The future that George Miller portrays in the movie Mad Max is one of growing lawlessness, where gasoline is quickly becoming the main currency. The last hope for Australian society is the Main Force Patrol, a highway police force locked in an endless battle with the criminals of a changing world. Max Rockatanksy, played by Mel Gibson, is a hot shot Main Force Patrol officer who frequently makes local news with spectacular car chases and arrests. Max has a wife and son at home, and dreams of a day when he is no longer part of the Main Force Patrol so he can spend more time with his family. Max Rockatansky in the movies Mad Max and The Road Warrior is a successful hero because he grows from his journey, overcomes adversity, and returns to society to save a threatened community from destruction.
At the beginning of Mad Max, Max is the star of the Main Force Patrol (MFP) and although he enjoys action and driving fast cars, he is conflicted about his career. The call to adventure that Max experiences happens when his long time partner Jim Goose gets severely burned by a member of an outlaw motorcycle gang. When Goose dies from his injuries Max’s suspicions about the drawbacks of his career choice are confirmed. Max doesn’t want a dangerous job, he just wants to be there for his family. Max is afraid of the job consuming him, with the only difference between him and the evil he fights being his MFP badge. Max decides to resign from the MFP and heads out of town on a vacation, setting in motion the hero journey of Max Rockatanksy.
Max's boss is an old, muscular, bald man named Fifi. This cigar smoking, leather wearing MFP sergeant provides Max with encouragement; Fifi had noticed Max’s doubts about the job and was determined to keep him around. When Max comes to Fifi to offer him his resignation, Fifi adamantly tries to persuade Max into reconsidering by saying, “They say people don't believe in heroes anymore. Well damn them! You and me, Max, we're gonna give them back their heroes!” (Mad Max) After some discussion, Fifi offers to Max an extended vacation so he can later return to the MFP if he wants to resume his fight against evil on the highway. Fifi also gives Max the greatest gift of all, although Max is unaware: The MFP Interceptor that is built specifically for Max is Fifi’s pet project and last-ditch effort to keep Max on the force. In the dark catacombs under the Halls of Justice, this supercharged beast is built in secret by the MFP’s mechanic Barry. When Goose reveals the car to Max for the first time, Barry tells Max of its secrets:
She sips nitro... with Phase 4 heads!
600 horsepower through the wheels!
She's meanness set to music and the bitch is born to run! (Mad Max)
Although Max isn’t tempted by the V8-powered beast immediately, it stays in the back of his mind. Max and the Interceptor have not yet seen the last of each other.
While on vacation, Max’s wife Jessie and his son Sprog have a chance encounter with the motorcycle gang and die trying to escape from them. Devastated by this loss of his family, Max returns to the Halls of Justice one last time. In full leather garb, Max walks into the MFP parking garage to retrieve the Interceptor that awaits him. Max is not returning as an officer, he is returning only for the tool he knows he needs. It is at this crucial moment that Max chooses to resume his fight between good and evil, this time on his terms. Driving slowly and purposefully out of the darkest reaches of the Halls of Justice, Max emerges ready to avenge the death of his family at any cost.
"Driving slowly and purposefully out of the darkest reaches of the Halls of Justice, Max emerges ready to avenge the death of his family at any cost."
The road of trials for Max is long and enduring, yet ultimately he is successful at overcoming the challenges in his path. The first trial he experiences is managing the grief of losing his partner and family. Max does this by avenging their deaths; he tracks down the motorcycle gang and kills them mercilessly. One such killing happens when Max rolls up on an accident scene where a car had left the road and overturned. Max notices a nearby motorcycle and stops his Interceptor to investigate. He finds the boy who lit the fire that killed his partner stealing the boots of a dead man. Much to the boy’s protest, Max handcuffs the boy’s leg to a piece of mangled metal on the car and builds a time-fuse with a broken headlight that he leaves slowly filling with gasoline. As the broken light fills, and the fickle flame of the lighter eagerly awaits its spill, Max offers the kid a hacksaw and says, “The chain in those handcuffs is high tensile steel. It'd take you ten minutes to hack through it with this. Now, if you're lucky, you could hack through your ankle in five minutes. Go” (Mad Max). The outcome of this is not specifically mentioned. However, Max is seen driving off in the Interceptor, with a cold look on his face, as a fireball erupts in the background. This vengeance seems to have a bittersweet effect on Max, and he drives off into the outback not knowing where the road will take him next.
As the story progresses into The Road Warrior, the road of trials continues as Max is forced to survive in the Australian outback after nuclear apocalypse. His only possessions include the Interceptor he took from the MFP, his dog, his double-barreled shotgun, and a few hundred liters of gasoline. In his journeys, Max aids a small town built around an oil refinery in procuring a semi-truck for hauling their fuel tanker. The town is held captive inside its walls by a gang of renegade desert nomad warriors, yet he fails to sympathize with their cause; he is still cold-hearted from the loss of his family and partner. Max merely collects his reward for retrieving the truck—all the gasoline he can carry—and sets off alone into the desert, leaving the townspeople to fend for themselves. Seemingly to punish Max for his selfish deed, the gang waiting outside the town gets the best of Max, destroying his Interceptor and killing his dog. Having failed on his own, Max returns to the town to offer his help, lucky to have survived his encounter with the gang.
When Max returns to the town he is in pretty rough shape; one of the townspeople says to him, “Look at yourself. You couldn't drive a wheelchair” (The Road Warrior). Nevertheless, he offers his ultimate boon to the townspeople: He drives the tanker truck out of the town, facing certain death, to allow the townspeople to escape in another direction in other vehicles. Although still internally conflicted, Max has an insatiable taste for adventure, and very much wants to do the right thing and help these people. Max has three warriors on his truck, and one support vehicle to help fend off the gang of renegades. Many people die, but the mission is a success due to Max’s participation: the tanker, full of sand, battles with the enemy long enough for everyone to get to safety. Through his reconciliation with his inner demons, Max finds the strength to save an entire community from certain death.
Max is a successful hero because he looks inside himself to find the strength and motivation to overcome his past, overcomes the many trials placed in his path, and returns to the refinery town to save the community from destruction. Coming to terms with the death of his family is no small problem for Max. The inner journey that Max takes through Mad Max and The Road Warrior is just as significant as his geographic one. The struggles that Max faced were often due to his unwillingness to let go of the past, and it was only when he overcame this that he could return to society as a true hero.
Works Cited
Mad Max. Dir. George Miller. Perf. Mel Gibson, Joanne Samuel, Steve Bisley, Roger Ward, David Cameron. Twentieth Century Fox, 1979. DVD.
The Road Warrior. Dir. George Miller. Perf. Mel Gibson, Bruce Spence. Warner Bros. Entertainment, 1981. DVD.
