Mad Max 2: Der Vollstrecker (1981)

Mad Max 2: Der Vollstrecker: Directed by George Miller. With Mel Gibson, Bruce Spence, Michael Preston, Max Phipps. In the post-apocalyptic Australian wasteland, a cynical drifter agrees to help a small, gasoline-rich community escape a horde of bandits.

“Something endears about how this almost never became a franchise, or didnu0026#39;t become one until after this. The first was another exploitation movie about a man seeking revenge, only more riproaring than most. The character was brought back for this and it was also not supposed to lead to more.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThey had more of a budget here, still none of Lucasu0026#39; engineering a whole world, with trajectory and conclusions. Here more than the first, they created a sense of world, an edge of which we happened to explore in this episode and left behind in the dust upon conclusion.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eA lone antihero (no longer a cop) steps out from the sands and becomes embroiled in a squabble between rival clans. The plot around an ambush, the circling savages, everything here recalls westerns. In western films it might have been a carriage of gold, or people besieged by Comanches in some desert outpost.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eI always thought it amusing how this is a world where gas guzzling beasts are driven around the outback for miles in search of scarce gas. Baddies are dressed in BDSM and punk attire, figments of what would have looked menacing to 80s viewers. It did create a whole futureworld as much as Bladerunner and Star Wars (and with a fraction of the means); rival gangs roaming a wasteland is now firmly entrenched as one of possible futures for mankind in the pop mind.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eItu0026#39;s really the barreling heavy metal of the action that makes it, more so when you think itu0026#39;s from the time before computers when it was all something you actually crashed. Amazing to think that the filmmaker was just a doctor before embarking on the first one. He proved to be an able mechanic of image. Youu0026#39;ll see some masterful editing in both.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eOkay, so Iu0026#39;ll take Alien, Bladerunner, Terminator, when in the vicinity, in that order. But for me this is like giving the edge to Lethal Weapon over Die Hard; both wildly effective, itu0026#39;s just a matter of which cinematic world appeals to me more. In specifics it has little to offer me. The way weu0026#39;re placed inside of that world still captivates, stretches of dust that scavengers roam and where the odd enclave may be.”