What is Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior about?
The original Mad Max was all about showing Max’s loss of humanity, his transition from an MFP officer to just another crazy person on a highway to hell. The Road Warrior picks up with Max, and the world itself, in a deeper darkness. In this case, his grief has caused him to disassociate from others in the wasteland. Not just the scavengers but good people who are trying to restore a sense of order to the world. Max must learn to reconnect, before its too late. And because he’s the hero of the story, his emotional state and actions affect the future of this universe. He can be part of its continued decay. Or its revival.
Cast
- Max Rockatansky – Mel Gibson
- Dog – Dog (it’s true)
- The Gyro Captain – Bruce Spence
- Pappagallo – Michael Preston
- Feral Kid – Emil Minty
- Warrior Woman – Virginia Hey
- Lord Humungus – Kjell Nilsson
- Wez – Vernon Wells
- Toadie – Max Phipps
- Written by – Terry Hayes | George Miller | Brian Hannant
- Directed by – George Miller
The ending of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior explained
Recap
The end of The Road Warrior begins after Max’s attempt to leave the settlement by himself. Humungus’s crew tracks him down, runs him off the road, then unalives his wonderful, amazing dog, Dog. The timely detonation of a booby trap saves Max’s life. Gyro Captain finds and recovers Max. Back at the oil refinery, the community prepares to flee north. Max pushes to be the one to drive the rig.
The attempted escape leads to a final conflict, in the form of the Humungus gang chasing Max driving the tanker. Both leaders perish—Pappagallo to a spear, Humungus in a head-on collision, with the rig (that Max barely survives). It turns out the tanker was a decoy, filled with sand instead of gasoline. The remnants of the gang lose interest. Elsewhere, the rest of the community is safely on their way. Gyro Captain becomes the new leader. The Feral Kid turns out to be the film’s narrator and the community’s future leader.
Adult Feral Kid: And so began the journey north, to safety, to our place in the sun. Among us, we found a new leader—the man who came from the sky. The Gyro Captain. And just as Pappagallo had planned, we traveled far beyond the reach of men on machines. The juice, the precious juice, was hidden in the vehicles. As for me, I grew to manhood. In the fullness of time, I became the leader. The chief of the great Northern Tribe. And the Road Warrior? That was the last we ever saw of him. He lives now…only in my memories.
The last shot is of Max on the side of the road, on his own.
Meaning
The original Mad Max was about the fall of society, order giving way to chaos. Max was a law enforcement officer dedicated to keeping the peace, but we watch as events cause him to lose his civilized self and become one of the “terminally crazy”.
The Road Warrior jumps ahead. Chaos reigns. The crazies have the power. And we see civilization, order, the better parts of humanity, all struggle to survive in such a world. That’s the macro situation.
Max’s personal situation is about independence versus community. For so much of the film, he’s resistant to personal relationships. Gyro Captain isn’t a companion but a prisoner. The refinery folk aren’t allies but part of a transaction. He doesn’t save the wounded man out of the kindness of his heart but because he can leverage the rescue for resources.
So Max operates in this middle ground between the awfulness of the Humungus gang and the positivity of the refinery people. His only real relationship is with Dog. And even then, he won’t give Dog a proper name. There’s a refusal to form meaningful commitments. That is, until the loss of his Pursuit Special and Dog, the two symbols of his solitude. It becomes clear he can’t survive by rejecting his humanity. The world is too cruel for that.
Once that realization happens, the relationship dynamics change. Gyro Captain is no longer Max’s prisoner but his rescuer. And Max offers to drive the rig for the community. No strings attached. No transaction. He wants to help. His presence is what makes the difference. Even if he doesn’t join the group for the long haul, he’s rediscovered an important part of himself. Good triumphs over evil. Order gains a bit of ground back from chaos. There’s hope for civilization.
That hope is implied through Adult Feral Kid’s closing reference to becoming chief of the great Northern Tribe. We know that this group not only survives but thrives. While “tribe” still implies a degree of nomadic wandering, it seems like civilization will begin to, eventually, find its footing. And it’s Mad Max he helped ensure that could happen.
The themes, message, and meaning of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior
No man is an island
Back in 1624, John Donne published a pretty crazy work called Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, and several steps in my Sicknes. He was in his 50s and really ill in a time period when doctors still didn’t wash their hands—there was a high chance he didn’t make it. He was also a famous author and poet. So of course he got introspective and philosophical. Each day, he’d write a new devotion that contained a meditation, an expostulation, and a prayer.
The titles are wild. Each day that passes becomes more grim.
- “The Strength and the function of the senses, and other faculties, change and fail.”
- “The physician is afraid.”
- “They use cordials, to keep the venom and malignity of the disease from the heart.”
- “They apply pigeons, to draw the vapours from the head.”
Devotion 17 is “Now, this bell tolling softly for another, says to me: Thou must die.” It starts like this: Perchance he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that.
Midway through, Donne states, No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.
It’s a declaration that we’re all united. To Donne, that was through God. But you could view it as agnostic and having more to do with our shared humanity. A community, no matter how big, depends on its every individual. Donne essentially says there’s a butterfly effect to each loss. And that it affects all of us in ways we may never realize.
What’s crazy is that I started writing all of this before doing any research about George Miller and John Donne. It was just a gut instinct to go to Donne. Then I got worried I was spending way too much time on John Donne. So I googled it. And it turns out there’s a quote from Mr. Miller from when he was doing press for Beyond the Thunderdome.
Miller: The main lesson I think [Max] learned from The Road Warrior was that no man is an island, that you can’t help but be involved in the community of men…
So there we have Miller using Donne’s exact phrase. To be fair, the phrase has become so popular that Miller could know it and know nothing about Donne or Donne’s Devotions. But, regardless, the sentiment is there.
Max’s journey in Road Warrior is about accepting people back into his life. Which ties back to the loss of his wife and son in the previous film. That was Max’s tipping point, the thing that turned him “mad”. In the few years since, you can imagine his grief had been pretty overwhelming. Why care when this cruel, awful place will take everything from you? It’s something that Pappagallo challenges him over prior to Max’s accident and the death of Dog.
Pappagallo: What is it with you, huh? What’re you looking for? Come on, Max. Everyone’s looking for something. You’re happy out there, are you? Eh? Wandering? One day blurring into another? You’re a scavenger, Max. You’re a maggot. You know that? You’re living off the corpse of the old world. Tell me your story, Max. Come on, tell me your story. What burned you out, huh? Kill one man too many? See too many people die? Lose some family? [Max walks away]. Oh, so that’s it. You lost some family. That make you something special, does it?! Eh?! Listen to me. [Max punches him]. Do you think you’re the only one that’s suffered. We’ve all been through it in here. But we haven’t given up. We’re still human beings, with dignity. But you? You’re out there with the garbage. You’re nothing.
It’s a pretty killer speech and it’s there to give the viewer insight into Max’s psyche. He did lose someone. He has wallowed in his suffering. Even though he’s surviving, he’s given up on being human. On actually living. He’s on the path to being like the other scavengers. That’s the switch that’s thrown after Gyro Captain rescues him. Max, having, like John Donne, been on the brink of death, comes to appreciate, at least a little bit more, the value of his own life. The value of others.
Why is the movie called Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior?
So when it released in Australia, the movie was called Mad Max 2. Pretty simple. Max was a normal guy. He’s now one of the many crazy people in a crazy, post-apocalyptic world. This is a second story about him. It’s a typical sequel title.
Except when Warner Bros. did the US release, they decided Mad Max 2 wasn’t good enough because Mad Max hadn’t been that popular in the States. So they called it The Road Warrior. Obviously a lot of people understood it was connected to Mad Max, especially as the years went on and Mel Gibson became a bonafide Hollywood star. At this point, the two titles are pretty much interchangeable. It’s currently streaming on Max, and they just combined the two into the mega title Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior.
But The Road Warrior moniker is cool because it elevates Max to more of a figure, a myth, a legend. He goes from an individual, Max, to a folk hero. It’s an appropriate shift when the sequel is so much more fantastic than the original film.
Important motifs in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior
Dog and the Feral Kid
So we’ve talked about how the film pivots on Max going from loner to being part of a community. Dog and the Feral Kid end up as externalizations of those mindsets. When Max is on his own, he has Dog as a companion. There’s still a kindness to Max and a desire for companionship. But as amazing as dogs are, they’re not people (though that’s often a good thing). So in this case, Dog reflects Max’s fear of connection. He can’t handle a more serious relationship with anyone because, after the deaths of his wife and son, he’s too afraid to lose someone else he cares about.
Dog’s death is essentially the end of that part of Max. Afterwards, he’s ready to reconnect with people. And the Feral Kid replaces Dog. He helps Max in similar ways to Dog, though can do a lot more since he has, you know, hands with fingers and opposable thumbs. It’s not like Max adopts the Feral Kid or anything. But the time they do spend together has a lot of narrative meaning, as it implies a degree of closure for Max when it comes to his own son.
Questions & answers about Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior
Did Max know the tank was full of sand?
Nope. He found out when he got out. It makes sense—he was so new to the community and a last minute addition to the mission…why tell him?
Is Jedediah the pilot the Gyro Captain?
Jedediah is from Thunderdome and is played by the same actor, Bruce Spence, and is also, like the Gyro Captain, a pilot. Despite the similarities, Miller is on record saying they’re different characters. So it seems more of a case of wanting to work with the same people and not thinking much of it, more so than any kind of easter egg or continuation from Road Warrior.
Why did Pappagallo say “We’ve won. It’s over, boy” when Humungus was still after the truck?
Because the rest of the tribe had left in a separate convoy, with the fuel. The group with the tanker had already successfully distracted Humungus long enough to ensure the tribe could escape the compound. You could maybe imagine that Pappagallo was going to get the Feral Kid and abandon Max to Humungus. So he wasn’t all that interested in what happened to the rig. Or Max. But the truck was crawling with scavengers and enemy vehicles were all around. So it was a pretty bad time for Pappagallo to be so careless. “We won!” Bro, you’re surrounded by murderous heathens.
How did the Gyro Captain survive the crash?
Because he’s the mother f***ing Gyro Captain.
Now it’s your turn
Have more unanswered questions about Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior? Are there themes or motifs we missed? Is there more to explain about the ending? Please post your questions and thoughts in the comments section! We’ll do our best to address every one of them. If we like what you have to say, you could become part of our movie guide!
