Remember That Movie: The Mad Max Trilogy
A revenge thriller. A post-apocalyptic Yojimbo. A kid-friendly adventure.
There are few trilogies as varied in both quality and tone as the Mad Max trilogy. In this edition of Remember That Movie, I’ll take a look at each installment of the trilogy, how the sequels fit into the series, their influence on cinema, and the careers of both George Miller and Mel Gibson, the major players behind Mad Max.
Buckle up, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls… dyin’ time is here!
Mad Max (1979)
“I am the chosen one. The mighty hand of vengeance, sent down to strike the un-roadworthy!”
Mad Max is a low-budget Australian film inspired by society’s occasionally aggressive attitudes during the oil crisis of the early seventies. The story was conceived by Byron Kennedy (who also produced) and George Miller (who directed and co-wrote the script with James McCausland). How low was the budget? It was $300,000, so small that post-production was completed at Kennedy’s house.
Mel Gibson, who was unknown at the time and only 23 years old, got the part of Max Rockatansky by arriving at an audition with a friend the morning after being involved in a bar fight that left his face a swollen mess.
In case you don’t remember, the original Mad Max takes place in a dystopian future. We are given little information, but the police force seems to consist of patrolmen divided into two groups: Pursuits and Interceptors. Gangs commonly wreak havoc in the small towns of an Australian desert. One day, a speed-demon gang member, known as Night Rider, tears down the highway, crashing into anything and endangering the lives of anybody who crosses his path. Max is called to put the brakes on him. The chase ends horribly for the Night Rider. His gang, led by the Toecutter (Hugh Keays-Byrne), hears of his demise and comes to a nearby town to wreak havoc. Max’s fellow officers become the target of their violence, which is more than Max, a family man, can take. Max quits and gets his family out of dodge. But they could not avoid crossing the gang’s path forever and their safe, happy life comes into danger.
That basic description pretty much covers the first two-thirds of the film, so I definitely won’t go into anymore detail. However, it’s a bit striking that the title character of Mad Max isn’t really all that mad for most of the film; he’s a pretty well-adjusted dude. Therefore, the title is a bit misleading. The title also suggests it’s a revenge flick wherein Max is the one exacting the revenge – that’s not entirely accurate either. Mad Max IS a revenge flick, but more in the sense that vengeance begets further vengeance. Really, it is the villains of the story who exact revenge on the law and innocents, which then infects these symbols of order and decency with a thirst for an even harsher reckoning.
This is a very interesting twist to the genre that I think helps set Mad Max apart.
Having said that, being a low-budgeted film, Mad Max is not immune to the merciless wear of time. It does have some aspects that seem quite silly – not intentionally or tonally so, but because it is a product of its time (ironic, since it’s supposed to be set in the future). For example, there is a scene with a disco café that is just plain ridiculous. But most of these elements seem to be filmmaking choices, such as the dramatic score that blares whenever the Hall of Justice appears onscreen or when Max reacts particularly upset by something (the camera quickly zooms in for extra dramatic effect!). Mad Max would certainly seem less dated – and thereby more effective – if not for these things.
You can’t really blame first-time director George Miller much, considering everything else he got right. Overall, the film is one of the best examples of the revenge genre and features a couple car chases that are more thrilling than those of many more expensive movies. Not only that, but the villains have a very unique look and the vehicles captured the hearts of many car lovers.
Mad Max earned a world-wide gross of $100 million, making it the highest profit-to-cost ratio movie ever (until 1999’s The Blair Witch Project). Only $8 million of that profit came from a U.S. theatrical run, which was most likely limited due to an aesthetic of the film most often described as ‘Ozploitation’, a term referring to Australia’s cheap exploitation fringe movies (for more on this, see the documentary Not Quite Hollywood).
As for Mel Gibson, Mad Max is often remembered for making the lead actor a star. That’s not quite accurate, but it did kick his career in gear; Mel starred in Tim and Gallipoli after Mad Max. It wasn’t until after Mad Max 2 that Gibson crossed over into Hollywood. While others went on to a decades-long career in acting, Gibson was the only cast-member to become a star.
That stardom wouldn’t follow until after the Mad Max trilogy.
Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981)
“Only those mobile enough to scavenge, brutal enough to pillage would survive. The gangs took over the highways, ready to wage war for a tank of juice.”
Two years later, the first sequel to Mad Max was released. In case you don’t remember, Mad Max 2 begins with a prologue delivered via montage and voice-over narration of both the main bullet points of the previous film and a post-apocalyptic set-up. After a nuclear war, the world became desolate; gas is a commodity worth killing for, and gangs of thugs rape and murder mercilessly for it. Max himself, now a silent and brooding loner, finds himself in the middle of a conflict between a community of decent people protecting an oil refinery and a ruthless gang who wants to take it from them. Will the Road Warrior help the community fight off the vicious gang of freaks or carry on with his own survival?
Mad Max 2 is better known to Americans as The Road Warrior. That title was never used during production. When it came time to distribute the film in the States nobody here was all that familiar with the first Mad Max film since it was barely released in theaters here. Thinking nobody would want to see a sequel to a film they’d never heard of, a new title and a prologue to catch people up to speed were slapped on the film. This is one of the few instances where a regional name change fits the film and is superior to the original title.
Everything about Mad Max 2 is better than its predecessor. The story is tighter, the chases are expertly crafted, the characters are more vividly realized, and there is a very clear vision of the world the story exists in. As a result, Mad Max 2 ranks among the pantheon of early eighties sci-fi films (The Empire Strikes Back, Blade Runner, The Thing, E.T.) that became some of the most influential films of their time.
As a matter of fact, Mad Max 2 is very un-sci-fi in that its setting in the future is the only thing linking it to that genre. There are no space ships, aliens, clones, or trips through time; this world is merely a more desolate version of ours – a western with cars, you could say. As such, Mad Max 2 is the blueprint for every zombie-less post-apocalyptic adventure (see: Waterworld).
The film itself recycled the Man-With-No-Name conceit of Yojimbo (which was also used in Eastwood’s spaghetti westerns) in that its central character rides into town to help the good defend against the bad. We know the character as Max, but are the only ones privy to his past life. To these people, he is the mythic Road Warrior. The film even canonizes him as a legend during its final moments.
This time, the budget is naturally higher than its predecessor at $4 million Australian ($4,291,661 US). Yet it still retains a low-budget aesthetic. There is no polish or extravagance that one might find in a film like Raiders of the Lost Ark, the other significant action film of that year. Mad Max 2 retains and exceeds the grit of its predecessor and refuses to pull any punches. The film seems to be aimed more for 1981’s punks and underground than any mainstream audience, its costumes borrowing heavily from thrift and S&M clothing racks.
Not only was the film’s visual aesthetic unique, but the stunts were more daring than any film before. During a climactic chase sequence that runs between ten and twenty minutes in length, a tanker truck rolls over and, earlier, a stuntman is sent flying sixty feet off his motorcycle toward the camera. Consider this: every crash, every jump from one vehicle to another – every stunt - was real; unlike today, nothing you see in this film was faked… well, except maybe when a villain’s eyes bug-out just before he meets his end.
The only shortcoming in the entire film is that the dialogue can be occasionally overwhelmed by Brian May’s score. Otherwise, we are given a sequel that exceeds the original in every way and also works well as a stand-alone film. One could not be blamed for going so far as claiming The Road Warrior as the only must-see film of the entire trilogy.
Especially when one considers where the series went from here.
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)
“Call it what you like. It still smells like shit to me.”
The third Mad Max film was released four years after its predecessor. That isn’t because of any issues with funding or screenwriting, as with some films. As far as my research has found, there were no plans for a third Mad Max film by any of its creators. However, when a film about a group of kids living in the wild and discovered by an adult was in development, someone jumped at the opportunity to turn it into the next Mad Max sequel.
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (a title so cheesy, I cringe as I write it) feels and looks like the afterthought it was.
In case you don’t remember, Max is traveling the Australian desert when his vehicle and belongings get stolen by a pair of thieves (one looks and behaves exactly like a key character from Mad Max 2 – even played by the same actor – but is supposedly not the same character). Max follows the thieves to a make-shift town called Bartertown, sort of the Mos Eisley of the Mad Max series, if you will. Max finds himself hired by Auntie Entity (played adequately by Tina Turner) to kill her rival in a cage match known as Thunderdome. Entity wants to rule Bartertown and it’s easier for her to do so without anyone in the way. After refusing to complete his task, Max is banished and stumbles upon a community of children.
It’s exasperating just writing the plot to this film, so far removed is it from its predecessors. Where the other films in the series were earnest and straightforward, Thunderdome is silly and campy. It feels like a parody of a Mad Max film. First of all, the Thunderdome match isn’t exactly Spartacus – it’s a fricken bungee fight with Max bouncing around the dome like he was Qbert! A guy literally jumps up and down on top of The Road Warrior! Oh, and that guy is actually a masked Downs man-child with a midget strapped to his back who speaks in a retarded version of English and says things like “You smart!” and “You want food in face?”.
If that isn’t enough to make your jaw drop, Max, the silent mythic antihero of The Road Warrior, is turned here into a put-upon exasperated reluctant hero that has more in common with the Sgt. Riggs of Lethal Weapon’s later sequels. In Mad Max 2, our antihero meets a true wild child, all wild hair, grunts, and armed with a razor-sharp boomerang. The tribe of kids Max meets in Thunderdome are like Peter Pan’s Lost Boys-meets-Ewoks; two great flavors pureed into shit – it’s a bit nutty.
Mad Max is neutered and watered-down into a kid’s film.
As with the other films, Thunderdome concludes with a chase scene. However, short of one shot of a spear sticking through a man’s leg, it completely lacks any of the danger and excitement of the previous films. Where Toecutter and Humungus met their end with head-on collisions, a similar character seems to meet with the same fate here (vehicles crash, big explosion). But not in a film like Thunderdome; this is the kind of film where that character survives the explosion and is stuck to the front of our hero’s vehicle a lá Wyle E. Coyote. This is a film where a villainess who spends the rest of her screen time trying to look menacing simply laughs off the hero’s victory and drives away.
Where are the colorful and ruthless characters?
Where are the horrific deaths?
Things become less baffling when it is discovered that director and co-creator George Miller lost interest in the project when producer and co-creator Byron Kennedy died while location scouting (the film is dedicated to Byron). Miller is credited as the film’s director, however he limited his focus to just the action scenes. The rest of the film was directed by George Ogilvie, a TV director who’s done little work before and since.
While Miller’s heart may be missing from the project, the money sure isn’t. You can feel the $12 million (AUD) budget in nearly every scene. The sets are bigger, there are more locations, and the extras number in the hundreds. Bartertown has a population big enough to rival Waterworld (which is huge for this series). Even the children number in the dozens. Money was clearly spent on everything except the things that matter more to the series than the vehicles and costume design – the characters and the story. It is inconceivable that the only people credited with this script are the same two people responsible for Mad Max 2 (Miller and Terry Hayes) – especially since the script was probably green-lit before Kennedy’s death.
It has been said that two scenes were deleted for time. In one, Max has a dream that flashes back to the first film. He wakes, crying, realizing he has become a shell of who he once was, no different from the biker gang who terrorized his community long ago. In another, Max takes a dying child to the top of a sand dune, the lights of Bartertown in sight, and tells the boy they’ve reached Never Never Land. These two scenes represent the only part of the film that has any emotional depth or relationship to the rest of the series. Would they have saved the film? Not at all, but they certainly would’ve given it some legitimacy.
Two years after Thunderdome, Mel Gibson began his second franchise, Lethal Weapon, and was on his way to superstardom.
Thunderdome was the first Mad Max film George Miller produced. He went on to write, produce, or direct many films, such as The Witches of Eastwick, Happy Feet, Babe and Babe: Pig in the City. He’s had his eye on several projects that either fell apart (a live-action Justice League film) or went to other directors (he was paid off Contact with the rights to Mad Max 2 and 3). He’s currently prepping two new Mad Max films – Mad Max: Fury Road and Mad Max: Furiosa – with Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, and Nicholas Hoult for a 2012 release.
The influences of the Mad Max trilogy are too many to number. Car culture, pop culture, and film (to name a few) have all been touched by the series – most especially by Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. Vernon Wells, who played the chief baddie of that film, appeared in Weird Science in a similar role. Cartoon series such as The Simpsons, South Park, Futurama, and even The Super Mario Brothers Super Show! have all done Mad Max-influenced episodes. The video games Borderlands, Fallout 3, and World of Warcraft make references to the trilogy. A character in Alan Moore’s graphic novel Watchmen reaches a breaking point similar to Max’s and offers the same choice to a foe that involves handcuffs (this also served as inspiration to Saw). Even some music videos and album covers have had the Mad Max touch (‘California Love’, anyone?).
Filmmakers David Fincher, Guillermo del Toro, Robert Rodriguez, and James Cameron – all visionaries in their own right – have cited The Road Warrior as having a major influence on them.
The Mad Max trilogy is a unique one, full of ups and downs, groundbreaking stunts, and iconic characters and production designs. It may be inconsistent, but it’s full of enough cinematic treasures to make it more valuable than a lifetime supply of fuel. Without it, so much of cinema’s Modern Age (and other creative mediums) wouldn’t have been the same.
Step right up and watch the man lay down the rubber road for many things to come.
Mad Max - 7/10
Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior – 9/10
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome – 3/10
Should you see them? Rent Mad Max and The Road Warrior. Skip Thunderdome.
The Mad Max trilogy is available separately on DVD or streaming. Mad Max 2 is also available on Blu-ray.
There are few trilogies as varied in both quality and tone as the Mad Max trilogy. In this edition of Remember That Movie, I’ll take a look at each installment of the trilogy, how the sequels fit into the series, their influence on cinema, and the careers of both George Miller and Mel Gibson, the major players behind Mad Max.
Buckle up, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls… dyin’ time is here!
Mad Max (1979)
“I am the chosen one. The mighty hand of vengeance, sent down to strike the un-roadworthy!”
Mad Max is a low-budget Australian film inspired by society’s occasionally aggressive attitudes during the oil crisis of the early seventies. The story was conceived by Byron Kennedy (who also produced) and George Miller (who directed and co-wrote the script with James McCausland). How low was the budget? It was $300,000, so small that post-production was completed at Kennedy’s house.
Mel Gibson, who was unknown at the time and only 23 years old, got the part of Max Rockatansky by arriving at an audition with a friend the morning after being involved in a bar fight that left his face a swollen mess.
In case you don’t remember, the original Mad Max takes place in a dystopian future. We are given little information, but the police force seems to consist of patrolmen divided into two groups: Pursuits and Interceptors. Gangs commonly wreak havoc in the small towns of an Australian desert. One day, a speed-demon gang member, known as Night Rider, tears down the highway, crashing into anything and endangering the lives of anybody who crosses his path. Max is called to put the brakes on him. The chase ends horribly for the Night Rider. His gang, led by the Toecutter (Hugh Keays-Byrne), hears of his demise and comes to a nearby town to wreak havoc. Max’s fellow officers become the target of their violence, which is more than Max, a family man, can take. Max quits and gets his family out of dodge. But they could not avoid crossing the gang’s path forever and their safe, happy life comes into danger.
That basic description pretty much covers the first two-thirds of the film, so I definitely won’t go into anymore detail. However, it’s a bit striking that the title character of Mad Max isn’t really all that mad for most of the film; he’s a pretty well-adjusted dude. Therefore, the title is a bit misleading. The title also suggests it’s a revenge flick wherein Max is the one exacting the revenge – that’s not entirely accurate either. Mad Max IS a revenge flick, but more in the sense that vengeance begets further vengeance. Really, it is the villains of the story who exact revenge on the law and innocents, which then infects these symbols of order and decency with a thirst for an even harsher reckoning.
This is a very interesting twist to the genre that I think helps set Mad Max apart.
Having said that, being a low-budgeted film, Mad Max is not immune to the merciless wear of time. It does have some aspects that seem quite silly – not intentionally or tonally so, but because it is a product of its time (ironic, since it’s supposed to be set in the future). For example, there is a scene with a disco café that is just plain ridiculous. But most of these elements seem to be filmmaking choices, such as the dramatic score that blares whenever the Hall of Justice appears onscreen or when Max reacts particularly upset by something (the camera quickly zooms in for extra dramatic effect!). Mad Max would certainly seem less dated – and thereby more effective – if not for these things.
You can’t really blame first-time director George Miller much, considering everything else he got right. Overall, the film is one of the best examples of the revenge genre and features a couple car chases that are more thrilling than those of many more expensive movies. Not only that, but the villains have a very unique look and the vehicles captured the hearts of many car lovers.
Mad Max earned a world-wide gross of $100 million, making it the highest profit-to-cost ratio movie ever (until 1999’s The Blair Witch Project). Only $8 million of that profit came from a U.S. theatrical run, which was most likely limited due to an aesthetic of the film most often described as ‘Ozploitation’, a term referring to Australia’s cheap exploitation fringe movies (for more on this, see the documentary Not Quite Hollywood).
As for Mel Gibson, Mad Max is often remembered for making the lead actor a star. That’s not quite accurate, but it did kick his career in gear; Mel starred in Tim and Gallipoli after Mad Max. It wasn’t until after Mad Max 2 that Gibson crossed over into Hollywood. While others went on to a decades-long career in acting, Gibson was the only cast-member to become a star.
That stardom wouldn’t follow until after the Mad Max trilogy.
Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981)
“Only those mobile enough to scavenge, brutal enough to pillage would survive. The gangs took over the highways, ready to wage war for a tank of juice.”
Two years later, the first sequel to Mad Max was released. In case you don’t remember, Mad Max 2 begins with a prologue delivered via montage and voice-over narration of both the main bullet points of the previous film and a post-apocalyptic set-up. After a nuclear war, the world became desolate; gas is a commodity worth killing for, and gangs of thugs rape and murder mercilessly for it. Max himself, now a silent and brooding loner, finds himself in the middle of a conflict between a community of decent people protecting an oil refinery and a ruthless gang who wants to take it from them. Will the Road Warrior help the community fight off the vicious gang of freaks or carry on with his own survival?
Mad Max 2 is better known to Americans as The Road Warrior. That title was never used during production. When it came time to distribute the film in the States nobody here was all that familiar with the first Mad Max film since it was barely released in theaters here. Thinking nobody would want to see a sequel to a film they’d never heard of, a new title and a prologue to catch people up to speed were slapped on the film. This is one of the few instances where a regional name change fits the film and is superior to the original title.
Everything about Mad Max 2 is better than its predecessor. The story is tighter, the chases are expertly crafted, the characters are more vividly realized, and there is a very clear vision of the world the story exists in. As a result, Mad Max 2 ranks among the pantheon of early eighties sci-fi films (The Empire Strikes Back, Blade Runner, The Thing, E.T.) that became some of the most influential films of their time.
As a matter of fact, Mad Max 2 is very un-sci-fi in that its setting in the future is the only thing linking it to that genre. There are no space ships, aliens, clones, or trips through time; this world is merely a more desolate version of ours – a western with cars, you could say. As such, Mad Max 2 is the blueprint for every zombie-less post-apocalyptic adventure (see: Waterworld).
The film itself recycled the Man-With-No-Name conceit of Yojimbo (which was also used in Eastwood’s spaghetti westerns) in that its central character rides into town to help the good defend against the bad. We know the character as Max, but are the only ones privy to his past life. To these people, he is the mythic Road Warrior. The film even canonizes him as a legend during its final moments.
This time, the budget is naturally higher than its predecessor at $4 million Australian ($4,291,661 US). Yet it still retains a low-budget aesthetic. There is no polish or extravagance that one might find in a film like Raiders of the Lost Ark, the other significant action film of that year. Mad Max 2 retains and exceeds the grit of its predecessor and refuses to pull any punches. The film seems to be aimed more for 1981’s punks and underground than any mainstream audience, its costumes borrowing heavily from thrift and S&M clothing racks.
Not only was the film’s visual aesthetic unique, but the stunts were more daring than any film before. During a climactic chase sequence that runs between ten and twenty minutes in length, a tanker truck rolls over and, earlier, a stuntman is sent flying sixty feet off his motorcycle toward the camera. Consider this: every crash, every jump from one vehicle to another – every stunt - was real; unlike today, nothing you see in this film was faked… well, except maybe when a villain’s eyes bug-out just before he meets his end.
The only shortcoming in the entire film is that the dialogue can be occasionally overwhelmed by Brian May’s score. Otherwise, we are given a sequel that exceeds the original in every way and also works well as a stand-alone film. One could not be blamed for going so far as claiming The Road Warrior as the only must-see film of the entire trilogy.
Especially when one considers where the series went from here.
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)
“Call it what you like. It still smells like shit to me.”
The third Mad Max film was released four years after its predecessor. That isn’t because of any issues with funding or screenwriting, as with some films. As far as my research has found, there were no plans for a third Mad Max film by any of its creators. However, when a film about a group of kids living in the wild and discovered by an adult was in development, someone jumped at the opportunity to turn it into the next Mad Max sequel.
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (a title so cheesy, I cringe as I write it) feels and looks like the afterthought it was.
In case you don’t remember, Max is traveling the Australian desert when his vehicle and belongings get stolen by a pair of thieves (one looks and behaves exactly like a key character from Mad Max 2 – even played by the same actor – but is supposedly not the same character). Max follows the thieves to a make-shift town called Bartertown, sort of the Mos Eisley of the Mad Max series, if you will. Max finds himself hired by Auntie Entity (played adequately by Tina Turner) to kill her rival in a cage match known as Thunderdome. Entity wants to rule Bartertown and it’s easier for her to do so without anyone in the way. After refusing to complete his task, Max is banished and stumbles upon a community of children.
It’s exasperating just writing the plot to this film, so far removed is it from its predecessors. Where the other films in the series were earnest and straightforward, Thunderdome is silly and campy. It feels like a parody of a Mad Max film. First of all, the Thunderdome match isn’t exactly Spartacus – it’s a fricken bungee fight with Max bouncing around the dome like he was Qbert! A guy literally jumps up and down on top of The Road Warrior! Oh, and that guy is actually a masked Downs man-child with a midget strapped to his back who speaks in a retarded version of English and says things like “You smart!” and “You want food in face?”.
If that isn’t enough to make your jaw drop, Max, the silent mythic antihero of The Road Warrior, is turned here into a put-upon exasperated reluctant hero that has more in common with the Sgt. Riggs of Lethal Weapon’s later sequels. In Mad Max 2, our antihero meets a true wild child, all wild hair, grunts, and armed with a razor-sharp boomerang. The tribe of kids Max meets in Thunderdome are like Peter Pan’s Lost Boys-meets-Ewoks; two great flavors pureed into shit – it’s a bit nutty.
Mad Max is neutered and watered-down into a kid’s film.
As with the other films, Thunderdome concludes with a chase scene. However, short of one shot of a spear sticking through a man’s leg, it completely lacks any of the danger and excitement of the previous films. Where Toecutter and Humungus met their end with head-on collisions, a similar character seems to meet with the same fate here (vehicles crash, big explosion). But not in a film like Thunderdome; this is the kind of film where that character survives the explosion and is stuck to the front of our hero’s vehicle a lá Wyle E. Coyote. This is a film where a villainess who spends the rest of her screen time trying to look menacing simply laughs off the hero’s victory and drives away.
Where are the colorful and ruthless characters?
Where are the horrific deaths?
Things become less baffling when it is discovered that director and co-creator George Miller lost interest in the project when producer and co-creator Byron Kennedy died while location scouting (the film is dedicated to Byron). Miller is credited as the film’s director, however he limited his focus to just the action scenes. The rest of the film was directed by George Ogilvie, a TV director who’s done little work before and since.
While Miller’s heart may be missing from the project, the money sure isn’t. You can feel the $12 million (AUD) budget in nearly every scene. The sets are bigger, there are more locations, and the extras number in the hundreds. Bartertown has a population big enough to rival Waterworld (which is huge for this series). Even the children number in the dozens. Money was clearly spent on everything except the things that matter more to the series than the vehicles and costume design – the characters and the story. It is inconceivable that the only people credited with this script are the same two people responsible for Mad Max 2 (Miller and Terry Hayes) – especially since the script was probably green-lit before Kennedy’s death.
It has been said that two scenes were deleted for time. In one, Max has a dream that flashes back to the first film. He wakes, crying, realizing he has become a shell of who he once was, no different from the biker gang who terrorized his community long ago. In another, Max takes a dying child to the top of a sand dune, the lights of Bartertown in sight, and tells the boy they’ve reached Never Never Land. These two scenes represent the only part of the film that has any emotional depth or relationship to the rest of the series. Would they have saved the film? Not at all, but they certainly would’ve given it some legitimacy.
Two years after Thunderdome, Mel Gibson began his second franchise, Lethal Weapon, and was on his way to superstardom.
Thunderdome was the first Mad Max film George Miller produced. He went on to write, produce, or direct many films, such as The Witches of Eastwick, Happy Feet, Babe and Babe: Pig in the City. He’s had his eye on several projects that either fell apart (a live-action Justice League film) or went to other directors (he was paid off Contact with the rights to Mad Max 2 and 3). He’s currently prepping two new Mad Max films – Mad Max: Fury Road and Mad Max: Furiosa – with Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, and Nicholas Hoult for a 2012 release.
The influences of the Mad Max trilogy are too many to number. Car culture, pop culture, and film (to name a few) have all been touched by the series – most especially by Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. Vernon Wells, who played the chief baddie of that film, appeared in Weird Science in a similar role. Cartoon series such as The Simpsons, South Park, Futurama, and even The Super Mario Brothers Super Show! have all done Mad Max-influenced episodes. The video games Borderlands, Fallout 3, and World of Warcraft make references to the trilogy. A character in Alan Moore’s graphic novel Watchmen reaches a breaking point similar to Max’s and offers the same choice to a foe that involves handcuffs (this also served as inspiration to Saw). Even some music videos and album covers have had the Mad Max touch (‘California Love’, anyone?).
Filmmakers David Fincher, Guillermo del Toro, Robert Rodriguez, and James Cameron – all visionaries in their own right – have cited The Road Warrior as having a major influence on them.
The Mad Max trilogy is a unique one, full of ups and downs, groundbreaking stunts, and iconic characters and production designs. It may be inconsistent, but it’s full of enough cinematic treasures to make it more valuable than a lifetime supply of fuel. Without it, so much of cinema’s Modern Age (and other creative mediums) wouldn’t have been the same.
Step right up and watch the man lay down the rubber road for many things to come.
Mad Max - 7/10
Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior – 9/10
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome – 3/10
Should you see them? Rent Mad Max and The Road Warrior. Skip Thunderdome.
The Mad Max trilogy is available separately on DVD or streaming. Mad Max 2 is also available on Blu-ray.