When one thinks of great movies, Australian cinema is not usually the first thing that comes to mind. However, this is not to say that it has gone completely unnoticed. Australian cinema has been a sort of boom and bust industry since its inception in the late 1800’s. When it is booming, it can be one of the most successful film industries in the world. Nonetheless, when it is down, it can be so unproductive as to only produce a few movies in a decade. After several previous attempts to solve the slump of the film industry, the Australian government created the Australian Film Commission (AFC) in 1975. The AFC was a used to help the film industry by providing government funding to Australian filmmakers to facilitate the production of internationally competitive films. This made it much easier to screen Australian films across the globe for an international audience. Upon its inception, the effects of the AFC were seen almost immediately with the release of Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) as well as Ken Hannam’s Sunday to Far Away (1975), two of the first internationally successful Australian films. According to Film History: An Introduction, a textbook by Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell, “The AFC helped finance about fifty features in its first five years, out performing its European counterparts by recovering about 38 percent of its investments.” The era of films made during the 1970’s and 1980’s as a result of the AFC’s funding have been referred to as Australia’s New Wave of cinema in which filmmakers made some of the most memorable and influential films of all time. Around the same time, two young ambitious Australian filmmakers, George Miller and Byron Kennedy, formed a partnership that would bring Australian cinema to the top of the box office without the help of government funding. Their breakthrough film, Mad Max (1978), directed by Miller, would forever change the science-fiction genre. However, it would be only the first of a trilogy of Mad Max films. It was followed by both Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981) and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985) both directed by Miller. The trilogy follows a character, Max Rockatansky, AKA “Mad Max”, (played by Mel Gibson in his breakthrough role), through his escapades in a post-apocalyptic Australian Outback. As a former police officer whose family was murdered in the first film, Max has become referred to as a “shell of a man.” He drives through the outback alone in his V-8 interceptor in search of what has become the most precious commodity on the planet: Gasoline. George Miller’s 1981 film, Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, provided the world with a rather grim prediction of what the world may become if it continues to consume oil in the way it does. In comparison to the other Mad Max films, The Road Warrior is viewed as being far superior to the original Mad Max, dispelling the myth that most sequels are inferior to their originals. The Road Warrior is superior for numerous reasons. The film used over the top stunts to create an action packed plot, only further highlighted by its uniquely designed costumes and props. It made very notable achievements in these fields as well as filming and editing through using fender mounted cameras in numerous chase scenes throughout the film. As a result of its superior cinematography, it won numerous awards in those fields. In addition, what the original film did in terms of excessive dialogue, the second made up for in terms of lack-there-of. According to film critic John Cochrane of the Internet Movie Database, the film’s lack of dialogue “was smart enough to let its settings, action and costumes do the talking.” Cochrane said it best. In fact, Gibson only had a total of seventeen lines of dialogue in the movie in which is considered by many to be his best. The Road Warrior tells the story of how Max reluctantly helps a group of people living on the site of one of the last oil refineries. They have come under attack by hundreds of members of a ruthless leather-clad biker gang led by a man who goes by the name Lord Humungus. He and his brutal warriors only want to exploit them for the tanker full of oil that they have remaining so they can continue to thrive. Max agrees to help the people under attack on the basis that he can have his share of the oil once they escape to a safe region in the north.
The movie has several themes that are very fitting of Australian cinema. For one, it portrays life in the Outback, a very common setting for Australian films. However, it does so in a very unusual manner. While period films about the outback were quite common, with films such as Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout (1971) as well as the aforementioned Picnic at Hanging Rock, a film representing the future in the outback was a very new concept. It set the standard for displaying the world in a post-apocalyptic world and started the trend amongst the many B-grade science fiction films that followed.
Yet, at the same time, this setting has numerous parallels to the classic Western genre seen decades before; Mad Max fits the role of the solitary cowboy in the west, slightly bitter about his past but in need of a way to reconnect with humanity. The settlers in the oil refinery attempt to provide Max with this connection, which is displayed numerous times through his interactions with Pappagallo, the leader of the group. While conversing over an offer to help the settlers, Max declines and says, “I got all I need here,” in which Pappagallo responds, “You don't have a future. I could offer you that.” He is trying to convince Max to help the group fight off the bandits and move away from the outback to the north where he can live with them in peace thus attempting to get Max in touch with his humanity.
Another prevalent theme in Australian cinema is “mateship”. The Road Warrior takes a very different approach on this theme as well. It has a strong emphasis on the lack thereof. Mel Gibson’s character seems to be entirely solitary, with the exception of his dog (whom he even distantly refers to simply as “Dog”). Yet, even when he meets the Gyrocopter pilot and is given numerous opportunities to befriend him as a partner in their escapades, he declines. Throughout the entire movie, Max remains very distant from everyone accept for one character, the little boy credited as “The Feral Kid.” While Max by no means shares any real friendship with the feral kid, we see Max show some compassion by giving him a music box he found at the beginning of the film. The child overly reciprocates this friendship by constantly trying to be with Max and even refusing to go with anyone else when they all make their escape. However, Max continues to show his lack of friendliness by repeatedly trying to shove the child away.
The character of Max Rockatansky can relate back to several other characters seen in classroom films. For example, his bitterness toward life is very typical the “Angry young man” characters seen in the Lindsay Anderson’s 1968 film If…. Both Max and Mick Travis, (the leader of the angry students) have a bitter outlook on the world around them due to the way they have been treated. On the other hand, Max’s distance from society can also be compared to the character of Pauline Parker in Peter Jackson’s 1994 film Heavenly Creatures. Both characters are of the slow-to-warm type and have very few or no friends. However, Pauline differs from Max in that she accepts an offer of friendship while Max continuously declines. All three of the movies can be tied back together in that, in the end, all the characters end up killing people because of their issues. In fact, in The Road Warrior, Pappagallo confronts Max about his issues when he says,
“What is it with you, huh? […] Tell me your story, Max. C'mon. […] What burned you out, huh? Kill one man too many? See too many people die? Lose some family? Oh, so that's it, you lost your family? That makes you something special, does it?”
Pappagallo realizes that Max’s past is haunting him, but tries to bring him to the realization that he is not the only one that has suffered a loss in the past. He says that everyone has his or her problems but must learn to get past them. Twenty-five years after its release, the world still faces the main problem that addressed in the movie. The oil crisis the world faces today is worse than ever before. In fact, some say that the world is already at war over it. In the opening narration of the film, the narrator makes an eerie reference to what could easily become a very similar situation:
“The world was once powered by the black fuel, and the desert sprouted great cities of pipe and steel. Gone now, swept away. For reasons long forgotten, two mighty warrior tribes went to war and touched off a blaze, which engulfed them all. Without fuel, they were nothing. They built a house of straw. The thundering machines sputtered and stopped. Their leaders talked and talked and talked. But nothing could stem the avalanche. Their world crumbled. The cities exploded; a whirlwind of looting, a firestorm of fear. Men began to feed on men. On the roads, it was a white line nightmare. 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. And in this maelstrom of decay, ordinary men were battered and smashed.”
With the current oil crisis, the threat of nuclear war between numerous countries, as well as crooked politics in nearly every nation, the world now has a very serious problem on its hands. If the consumers of the world continue to use oil in the way it has been used for the past century, it is very possible that we, too, could end up in a world like that of Mad Max in The Road Warrior.
Works Cited

"Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 29 April

2007, 10:11 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 29 April 2007

Bordwell, David and Kristin Thompson. Film History: An Introduction. New York:

McGraw Hill, 2003

“The Road Warrior.” Internet Movie Database. 1990-2007. Mar 9 2007

< http://imdb.com/title/tt0082694/ >

“Cinema of Australia." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 29 April 2007, 10:11

UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 29 April 2007