10 Fun Facts About MAD MAX 2: THE ROAD WARRIOR

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With Mad Max: Fury Road being released in theaters this week, I thought I would put together a fun facts list for one of my favorite films in the franchise, Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. I recently watched the very first Mad Max movie, which I hadn’t seen since I was 13 years old. I forgot how boring that movie was! The Mad Max franchise didn’t really take off until The Road Warrior exploded in theaters in 1981. So without further ado, here are some fun facts that you may or may not know about the film. 

Some of the information comes from Imdb, but there is also more information on the film that you can check out here. I also try to add some additional commentary and videos when I can in these posts. 

• Mel Gibson only has 16 lines of dialogue in the whole film, and two of them are the repeated line, "I only came for the gasoline." That’s about the same for Mad Max: Fury Road. Tom Hardy didn’t really say much.
• According to a behind the scenes featurette that was released, one of the crazier stunts in the film was actually a serious accident. In the scene one of the motorcycle raiders hits a car, and the rider is flung off the bike where he smashes his legs against the car. From there he is set in cartwheel motions through the air towards the camera. This was a real accident that wasn’t planned. The stuntman was supposed to just fly over the car without hitting it. The accident was so dramatically awesome on film that director George Miller kept it in the movie. Luckily the stuntman survived. You can watch it in the video featurette below, and a clip from the film of that scene.

featurette on the stunt work in "The Road Warrior".

Mad Max 2 movie clips: http://j.mp/17HXOQp BUY THE MOVIE: http://j.mp/17HXOQc Don't miss the HOTTEST NEW TRAILERS: http://bit.ly/1u2y6pr CLIP DESCRIPTION: Max (Mel Gibson) drives the tanker with Wez (Vernon Wells) and the gang in violent pursuit. FILM DESCRIPTION: Director George Miller's follow-up to his own 1979 hit Mad Max is proof that not all sequels are inferior to their originals.

• The stunt at the end of the chase that involved a tanker roll was so dangerous that the stunt driver was not allowed to eat any food 12 hours before they shot the scene. This was just in case he would have to be rushed into surgery if it went wrong. Below you can see a behind-the-scenes video.

Dennis Williams (Precision Truck Stunts) describes the tanker impact and roll over stunt from Mad Max 2 / The Road Warrior. Video excerpt taken from the Back 2 The Max documentary, see http://www.back2themax.com for further information on the documentary, and see http://www.madmaxmovies.com/making/madmax2/TankerRoll/ for more detail on the stunt itself.

Mad Max 2 movie clips: http://j.mp/17HXOQp BUY THE MOVIE: http://j.mp/17HXOQc Don't miss the HOTTEST NEW TRAILERS: http://bit.ly/1u2y6pr CLIP DESCRIPTION: The second-wave attack is let loose on the tanker driven by Max (Mel Gibson) leading to a massive, destructive crash with The Humungus (Kjell Nilsson).

• The movie was shot in chronological order, which is unusual for an action film.
• When the story was first conceived, the character Humungus was originally supposed to be Max's partner Jim Goose. They ended up not going with this plan, but left in a few clues, such as that horrible burns behind Humungus' goalie mask, his raider's use of police vehicles, and his own use of a similar weapon to the MFP's standard sidearm.
• Since Gibson wasn’t really known in the US, the trailers for the movie didn’t spotlight the actor. They put all the focus into the action sequences. I included the original US trailer below.

In the post-apocalyptic Australian wasteland, a cynical drifter agrees to help a small gasoline rich community escape a band of bandits. Directed by: George Miller. Cast: Mel Gibson, Kjell Nilsson, Bruce Spence, Vernon Wells, Mike Preston, Virginia Hey, Emil Minty. Release Date (Australia): December 24, 1981.

• The logo on the tanker truck reads "7 Sisters Oil," which is an reference to an early oil conspiracy theory that Standard Oil and six other companies controlled the world oil market, and that they bought up and suppressed the 200-MPG carburetor so that they could to keep oil prices up.
• The Road Warrior was supposed to be the conclusion of the "Mad Max" storyline. Max's fate would never be revealed and Miller had no intentions of making a third film. It was when Miller started working on a post-apocalyptic version of Lord of the Flies that Beyond Thunderdome was shaped. It follows a tribe of children living in the wild, who are found by an adult. It was suggested to Miller that Mad Max should be the adult who finds the children, and so that became the third installment of the franchise.
• According to Hot Dog Magazine's “Still Crazy After All These Years” by Pavel Barter (via: io9), Max's dog in the film was rescued by the filmmakers from being put to sleep in a shelter. According to the story, one day before the dog was to be put down, members of the crew visited they shelter looking for an animal to cast for the film. He was picked out of a number of other dogs because he picked up a rock off the ground and played with it. The crew members realized the dog could have a real presence on film and had the potential to be trained. Mad Max 2 ended up being the only film he appeared in.

Max and the Gyro Captain join forces in the post-apocalyptic wasteland

• The first cut of the film was even more bloody and violent than the final cut we saw. It was heavily cut down by the Australian censors. When it was submitted to the MPAA, two additional scenes had to be cut down. Those scenes included Wez pulling an arrow out of his arm as well as a close-up shot of him pulling the boomerang out of his dead boyfriend's head. Apparently there aren’t any full uncut versions of the film.

I've also included a video that features some deleted and alternate scenes from the film below.

This is a collection of clips taken from a version of Mad Max 2 (The Road Warrior) known as the "Lost Version" that was aired back in the mid 1980's for American television. This version contains deleted scenes, alternate takes and angles and an alternate "Americanized" beginning and ending voice-over.