Top 5: Gifts from Mad Max 2 to World Cinema

Taking a break from studying about environmental ruin, I thought I'd watch Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior for a little post-apocalyptic pick-me-up.

While watching, I couldn't help but notice all of the references the film had from earlier movies; particularly the Spaghetti Westerns. To begin with, Mad Max 2 has a good (Max), bad (hockey-masked dude), and ugly (the gyro-copter captain) characters. Give it a look and you'll see many more.

Incidentally, the hockey mask has certainly done wonders to assist audience goers identify bad guys.

Bad Guy

Back to Mad Max 2 though; I noted that the film came out in 1981, meaning that many of the characters and themes were also new for the time. And so in the spirit of promoting Australian film, here are my top 5 gifts that Mad Max 2 gave to cinema.

5. Fuel-tank car chase
Movies such as Breakdown, Licence to Kill and Fast and the Furious (at least one of them) have thrilled audiences with scenes of goodies driving away from baddies in a much bigger vehicle that could possibly explode. Awesome.

4. Cookie


OK, not really a gift to world cinema, but I struggled to come up with 5 for this list and you can't help but appreciate Sid Heylan (that loveable rogue!) in any guise.

3 - Masked leader with mysterious burns on the back of his head.

Back of head not shown. Certainly not on Karaoke night.

Nothing makes you wonder more about the chief bad guy than some mysterious burns, as can be witnessed by the drawing power of Darth Vadar. Audiences eventually found out that he got messed up by Obi Wan, but it wasn't until Ewan McGregor dumped Hayden Christiansen in some magma that we saw how. Even then most weren't convinced it wasn't due to Haydens acting.

2. Skinny, weird character who may be good.
A whole fleet of youngsters are currently growing up learning that Pirates are really bad, though not always, thanks to the likes of a possibly drunk Captain Sparrow and Miranda Kerrs boyfriend, who seems to come from the same acting school as ol' Hayden.

But where did this all start, well the crazy gyrocopter pilot mentioned earlier (Bruce Spence) has a more than striking resemblance to the skinny pirate from Pirates of the Thingimy.

1. Mad Mel
It started with him driving cars, then went to driving Danny Glover to retirement (despite being too old for this....). Hollywood producers must have seen something of Mels character in the film and thought; "there's a range of films we can base around this guy, and NOTHING WILL EVER GO WRONG".