MovieChat Forums > Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) Discussion > The Road Warrior is a vastly superior fi...

The Road Warrior is a vastly superior film to this....


I agree with the view that Mad Max: Fury Road was way better than people expected it to be but simply not the masterpiece being claimed either.

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I FEEL THE ROAD WARRIOR IS THE BETTER FILM TOO...ALTHOUGH I DO THINK FURY ROAD IS JUST SHY OF A MASTERPIECE.

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Fury Road is great but one or two viewings is enough. Lost count how many time I’ve seen Mad Max 2.

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IF WE WERE KIDS LIKE WE WERE WHEN WE SAW THE ROAD WARRIOR...MIGHT FEL THE SAME WAY ABOUT FURY ROAD...NOSTALGIA IS A POWERFUL FACTOR.

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Maybe. BTW I get this is an American board but did you know it’s only in the US this film was called the Road Warrior ? Elsewhere including Canada it is known as Mad Max 2.

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Thanks for mentioning it, as an Aussie I cringe a little every time someone mentions The Road Warrior.

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YEAH...ITS KIND WEIRD...ROAD WARRIOR IS THE TITLE I GREW UP...FEELS WEIRD SAYING MAD MAX 2 EVEN THOUGH I OWN AND ENJOY MAD MAX...

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No. In Canada it was known as The Road Warrior. I saw The Road Warrior at age 17 in a theater in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada when it came out in 1982. It was known as The Road Warrior in the newspaper and TV ads and on the title screen of the film. I found the movie section from that time period from the Ottawa Citizen on Google News Archive. You can see the ad is for The Road Warrior, not Mad Max 2.

https://imgur.com/a/COOujsK

Mad Max the original film only had a limited drive-in theater double bill release in Canada in 1980 and very few Canadian people were aware of it at that time.

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The Road Warrior is a much more evocative title than Mad Max 2, anyway. I always hate when sequels have a number stuck on the end, especially when they can't even be bothered using Roman Numerals. Very tacky and very 80s. Part II desereved better than simply a "2". So if the title "The Road Warrior" catching on was an accident, it was a happy accident.

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Interesting. I was just in Walmart yesterday (Canada) and saw the poster for MadMax2

https://www.walmart.ca/en/ip/Posterazzi-MOV353531-Mad-Max-2-the-Road-Warrior-Movie-Poster-11-x-17-in/PRD2GOJYLC2VKX1

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Maybe now it is known as Mad Max 2 because the series is so popular and well known, but on release in 1982 we saw it in theaters as The Road Warrior. My old VHS from the 90s bought in Canada also bore the Road Warrior title.

Edit: The poster you linked is a European poster to hang on the wall. Look at the languages. French and Dutch or German.

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The first Mad Max didn't make much of an impact in America in 1979, and most people only saw the first film AFTER the sequel when it was re-released. That's how I first saw the original, anyway. Too be honest, I was a bit taken aback by the first film and it took me another viewing or two to fully appreciate it. The odd American dubbing didn't help much either. I had always just assumed it was always called "The Road Warrior" until years later when I found it the original title was indeed Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior.

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Yeah. My buddy got his dad to sneak him into the drive-in in 1980 to see Mad Max but I didn't see it until I rented it on VHS a few years after I saw The Road Warrior. I read it was originally called Mad Max 2 in Starlog magazine.

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Nostalgia's got nothing to do with. By nearly every metric the second installment comes out on top. The acting, characters, dialog, music and atmosphere are all much better in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (MM2TRW). One can just as easily be unduly swayed by the new and shiny object as much as the other way around. I know a perfectly structured and executed film when I see it, and MM2TRW was one of them. The epic mythological nature of Max's character arc which was only hinted at in the first film is fully brought home in the second, as are the parallels with the Western. The second film simply has more impact and emotional weight than any of the others. Furthermore, whereas Mad Max had too much exposition and not enough action, Fury Road too little of the first and too much of the second... consequently, both films feel a bit lopsided. As for Beyond Thunderdome, it gets lost in its own silliness in the second act. The action set piece on the train is mostly a campy retread of the tanker chase from MM2TRW.

I like the nightmarish and eerie atmosphere of the first two films. Brian May was not perhaps the greatest film composer of all time, but his lurid and energetic style fit the films perfectly. He outdid himself in the second one, and the sound mix problems of part one were solved. The only thing I remember about the score of Fury Road is that it wasn't very memorable... except for the part that ripped off Penderecki's Third Symphony. Finally, although Tom Hardy may be a good actor, he simply doesn't have the Movie Star magnetism that Mel Gibson had (whatever you may think of him as a person with all his ugly flaws). Is that specific and non-nostalgic enough for you?

P S. Kvetching about me simply calling it "The Road Warrior" is as silly as upbraiding someone for calling Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back simply "The Empire Strikes Back". Calling it The Road Warrior rather than Mad Max 2 should be seen as a sign of respect, not the lack of it.

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I agree; Fury Road was a good film and it IS the way a reboot SHOULD be done; but it just does not compare to the 2nd installment which is just a freaking masterpiece of filmmaking. After a couple of viewings of Fury Road the impressiveness of it starts to dwindle to the point where now, I don't even want to watch it. Every time I see the Road Warrior I seem to love it more.

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I mean, it certainly wasn't better than what I expected it to be... and I didn't expect much of anything, to be honest.

What it is, as far as I'm concerned, is an entirely hollow exercise in all-style, no-substance, which seems to labor under the impression that what made Mad Max 2 a timeless masterpiece was junkyard-tribal aesthetics and a truck chase, with the character arc and journey of one "Mad" Max Rockatansky being an altogether inessential and superfluous bit of flavor, instead of the other way around.

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all of the action scenes in MM2TRW serve to enhance and develop the character of Max... none of them are there just to have car wreck spaced out every five minutes.
It also had well-placed and well-judged humor, of which Thunderdome had either too much or the wrong sort, or essentially none at all in the case of Fury Road.

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i'm the outlier, i guess, in that i think fury road is a lot better. i think it's a perfect film, one of the best of the century, an absolute classic.

like every other 80s kid, i watched the road warrior on vhs about 1 billion times in assorted rec rooms, and i like it fine. but it's only the ending chase that's ever really excited me. and that's a great chase, one of the best ever shot, for sure.

but the rest of the film just doesn't give me the same jolt, certainly not the way fury road does. fr, to me, is a perfectly calibrated film, not a hair out of place.

and it's also (not to sound like a sap) the only one of these films that i felt at least a little emotionally invested in, & the only one that actually moved me a bit at the end.

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no i'm the outlier, i loved MM2, and i hated MM:FR!

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I wasn't dialed into expectations for whatever reason, but The Road Warrior is still the best of the series to me.

The story is much tighter in TRW. Also, the characterization didn't work for me and the climax was inferior as well. You pick one or the other but you don't pretend a Furiosa movie is a Mad Max movie. Both characters are half-assed as a result. And Fury Road was a bit too shiny for me as well. The grit of the first two movies is lost in the cinematography of Fury Road. Filters and cgi make it seem like it's from a different planet than the others. It was entertaining but its spine isn't strong enough to elevate it to number one.

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The part at the end of Fury Road where the CGI water came gushing out of the skull-shaped cave looked like it belonged in a Conan movie, not a Mad Max movie. The CGI electric guitar dangling in front of the camera was another ill-advised decision.

Also, I dislike the way the Mad Max films after part two increasingly felt the need to hide their Australian-ness. How does a story clearly and unambiguously set in Australia suddenly turn into the Namibian desert in the relatively short time frame? I mean, even if we accept the 35-40 years that have passed in reality also have passed in the film's reality, it would still take longer than that for the landscape to change that dramatically. People were apparently still sheep herding in the first Mad Max film. I get the environment is a mess and Australia is very arid to begin with... but still.

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yeah, a bit too pretty and over-stylized. but I don't mean to bash it b/c there are a lot of good things as well. the technical direction is great in some of those sequences.

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I love Fury Road. It's an excellent film IMO. Close to a masterpiece. I was a bit sceptical because Mel Gibson is pretty much the perfect Mad Max (maybe because he isn't all there himself). Hardy, as good of an actor as he is, isn't even close. He's a bit blah as Max. But I was blown away by how good the film turned out to be. George Miller, in his 70s, can still make a cool ass action movie, and incorporate new technology where it doesn't 100% feel like a CGI fest.

Having said all that, there's just this atmosphere that Mad Max 2 has, I can't put it into words. It's been a while since I've seen it, so I might not remember all the plot points, but I just remember how it made me feel while I was watching it. Fury Road doesn't compare in terms of that atmosphere.

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It was a combination of the music, pacing, setting, cinematography, and Mel Gibson's screen presence that made it work so well... in my opinion.

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Nope sorry. Imo Fury Road is far superior, and this is coming from a huge Mad Max fan.

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That's fine...but REASONS... I must have your reasons for your conclusion. I've given you mine.

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The filmed chase was superior to Road Warrior. I felt Tom Hardy did an excellent job as Max. I have become a big fan of Hardy. The man morphs into whatever role he plays. I was doubtful at first. Becasue i love Road Warrior amd Mels portrayal. I was pleasantly surprised and have watched the film 4 times since its release and absolutely love it. Oh junkiexl did a killer soundtrack for the film.

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The whole of Fury Road was the chase, pretty much. You see, I can remember whole sequences of the final TRW chase scene, but (speaking only for myself) the whole of Fury Road is kind of a blur. The sadness of seeing Warrior Women and Papagallo die, the Feral Kid attacking marauders with his teeth, Wez being cut loose from his chain to wreak carnage. More tellingly, I can also remember the set up and pay off before and after the chase scene, such as the bitter irony when Max sees the tanker is actually filled with sand. So many moments.... the emotional core of the story. Furthermore, I remember little lines of dialog and quirky exchanges of even the minor characters in the film. Again, the characters in Fury Road are all a blur to me and I'd be hard pressed to recall any one particular stand out moment. I can remember certain looks on the face of Max's dog and the interior of Max's V8 more than any of the characters in Fury Road.

Anywho... it's evident that I will never be persuaded of Fury Road's superiority, but I won't argue the point any further as I probably won't persuade any Fury Road's most ardent supporters, either.

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I remember all the characters in Fury road. Just as much as Road Warrior and have seen Road Warrior at least a dozen times. Too each their own though. I still love Road Warrior but if I had to chose one to watch off my shelf right now its Fury Road. It's a future classic for sure if not already. In a sea of Superhero films in 2015 Fury Road was a treat.

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