... The Gyro Captain manages to catch up to Max in his battered gyro copter.

The Mack truck and its tanker trailer were a decoy, allowing the other settlers to escape with their precious fuel in oil drums inside their vehicles. With Papagallo dead, the Gyro Captain 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 but remembered by the narrator, who is in fact the adult feral kid.

VehiclesEdit

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.

Pursuit Special
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 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" and a sheathed knife is hidden on the underbody of the vehicle.

Mack Truck
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' Ford F-100
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.

Wez's GSX1000 & XS1100E
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.

Other Vehicles
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, one on the front, and one on the back. 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. Several of the besieging warriors' vehicles appear to be of the same type as seen used as police pursuit cars in the first Mad Max film. While the depiction of gang members using similar vehicles and even wearing police biker helmets and jackets has led some fans on chat websites to speculate that some of the gang members are police officers-gone bad, there is no support for this theory from the script.

SoundtrackEdit

The film score was composed and conducted by Australian composer Brian May. The 35 minute-long recording is available on CD on the Varese 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 fireball.

Critical receptionEdit

Film critic Roger Ebert 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.^[2] 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".^[3] 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".

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". 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 sf action film."^[4] 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."

Critics praised the stunt work and mobile camera techniques, particularly during the final chase and showdown. The use of fender-mounted cameras at high speeds was similar to the Frankenheimer race film Grand Prix and the staccato editing style helped give the illusion of very fast speeds, although other critics were concerned about the shocking violence in the film, which included rape, torture and brutal murders at the hands of the marauding biker gang. As of 2008, the movie has 35 reviews and a rare 100% fresh rating at the movie review website Rotten Tomatoes.

Trivia & NotesEdit

• Release Date: December 24, 1981
• Running Time: 91 minutes
• Budget: US $4,000,000 citation needed
• Gross Revenue: $23,667,907 (domestic)
• Mad Max: The Road Warrior on wikipedia

ReferencesEdit