The Road Warrior

So here’s the thing. The past week or so has been, for lack of better words, ugly. And of course, today was probably one of the worst parts of it for entirely different reasons than the other parts. It’s enough that I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to get anything written for here. Just too much blah going around and making it difficult to focus on much of anything. And then I took a time out and spent a bit with The Road Warrior.

Yep, I’m talking about the second movie in the Mad Max saga. It came out in 1981 and I dare say it’s still pretty damn good today. I’ve loved the whole series for an incredibly long time. I think I might have even looked at the more recent film a while back but I’m not going to go looking for it. Just going to sit here and do some reflection on what I took away from this viewing of the flick.

And ya know, one of the bigger things was the similarities between the Fallout game series and the post apocalyptic wasteland that permeates the Mad Max series. Well, except for the first one. The first movie was more just a dip into the future to come. There was a bit of law and order to the world. It was in the Road Warrior that the storyline really came into its own.

But I digress…

Back to similarities between this and Fallout. Mind you the biggest visual was the leather outfit that Max was wearing. This is the same leather armor you could be wearing in the first and second Fallout games. It’s silly and stupid but it ties them together so well.

The first game came out 16 years after the second movie. Though the storylines are different, there are throwbacks tying them together to hit hard into the feels of the people that grew up with the movies. This is the stuff that helps to build connections for the viewer. And you know they have to be powerful if I am still connecting to them so many years after they originally came out.

And there is another strong connection in there. It’s one you might not even realize. The narrator at the start of the Fallout series sounds similar to the narrator at the beginning of the Road Warrior. The the stories are different, their connection to the fall of man ties them both together.

Anyway, it isn’t like this is meant to be a review. The movie is 38 years old and all. At this point it’s probably not even on most people’s radar anymore. I’m just in a place right now where it was something I needed to experience again. And I’m glad I did. The movie still holds up and its still worth discovering if you’ve never seen it. Hell, it’s worth a rediscovery if its one you haven’t seen in a long time. Maybe it could give you a little perspective on the world. Or maybe it’s just enough to hold back the darkness of a horrible week.

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