Mad Max Revisited: The Road Warrior

In which I revisit a previously explored topic with fresh eyes and an open mind.

Up until 7:00 last night, the only Mad Max that anybody really cared about was The Road Warrior.  Sure, the first movie had its charms.  And yes, Thunderdome was an awesome concept.  The only movie in the franchise that actually mattered though - the only one with a legacy beyond the surprisingly hit franchise that it was in and the star who made it big after the fact - was the second one.

Since the death of his family, Max has been aimlessly roaming the dystopic wastes of Australia with nothing more than a half tank of gas and an empty shotgun.  The last semblances of law and order have long since broken down and civilization - such as it is - is paid for in Human life.

Halfway between nowhere and oblivion, Max comes upon two warring factions in the desert: each controlling their own invaluable oil well.  With a virtual fortune of oil to be made, Max agrees to help a peaceable tribe acquire a truck large enough to haul their oil to a promised land that very may very well not exist.

The Road Warrior is undoubtedly the quintessential dystopian movie.  You can keep your Hunger Games and your Divergents.  The nightmarish future is bleak and desolate and paroled by nomadic biker gangs in search of an angry fix.  It may not be the most nuanced vision of a post-apocalyptic future out there, but it's by far the most endearingly iconic: simply conceived, simply executed, spectacularly presented.

Unlike its predecessor, the movie knows what it is and has the budget to bring that vision convincingly to screen.  The first Mad Max used its premise as an excuse to amp up the violent car chases rather than as the foundation for a horrifically fascinating future world.  It was a chase movie: pure and simple.

The Road Warrior, however, has gone beyond simply making excuses for itself.  It  steeps itself in the now familiar iconography of a world that is well beyond the hope of saving.  It's a hellish place where fuel is as good as gold, ammunition is an increasingly scarce luxury and a can of dog food is a rare feast.  Pretty women are rarer still, and are quick to provoke the lust of the gangs that rule the wastes.

Working cars are hard enough to come by, let alone trucks or, God forbid, helicopters (which the world has all but since forgotten about).  Feral children run rampant through the settlements for want of a family and sometimes the opportunistic stranger who's just passing through is as good a parent as they can hope to come by.  Everything, in short, is the worst possible version of itself in a world turned savage and cruel.

Similarly, the film goes into much greater detail about the world and context of its action-packed narrative than its predecessor ever cared to.  We're finally told the specific reason for the dissolution of traditional civilization: a great and terrible war brought on by peak oil.  The same summation even takes care of the particulars of the first film, essentially removing any real need to see it other than blind completionism.  The Road Warrior is the franchise entire: everything that you ever needed to see or know about the Mad Max series.

At its heart, The Road Warrior is a revamped Western, owing more than a little of its depiction of a lone, nomadic warrior wandering from settlement to settlement in search of a quick buck and a wrong to right to Shane or The Dollars Trilogy.  Once you strip away all of the particulars of setting and props, you're basically left with a Sergio Leone film.

What's more is that there's nothing really wrong with the film.  It's a more than functional action movie with an instantly memorable setting, excellent star and solid execution across the board.  Sure, it might not be a perfect movie, but nothing stands out as being any less than good, and most of it is a good deal better than that.

Simply put, The Road Warrior is a must see action movie, a must see dystopian movie and a must see before the mad scramble starts for Fury Road this weekend.  It's held up remarkably well over the past 34 years and will doubtless do the same in the decades to come.  If anything, a revival for the franchise only serves to prove that there's life yet in the series and plenty yet to revisit in the coming years.

Rating:  8/10

Buy on BluRay:  Yes

So what is your favorite dystopian movie?  Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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