Road Warrior

[Susan]

What is it about this film that makes it the everyman's "guy movie"? Admittedly I liked it years ago but after having recently watched it I'm at a loss at how it still remains on most top 20 guy flick lists. Sure i like the post apocalyptic alure, but it's hard to overlook a future where the power is in the oil, but they aren't doing anything productive with it except filling up their gas tanks and driving around.

Observations:
1. Bandanas are all the rage in the future
2. While there is no electricity, there is some invention that has provided all women with the ability crimp hair!
3. 7 year old chaka-wannabe feral kids can catch a flying boomarang with razor edges and you can't!
4. Bad guys like to wear sadomasochistic attire including a leather thong
5. While women are readily available, they are often discarded. Who needs a woman when you have a boy toy riding on the back of your bike?

Am i missing something? ;-)



Post Edited (05-22-05 22:16)

[Menard]

Cool! Another opportunity to talk about Mad Max movies (heh...heh).

[BeyondTheGrave]

 Road Warrior is one of my favorite movies, really I don't know why. I guess because you ride around in a kick ass car, doing nothing, just to stop to get food and oil and most of the time to get those items, you have to kick someones ass. Ahh the freedom.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You can’t give it, you can't buy it, and you just don't get it!-Aeon Flux

[ulthar]

rich andrini wrote:

> you ride around in a kick ass car, doing
> nothing, just to stop to get food and oil and most of the time
> to get those items, you have to kick someones ass.

That's it.  The car and the fighting.   What's not to love?

[Dr. Kobb]

There's pretty explosions, too!  We like seeing things go 'BOOM'!

[odinn7]

Oh, the horror...the horror...This being my most favorite movie of all time, I feel the need to say something worthwhile to defend it. Unfortunately, I can't come up with too much except to point some things out:
1) Car chases- way cool car chases and stunts.
2) Loner hero- he's ruthless when he needs to be yet deep down, he still has a human side.
3) Bad guys- these bad guys give you many reasons to hate them so when they get it, you can really appreciate the ways that they die.
4) Dog- "Dog" is the coolest dog you're ever going to see. Let's see Lassie keep someone in line with a shotgun the way Dog does.
5) Car chases- did I mention the car chases?
6) Violence- Who doesn't love the scenes where Max gets to clean up the wasteland a little bit? The final chase sequence contains some real ultra-cool scenes. The guy standing on top of the cab that gets a load of buckshot between the legs or the guy in the red car who's head explodes all over the inside of the windshield when Max blasts him...tell me those aren't cool.

I also beg to differ with your idea about electricity. The compound clearly has a generator and they have electricity. OK, would they bother to crimp their hair? I doubt it so point taken.
The feral kid has a steel mesh glove to catch the boomerang. Who doesn't want one of these?
As far as the clothing and partner choices of some of the bad guys...well, there happen to be gay people in the world now so why couldn't there be a gay bad guy in the wasteland? Honestly, I don't know why that was thrown in there but it just added to the overall oddness of the movie for the time that it came out.

Anyway, did I mention the way cool car chases?

[Menard]

And I just wanted to add to what Odinn7 said by saying that it has way cool car chases. (:

[Mr Hockstatter]

You have to understand, when people are living out in the middle of a wasteland and the women look like they just spent four hours in hair and makeup, you will never, ever hear a guy complain about that.  

And when you have a dune buggy run straight into the front end of a semi truck, and you get a hellacious crunch! smash! crap goes flying everywhere!  Hey, it don't get better than that.  And the guy who's dune buggy got pushed off the side of the road, doing about 60, but there was a big ditch there and he (minus his dune buggy) just sailed through the air, free as a bird, and then thump! into the opposite bank of the ditch...pure beauty.  And there's something really special about somebody doing 60, cranking open the nitrous oxide bottle, and smoking the tires.  I mean, he was already doing 60!  

The only thing better was listening to the supercharger wind out on the black interceptor in the big chase scene at the end of Mad Max.

[odinn7]

"The only thing better was listening to the supercharger wind out on the black interceptor in the big chase scene at the end of Mad Max."

....drool....

[trekgeezer]

One of the best reasons to see Road Warrior is to see Virginia Hey (blue lady from Farscape), at least the part before the bad guys riddle her with arrows.

[Mr Hockstatter]

That was Zhaan?  Holly crap.  Never would have guessed that in a million years.

[raj]

I'll echo what the other guys have said, just wanted to add that there's lotsa cool car chases.

[Chris]

Hmm, it's good, but long-time fans like me eventually plump for the first outing of near-future madness. The low budget is more apparent, there are crude patches and a rather muddled narrative in compasisson to MM2, but the action scenes are what its about and few before or since have been filmed as well. My only real gripe with Road Warrior is the final chase scene. The truck, petrol tanker, passengers and bolted-on bits mean that the whole ensemble has a top speed of only 60mph, meaning that the 'chasing' pack of machines has to virtually queue behind it. Additionally, the marauders only attack in ones and twos and usually from one side only ....if they'd done a combined attack and say surrounded the vehicle it would have been all over. But really, these are my only quibbles. Some critics complain about the lack of plot or characterisation- but much more detail would have really slowed it down. Its's a real director's film.

[Master Blaster]

Me like watch cars go BOOM!!!

[Menard]

THE ROAD WARRIOR speaks the international language of the male: BOOM BOOM, BANG BANG, POW POW, and VROOM VROOM. This makes it easily understandable to all.