The Road Warrior George Miller Analysis

The Road Warrior (1981, dir. George Miller) begins with Max (Mel Gibson) and his dog getting tailed in what appears to be some kind of apocalyptic future.This can be seen through what they drive, the styling of the two guys on the bike (mohawks and strange outfits...even for the eighties) and the harsh look of the climate. Max is obviously worried about being tailed and so is his dog, which is why the puppy keeps looking back while Max tries to speed up. There’s threatening music too. They then encounter some wreckage that’s smoking, which Max easily navigates through while some of his other pursuers crash. Maybe they’re inexperienced drivers, but it shows the expendability of the antagonists. They might be dead but we’re not meant to linger on
that. The puppy is our protagonist, and it’s easy to root for someone who has a dog.
It follows Max around and characterizes Max as someone a dog would love, which tells the audience again that he’s not probably going to do something “bad”. The dog also hides at certain points and sniffs around a carcass later. It seems a bit jumpy and scared, so we can tell something bad has happened to either it or Max. While the puppy was with the animal carcass, Max was preserving gasoline or fuel, whatever was coming out of the big truck. That also tells the audience that this isn’t a world with resources readily available, and that it’s likely in the future. He saves the gas by absorbing some of it in a towel and filling plates (or things that can hold something with a curve in them). The importance of them is emphasized when the antagonist on the bike with an orange mohawk rips an arrow from his body but Max looks and ignores it, continuing to preserve the gas. He definitely doesn’t seem afraid of them or what they might do, but that doesn’t matter as much because then they leave. Before that, Max was surveying the site in a weary way; that tells us that his world has likely been how it is shown for a long time. Later on, Max opens the door of the truck and a body falls out, which doesn’t interest him so
much. What does interest him is what falls out with it--a small music box. When he begins to wind it up, there’s a look of curiosity on his face which is followed by amusement, and then he listens closely and pockets it before the shot changes to him driving off. Once again, we’re seeing the survival instinct at the end where he decides to keep it and leave. Max probably doesn’t see things that are a bit frivolous and without purpose like music boxes everyday, which explains why he’s gets amused by it, and that he might not even known exactly what it was or why it was there which is why he was curious about it. It’s easy to see that him and his dog have been through more than what is explicitly shown.