The Road Warrior (1981)

Film: The Road Warrior (1981)
Stars: Mel Gibson, Bruce Spence, Mike Preston, Max Phipps, Vernon Wells, Emil Minty, Kjell Nilsson
Director: George Miller
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

I sometimes have to remember that while I am at heart a film fan more than a literary fan (it's just a fact), I do love books, and perhaps most importantly, came to them first.  As a result, I will probably always be a bit more driven by story than I am by visuals onscreen, more awash in what is happening that what it looks like.  Don't get me wrong-I'm as big of a sucker for visuals as the next guy, and occasionally there are people who can push me past narrative structure being loose or nonexistent (looking at you Terrence Malick), but if there isn't enough plot in a film, I tend to lose interest even if what's happening onscreen is arresting.  This was the case with The Road Warrior, a film that is impossible to deny its importance even if I must confess I didn't love it.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film takes place in the wake of the previous film's events, with Gibson's Max (now armed with the memory of a dead wife & child) roving across the outback in a hyped-up death mobile, living off of scraps and whatever spare gasoline he can find (while still looking very much the impossibly handsome movie star).  He chances across a man who leads him to an oil refinery that is being watched by a group of nomads (because apparently in the apocalypse people largely forgot how to speak English), who are at war with the Marauders, headed by Lord Humungus (Nilsson) and his psychotic henchman Wez (Wells, who is clearly intended to be gay even if that's not mentioned as he's obsessed with his silent partner The Golden Youth, a leather-clad twink).  The film progresses with Max convincing the people to let him take on Lord Humungus, and in a series of battles we see him do just that, with Wez & Humungus both dying at his hands before he rides off into the desert, never to see the tribe again.

The movie itself has less narrative structure than the first film (as if that were possible), with Max getting little in terms of character progression other than what he came armed with from the first film.  This causes you to really just want to invest in the actual visuals of the picture, which are arresting.  Each character comes with a distinctive motif, but rarely do we learn anything in terms of back story, instead forced to fill in the story for certain characters.

This leaves us with a lot of surface-level pleasures, as there are wonderful car chases and inventive action sequences, and Wez in particular is a horrifying, unknowable villain in the best sense of the word.  But we also don't care enough about the main characters themselves.  Villains can get away with ambiguity, but you need someone to ground the film in some capacity, someone knowable for the audience to relate toward.  This isn't intended to be Max, though, as he has entered cinematic myth at this point rather than being a character we should understand (like Furiosa in the future Fury Road, still my favorite installment in the series, who grounds Hardy's unknowable Max).  Without that central figure, one who can appear human to the audience, I feel like this just becomes a visual feast, something that would almost work better as a silent film.  It's impressive, but I didn't really connect with the movie, so I'll land on 3-stars as I respect what is happening here even if it wasn't for me.