MovieChat Forums > Mad Max 2 (1982) Discussion > Why did The Humungus Kamikaze himself?

Why did The Humungus Kamikaze himself?


Watched this again for the first time in a few years. Love the film as always but one thing I was wondering again; at the end The Humungus Kamikazes himself and smashes his car into the tanker truck. He had to know that his car would be crushed like a lightbulb. So what was his plan exactly?

I get the impression that he was just so desperate to stop the truck and get the fuel that it was more important than even his own life. He seemed to do sacrifice, for his people; odd thing for a villainous leader of retched monstrous group of thugs to do.

Was it as simple as desperation leading him to do something extreme and reckless, or was there something more to it that I missed?

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He didn't. He used the nitrous to rocket himself back to the action but he didn't see the truck coming back the other way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_UtDuZaeZo

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I watched it again in the youtube; maybe it is the way it was framed; but it looked like he did it intentionally; he made no effort to avoid. But I guess you could be right; he was going to fast and couldn't stop or swerve in time.

Also now that you mention that; it might be because he was burned a few moments earlier; his site and reaction time might have been impacted by that.

I think you might be right, it wasn't intentional. Thanks that clarifies it for me I think.

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there's a dip in the road. they didn't see each other until it was too late at that speed.

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That is true but the way it was framed it looked like they saw each other; that might have just been an editing issue the truck was big and the dip didn't look that big; and the way Humungus lefts his head it looks like he saw it but didn't react in time; hence why I mistakenly thought it was intentional.

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there's way too much time between when the kid first sees him and impact. there would be no time to slowly pull the kid back into the cab with so little distance left. but it's a movie so you suspend disbelief.

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I had the same impression as dmac, that it was unintentional. He has a look of surprise and terror on his face as the impact comes.

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it's obviously set up that way. he gets taken out of the chase and doesn't know that Max turned the truck around. the nitrous turns his rig into a bullet and the dip in the road creates the moment.

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Yeah, I think you are right about the setup. The moment itself is what throw me off; it was framed like he had time to react but choose not to; but now I think you are right that was just an issue with framing and timing.

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umm, you can't see his face; he is wearing a mask. But i get the point. I think dmac8 is right; the way it is set up with him falling behind and panicking to catch up; the fact he was burned and also didn't know that the truck turned around. I think it was unintentional but it throw me off because of his failure to react; it made it look intentional.

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Well then I imagined his face. It’s been a while since I saw it. I thought I remembered him seeming surprised and scared, as there is no time to do anything.

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that's the other guy

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It was the other guy on the front of the truck who's face you can see. Humungus barely even reacts to seeing the truck; this is one of the reasons I mistakenly thought it was intentionally because you can't see his reaction

You can say this was done 'better' in the first mad max; when Toecutter gets crushed you see a quick shot of his eyes terrified gaze right before he is crushed so you know it was too quick for him to swerve. I am not sure if something like that would have worked ofr Humungus but it would have cleared it up.

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I read an interview or saw a mini-doc about the making of MM2 and they commented that they just decided to end the chase with a bang like they did in MM1. Note they do the same in MM3, which was horrible.

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It was a cool way to end the chase in MM2; don't get me wrong. it just seemed odd the way it was shot that Humungus didn't even attempt to avoid collision. But I think that is just how it was framed; other users point out that he just didn't see it in time and I think they are right. It was just framed in a way in which it looked like he had time.

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MM3 was not horrible!

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I mean, it's an entertaining enough film, and Aunty Entity is the single most interesting and well fleshed-out antagonist in the whole series... but as a Mad Max film, it's hard to see as anything but a disappointment.

First and foremost, narratively speaking, it just spins its wheels - Max comes across strangers in trouble and reluctantly becomes their savior, thus recovering a portion of his own humanity; it's just 2/Road Warrior all over again. If we were shown him spending time and bonding with the kids, allowing his defenses to come down and the old Max to surface again, before Savannah's faction went out to Bartertown, or failing that, if he went with them to Sydney and lived out his days as a father figure among them, effectively making all of them his second, spiritual family, it could have been the best entry in the series. Instead, alas, all we get is Max driving off into the sunset. Again.

Second but no less important, it tries way too hard to be kid-friendly, as though featuring kids meant you have to have them as your audience as well, and the result is that its tone is all over the place. Crashes in previous movies meant people have died in gruesome ways, even if the actual result was only implied... here, you have a soot-covered but otherwise completely unscathed Ironbar stuck to the locomotive's front, Wile E. Coyote-style.

It's not a bad film by itself, but it's kinda tough not to see it as a missed opportunity to end the series on the highest possible note.

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