Mad Max 2 (1981)
Mad Max 2 (released as The Road Warrior in the United States) is a 1981 Australian post-apocalyptic action film directed by George Miller. It is the second installment in the Mad Max franchise, with Mel Gibson reprising his role as “Mad” Max Rockatansky. The film’s tale of a community of settlers moved to defend themselves against a roving band of marauders follows an archetypical “Western” frontier movie motif, as does Max’s role as a hardened man whose decision to assist the settlers helps him rediscover his humanity. Filming took place in locations around Broken Hill, in the Outback of New South Wales. The film was released on 24 December 1981 to widespread critical acclaim, with particular praise given to Gibson’s performance, the musical score, cinematography,
action sequences, costume design and sparing use of dialogue. It was also a box office success, and the film’s post-apocalyptic and punk aesthetics helped popularise the genre in film and fiction writing. At the 10th Saturn Awards, the film won Best International Film and was nominated for five more awards: Best Director, Best Actor for Gibson, Best Supporting Actor for Bruce Spence, Best Writing, and Best Costumes for Norma Moriceau. Mad Max 2 is widely hailed as both one of the greatest action movies of all time and one of the greatest sequels ever made, and fan clubs for the film and “road warrior”-themed activities continue into the 21st century.
Preceded by Mad Max in 1979, the film was followed by Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome in 1985 and Mad Max: Fury Road in 2015.
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Plot.
After a global war resulted in widespread oil shortages, civilization collapsed, and the world descended into barbarism. Now, former policeman Max Rockatansky, haunted by the death of his family, drives his supercharged black V-8 Pursuit Special around the desert wilderness of Australia, scavenging for food and petrol with his Cattle Dog. He is able to outmaneuver a small group of marauders led by the unhinged biker Wez using his driving skills and a sawed-off shotgun and gets some petrol from a wrecked semi-truck. Later, Max finds an apparently abandoned gyrocopter and decides to collect its fuel, but is ambushed by the pilot. Max overpowers the man with Dog’s help, sparing his life in return for being led to a working oil refinery the pilot has discovered.
They arrive during the daily attack on the facility by a motley motorized gang, whose members include Wez.
The next day, Max witnesses several cars leave the besieged compound and get chased down by marauders. He rescues the sole survivor of one car and strikes a deal to return him to the complex in exchange for fuel, but the man dies shortly after Max gets him back, and the leader of the settlers, Papagallo, reneges on the deal. The settlers are about to confiscate Max’s car and cast him out of their compound when the marauders return to parley. A feral child who lives in the wasteland near the refinery kills Wez’s partner with a metal boomerang and Wez wants revenge,
but the gang’s leader, a muscular masked man called “Lord Humungus”, offers to spare the settlers’ lives in exchange for their fuel supply and leaves for the day.
With the settlers split about what to do, Max offers his own deal: he will bring them the semi-truck he saw earlier so they can try to haul away their tanker full of oil, if they return his car and give him as much fuel as he can carry. The settlers agree to let him try, and that night Max sneaks past the marauders on foot carrying fuel for the truck. He encounters the Gyro Captain and forces the man to fly him to the truck, which he is able to get started. It is somewhat damaged as Max passes through the marauders’ encampment on the way back to the refinery, but he makes it, followed by the gyrocopter.
Development.
Following the release of Mad Max, director George Miller received a number of offers from Hollywood, including one to direct First Blood,[citation needed] but he instead decided to develop a rock and roll movie, the working title of which was Roxanne. After working together on the novelization of Mad Max, Miller and Terry Hayes teamed up in Los Angeles to write Roxanne, but the script was ultimately shelved. Miller then became intrigued with the idea of returning to the world of Mad Max, as a larger budget would allow him to be more ambitious. He said: “Making Mad Max was a very unhappy experience for me. I had absolutely no control over the final product,” but “There was strong pressure to make a sequel, and I felt we could do a better job with a second movie.”
Filming.
Principal photography took place over the course of twelve weeks in the winter of 1981 near Broken Hill, New South Wales. The scene where the Pursuit Special rolls over and explodes was shot at Wilangee Road near the Mundi Mundi Plains lookout, just outside of Silverton. Filming also took place at the Pinnacles, which is where the set of the oil refinery compound was constructed.RELATED:
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Box office.
Mad Max 2 was a commercial success, grossing A$10.8 million in Australia alone, which was double what Mad Max had earned in the country to become the highest-grossing Australian film at the Australian box office. Despite making more than its predecessor, however, Mad Max 2 never held that record, because Gallipoli was released earlier in 1981 and grossed A$11.7 million in Australia. In the United States, with a gross of US$23.6 million and theatrical rentals of $11 million, the film also outperformed Mad Max. When that film was released in the U.S. in 1980, it did not receive a proper release from its distributor, American International Pictures, as AIP was in the final stages of a change of ownership after being bought by Filmways, Inc. a year earlier, and its box office was affected. Warner Bros. decided to release Mad Max 2 in the United States, but, recognising the first film was not well-known in
North America (although it was becoming more popular through cable channel showings), they decided to change the name of the sequel to The Road Warrior. The advertising for the film, including print ads, trailers, and TV commercials, did not refer to the Max character at all and shied away from the fact that the film was a sequel. For the majority of American viewers, their first inkling of The Road Warrior being a sequel to Mad Max was when they saw the black and white, archival footage from the first film during the prologue of the second. When Vestron Video later released Mad Max on home video, they capitalized by labeling it “the thrilling predecessor to The Road Warrior”.
Outside of the U.S., the film earned rentals of $25 million (including Australia), for a worldwide total of $36 million, making it the highest-grossing Australian film worldwide