![]() Miller has kept a firm grip on his idiosyncratic franchise, completing a trilogy with Mel Gibson (1985’s Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome), then taking an extended hiatus with The Witches of Eastwick (1987) and Lorenzo’s Oil (1992), as well as the lauded children’s films Babe: Pig in the City (1998) and Happy Feet (2006). Very few of these actually bear the Mad Max license (though I do have scars from a particularly awful Mad Max Nintendo game). Mad Max 2 is so successful in its simple combination of elements that it has come to define the term “post-apocalyptic wasteland.” So evocative is its landscape that endless B-movies, books, comics, and video games have been spawned to fill it: all of which must somehow contain leather, desert, mohawks, and wheels. Humungus and his gang approach the walled oil refinery with hostages. But his mercenary sensibilities gradually soften, and finally Max agrees to lead the charge across the desert, Humungus and his men pursuing them in a dusty, high-octane chase. Max strikes a bargain with the besieged community: if he brings them a truck so they can escape the refinery with barrels of fuel, he’ll be rewarded with all the gasoline he needs to keep surviving. When Max witnesses a man from the refinery beaten by the gang, his female companion raped and killed, Max delivers him back to the compound only to watch him die at the threshold. He guides Max to a walled enclave in the desert: an oil refinery under siege by marauders led by a masked muscleman called Humungus (Kjell Nilsson). ![]() He finds another scavenger (Bruce Spence, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King), who will be credited only as The Gyro Captain because he flies a gyro. He has a dog, and they eat from the same can of dog food while wandering the Outback and stealing precious gasoline to keep his V-8-powered “Pursuit Special” running. There’s an ex-cop named Max (Mel Gibson). This is a film which approaches the definition of “pure cinema.” With dialogue kept to a minimum (notably, one of the main characters communicates entirely in grunts), and the plot as spare as possible, Miller relies upon heart-stopping stunt sequences and an impeccable mise-en-scène – every frame of this film is perfectly composed, packing in all the story and character you need as events propel forward. Mad Max 2 tips the scale in favor of black humor and breathless action. ![]() Mad Max is a dark revenge saga about the last remnants of law and order falling to pieces in a post-apocalyptic Australia. Of course, knowledge of Mad Max is inessential to enjoying Mad Max 2, for Miller had by now pared down story to only its crudest parts, and revved up his technique. The film was cautiously retitled The Road Warrior for the U.S., because the majority of American moviegoers had never heard of the first film, barely released in the States. Two years after the benchmark Ozploitation film Mad Max (1979), director George Miller returned to the world of violent punks and souped-up cars with Mad Max 2 (1981). ![]()
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