Its hard to ignore just how much of an impact the sequel to Mad Max left when it premiered in 1981. While the first film became a cult classic, it faced mixed reception upon release and didn’t leave too much of an impression on the world as a whole. The Road Warrior, on the other hand, blew both the public and critics away, with many people praising the updates the film made to the style and feel of the original film, how it essentially popularized the post-apocalyptic punk genre into film and writing, and how it was at the time one of the highest grossing Australian films worldwide. Even after all these years, The Road Warrior is still remembered and highly regarded by many. Following a war that resulted in the collapse of civilization, the remaining inhabitants have revolved into feral scavengers who thrive on the land and steal from the other to survive. Within this world lives Max (played infamously by Mel Gibson), a former policemen who lost his mind after his wife and son was murdered, causing him to drift along the wasteland searching for any scraps of food or oil. What he finds instead is a small community compound which is being threatened by The Marauders, a motley motorcycle gang whose leader, Lord Humungus (played by Kjell Nilsson), is planning to destroy the compound and steal their fuel tanks. Wanting to just get gas for his car, Max will ultimately find himself helping out the community and facing off against the gang to truly become ‘the road warrior’. Even after Fury Road came out years later, people still seemed to consider The Road Warrior as the best Mad Max movie, despite how on the surface, it doesn’t do that much to stand out for itself.

This movie does have the benefit that people don’t have to have seen the previous film in order to watch this one; acting as an almost redux of the formula considering that this movie feels so largely dissimilar from its previous film. The style changes feel pretty natural, like its an evolution of the what the first one could have accomplished if it had more of a budget and maybe gone bigger with its ideas. On that level, its structured itself out pretty nicely and laid the groundwork out for some pretty nice opportunities to where they could take this simple, yet memorable idea. What the movie decides to go with is something that might be a little too familiar even for the common movie goer. Following similar beats to Joseph Campbell’s book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, (which director George Miller was inspired by), the narrative for the film is about as basic as you could expect. This archetype of narrative where ‘good guy comes to place where people are being hurt by bad people, good guy won’t help until he eventually does and saves the day’ was something that had been overused in cowboys stories ages before this film, but this wouldn’t be too much of an issue if the movie added anything that differentiate it from that basic set-up, which is what a lot of the great stories that took from it did. It is pretty strange to feel like Mad Max needs to have a really intricate narrative, but what manages to grab people and draw them in is how the story can surprise you without even expecting it, and while this movie didn’t need to do anything that distinctly different, it needed something unique to add to its formula, because otherwise its obviously clear where the movie’s going. Every scene of this movie is predictable because of this very by-the-numbers script handled by Miller, along with fellow screenwriters Terry Hayes and Brian Hannant, and the movie’s pacing doesn’t really allow for any moments of thought or even depth because it doesn’t feel like it cares about that stuff.

What arguably hurts the movie worse than having a very predictable plot is how generic and paper-thin its characters are. Again, this isn’t a franchise that really needs to rely on having really deep, interesting characters, but with how this environment is set up, the pieces were literally in place to go crazy with these roles and to make them easily stand out. But either through just basic writing or because the crew didn’t focus too much on the other people, almost every single character in this is generic and extremely forgettable, especially by apocalyptic futures standards. Max has always been a bit of a blank slate character; mainly observing the crazy environment as opposing to actively contributing to anything that interesting (which is a stable of George Miller’s story), but even by that standards, there’s really nothing to him. He barely even speaks in the film (roughly about 18 times) and whatever he does say, isn’t very distinct or character-driven, it’s not really taking advantage of what he has gone through and what you could do with his mental state and environment. Gibson is perfectly fine for the role (pretty much anyone could play Max considering what’s required), but he has the look and the feel, so it works out. The side characters are so boring and basic, it feels like the movie forgets to give them names or even that much dialogue, they are just parts in the machine to keep the film going, nothing more or less. The compound he’s stuck in has no personality, so why does the audience care if it’s taken over, and if everybody is nameless and adds nothing, why should It matter if any of them die. While some of them are okay actors, the roles they have are so blanket and generic that they really don’t have much to work with. The main villain does at least have a memorable look to him (despite being pretty similar to a certain camp killer), but he has this really weird quiet raspy voice that just doesn’t work when it comes out of this large, massive figure.

Arguably what is the saving grace of this movie is probably what won people over originally, the look and the atmosphere to it. Considering the movie did benefit from using Australia’s outback to get a lot of these desolate environments, it does look pretty accurate to how a movie like this should feel, as opposed to some of the other movies which do feel apocalyptic, but in a more stylized sense. The production design supervised by Patrick Clayton for these films have created their own iconography that has become infamous among several different forms of pop culture, and you can feel the effort that has come from all these talented people into making these films look distinct. This one feels dirty and unpolished, and especially with the graphic and crude imagery, it feels like it still carries its low-budget style, but with more money put behind it to feel bigger. This isn’t even mentioning the costume handled by Norma Moriceau, which have that nice grit and rugged feel to them which makes everything look tattered but has enough distinct ingenuity to its design that it stands out nicely without being too dramatic. Even most of the action has that now infamous driving style of action but doesn’t do anything that drastically special. It can sometimes be a little too choppily edited by David Stiven, Tim Wellburn, and Michael Balson, which makes some of the action not as enjoyable to watch, but they do know to hold off for the big climax and they do know how to go out on a high note, even if the ending is a little abrupt and feels pretty underwhelming.

Despite all of these listed points, this movie is still perfectly fine. It is pretty generic all things considered, but for the time and after the first one delivered something not as striking, it has good moments, but definitely needed something a bit more. This movie did help shape Mad Max into what the franchise was and helped make its sequels be even better by comparison, but the tragedy comes with how this movie has become pretty much redundant after them. With the first one’s gritty storytelling, Thunderdome’s handling of its narrative, and Fury Road’s amazing car-chase thrill ride, Road Warrior doesn’t really feel very distinct within its franchise and feels like a lesser to the other films. Even still, it’s still a decent movie to go back to and see where the legend of the Road Warrior really began for the character and for the franchise itself.

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