The beginning of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior opens with a voiceover describing the end of civilization as we now know it, as it displays images of war, oil and flashbacks of Mad Max. The same framed shot of Max as the audience last saw him in the flashback offers up a direct assessment with Max to his past. He now looks disheveled, dirty, he now has a mangy dog as a companion and his uniform seems to be missing a sleeve. Max has just avenged his family’s death, and is now alone on the road, where the only thing that seems to matter is fuel. With his own fuel running low, Max must fend off pursuers in order to refuel his Interceptor. As he makeshift siphons gasoline from a dune buggy that was pursuing him, “vermin have inherited the Earth” can be seen written on the tarp of a van. Max’s pursuer, shot by an arrow in his arm, screams at Max and pulls the arrow out before departing without conflict with Max.
The world seems to truly be in an even worse place than it was in the original film. Max’s legend has seemingly grown to the proportions that many seem to be afraid of him on the road, hence the nickname “Road Warrior”. As was the case in the first film, the overbearing theme is masculinity. The film “depicts” an Australian man, in a dystopic future, engaged in a “rugged occupation” (McFarlane, 59). The masculinity oozes out of this scene, with emphasis on the grittiness of Max, a continuing stress on the importance of cars and the addition of a dog to Max’s crew. Max’s masculinity is displayed through his frayed, ripped, all black attire, with a makeshift brace on his wounded knee. A very important part of the opening scene is when the pursuer leaves after screaming at Max, showing Max’s superior masculinity and the aura around him that precedes him. The importance of cars is just as evident in this film as in its predecessor, with the stress being on having the fastest car on the road, as well as petroleum being the only real form of currency.
Max’s car has been gutted and redone on the interior, being refitted with the essential needs for post-apocalyptic living. The inclusion of a dog into the car is essential, as it represents a certain duality in Max, since we know nothing about the dog or how they became companions; the dog represents the vital signs of a wild creature. Befriending the dog shows that while Max now fully embraces the wild, he still misses his old life with his family. Max has now become a product of the environment, not just someone who has responded to it. This has become echoed by the choice of his to enter the wastelands to avenge his family’s death and thus never leaving. This is ironic because now the world is purely wastelands and he has no choice to leave, as the wastelands are an inescapable prison for Max.
