So if you read my last entry, about my experience watching the first Mad Max film, I'm happy to report that my concerns over it's cult world or cult status are gone. I now totally understand why Mad Max is a thing and I now totally get all of the "fallen world without gas and roving mutant gangs of monsters" popular culture reference points. Happily the film clears all of that right away, right in the beginning of the film, with a few minute montage and a nice voice over telling you everything you need to know. It's like a live action Second Renaissance but without robots and more realistic because it's really plausible and there aren't robots. (Although, seriously, how great is the Second Renaissance? Still? To this day? A thousand years laters?)
(Spoiler's after the jump, mate)
So the world has gone to shit and everything is fucked. There isn't anymore gas and there are loads of crazified gang people. But now, they're acting more like the second type of movie biker villain I alluded to in my last review. In the first film, Toecutter's gang are ADD sugar children on speed, while here, the gang of Lord Humongous (the single coolest name for a bad guy ever) act way more like stoic nightmare beasts (who of course keep a few colorful characters to keep things from getting boring).
Max is seen racing along in his bad ass car with, what's this? Another dog. It's like there has to be some kind of being in the car with Max that isn't seatbelted down (last film, baby & dog) or else he doesn't want to race about wildly and dangerously. Some of my softball complaints about the last film (you know, more like wry observations) were concerning the "mad"-ness of Mad Max and how he's a baby faced good guy for nearly the entire film. Well he certainly looks rougher in Part 2. And even his (new) (and totally doomed, obviously) dog looks rougher as well!
He takes on a few dudes in his Max-ish way (i.e. racing next to them until they crash), has a brief stare down with Mohawk (who not only rocks a leather chaps and thong ensemble the whole film, but comes complete with his own leather party boy on a chain) then runs into a weirdo stick man with a helicopter chair and an attack snake.
At first I thought, "Well that's a bit of cool, kinda steampunk-ish technology there, like some future world flying chair thing." But it actually works! And this movie is as old as I am! Why don't we all have flying helicopter chairs?! People have been complaining about the lack of jetpacks and flying cars but we've had helicopter chairs for over 30 years!
The strengths of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior are apparent right away (where it went right, versus where the original went wrong). After running into Face (you know? from The A-Team?)(look I don't know what goofy helicopter chair pilot stick man's name is and I'm not going all the way over to IMDB to look it up), he discovers the Trailer Park of Heroes (unofficial title) and the Lord Humongous Action Army (again, unofficial/non-canon). The film takes off from this point (like a flying helicopter chair!) and just goes for the rest of the 90 glorious minutes.
I wrote "weird homoerotic stuff all the time" in my notes. I don't think I need to expand on that, but I will say that the world of Mad Max is way more comfortable with it's homoeroticism than other action films. (I mean it's not Top Gun gay, but what is?)
We run into the Lord Humongous crew following a beating and a raping given to two poor citizens of the Good Guy and Decent Citizen Emporium and Oil Well (non-canon). Max brings the body of the dude back to the not cannibal rapist monsters camp and is treated pretty poorly considering. Though I suppose after the fall of man, the fall of manners is to be expected. We then get to meet the only two characters in the movie radder than Max himself, Lord Humongous and the Feral Kid.
Lord Humongous is actually not that humongous, but he does have an awesome metal hockey mask and weird pulsing head veins. One of the few negative points I'd have to assign here would be that we don't ever get to see what his face looks like. This isn't the Pulp Fiction suitcase, I don't think his face needs to be an eternal cinematic mystery. Particularly since I feel like he has really sad eyes sometimes. He's also way more reasonable than Toecutter but not nearly as fabulously femme. (Although he does end up with his own party leather boy on a chain before the film ends so there's hope for him yet!)(Except not really because he's in all kinds of blood soaked body pieces come credits time.)(Better luck on the next reincarnation.)(Rambling here because I just really felt like there was more to the Humongous story than we got and I want to know what he was up to!)
I also now finally get this South Park scene.
The Feral Kid is a great Mad Max character because it's all there in the name. "The Feral Kid". What else do you need to know? Unlike Toecutter who doesn't cut off one single goddamn toe the entire picture, The Feral Kid is definitely a Feral Kid. He rocks a serious 80s metal hair-do, he howls like a wolf (or an 80s metal rocker) and whips a razor sharp boomerang (unlike most 80s hair metal bands, but it was a solid comparison up until then). I've actually never seen a boomerang, you know, boomerang before. I've seen them thrown in cartoons and comic books, but I don't think I've ever seen one actually whip through the air and come back. I've definitely never seen one slice off a dude's fingers or kill a leather party boy, so it was a big day of firsts in my house.
Oh! And for those keeping score at home, the cinematic equation that I think I settled on for this one is: Walkabout + Assault On Precinct 13 + A Boy And His Dog.
Either that or: Burning Man + Star Wars.
So Max makes a deal with the good townsfolk that he'll get them a vehicle big enough to move their precious, precious oil reserves before Lord Humongous (the Ayatollah of Rock and Rolla)(that is canon) and his party boys harsh everyone's mellow, which is extremely hard to do in Australia because everyone there is always having a good time, Apocalypse or no. In fact there's a brief flash of two Boris Vallejo models doing it in a tent at one point, and what better time could be had then that?
Max acts like he has a great plan to get this truck (that we saw in the beginning). What he's gonna do see, is he's gonna creep away in the night and then accidentally run into stick figure helicopter man, who's going to fly the two of them to the truck, where Max can get it running and then the brilliant part. He's going to drive it straight back to the camp, through all the mutants.
(I don't actually know if they're ever called "Mutants" in the film, but they look so much like the bad guys from The Dark Knight Returns I can't really call 'em anything else.)
He's not doing this out of the goodness of his heart, he's doing this for fuel so he can take off and be alone and eat dog food (oh yeah, dude loves dog food in this one). Max manages to bring this haulin' truck back to base, complete with all kinds of bad dude hangerson because his brilliant plan was literally just to drive it straight through the wall of monster men. So the gentle townsfolk try to get him to stay, but he's no hero (spoiler alert: which is what makes him the most hero hero of all) so he decides to piss off. But before he goes a crazy old man tries to sell him on their paradise dream with a bunch of beach postcards. He tells Max that there's fresh water there, which I totally get as a selling point. Then he says "And plenty of sunshine." which doesn't seem like the most enticing utopian attribute considering they're all in the desert. But Max says the deal he'll make is no deal and he throws the feral kid out of his car because he's had enough dead kids (but not enough dead dogs?).
Max puts another brilliant plan into motion and decides to hightail it to the good life by once again driving straight through the evil gang of leather daddies camped right outside. I thought this was stupid as I was watching it. I thought, "Surely, you're in the middle of the desert. Just pick another direction and go around if you have to. Or just go in another direction." And I felt confident with that on the fly assessment, and then later on in the film when Max is driving the truck full of "gas" out the front and once more into the fray, the rest of the villagers drive out the side and take off down a road leading out of the back. There was an actual road there the whole time! Honestly Max, it's like you wanted to get your eye all swollen shut and your dog murdered and your car exploded.
They have to fix Max up once Helicopter Jones (not canon) finds his broken and bloodied body and he decides that he's ready to be a team player. He also uses the Feral Kid as a human crutch which is one of the most bad ass / silliest things I've ever seen a bad ass dude do. Everyone is changing their station at this point in the game. Now Mohawk Punk is a leather party boy on a leash, now Helicopter Man is like an Admiral or something (also, when Max comes to camp carrying the body of one of the camp people they immediately surround him and handcuff and call him names and act like dicks, but when Helicopter Dude lands his freakin' Helicopter Chair IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CAMP IN THE MIDDLE OF A FIGHT, everyone walks up to him and starts shaking his hand and patting him on the back. That is way more suspicious! Australian Trailer Kind Folk Of The Future, get it together.) and Max is a team player driving the tanker being flanked by some of the village elders. (Including the leader of the good team who I think should be called "Nicodemus" regardless of what his name is)
Oh! I now understand what the phrase "off the chain" means, like when Lord Humongous lets Mohawk Punk off the chain. Oh! I also realized that crossbows are totally bad ass yet totally impractical. Oh! I also realized that shot with Max leaning out of the truck and shooting the dudes is one of the coolest things I've ever seen.
Lord Humongous's crew is definitely committed and definitely not afraid of "going for it" but I don't understand why they left "shoot out the tires" as a last resort to stop the speeding Max truck. And I totally called what was REALLY in the tanker, but I watched the film alone so there's no one to verify the truth of my story. Please believe me.
This is the second Mad Max film in which the main villain of the piece dies as a result of an unexpected head on collision which was cool enough to watch, but I want to see dudes punching the crap out of each other, and Humongous to hold Max's head and talk like a retro future 1980s Bane and give me some sweet one liners and hints at his amazing back story.
As the movie was wrapping up I was kind of hoping for a True Romance style ending, with Max sitting on the beach with an eye patch and a Hawaiian shirt and the Feral Kid playing in the sand (and the Feral Kid is now named Elvis). Which is almost kind of what happens though, but Max doesn't get to smile on the beach 'cause he's a loner and a bad ass (and wicked fucked up after what he just went through, like he got really dinged up).
The only point I was left pondering at the end of the film was how the hell Helicopter Guy became their new leader. I mean, he wasn't the worst choice for it, but he was a skinny weirdo who lived in the ground and threw snakes at people. I guess there's hope for anyone in the Australian Apocalypse.
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