There may well have been some accuracy in Tina Turner’s proclamation that “We don’t need another hero”. By the time that song was released as the theme to Beyond Thunderdome (1985), the third instalment in the Mad Max trilogy, Max Rockatansky had firmly established himself as the last lone warrior, the determined, though initially reluctant, hero who would be our sole saviour and “an inspiration to a dispirited community” (Barbour 1999). But just as Luke Skywalker in Star Wars (1977), two years prior to Max’s first steps on the road to his destiny, was forced to accept his role in saving the galaxy as the result of his despair, following the murders of his adoptive family on the planet of Tatooine, Max’s donning of the leathers of heroism in the post-apocalyptic aridity of an Australian outback was also the effect caused by the loss of family. And equally, just as Lucas had been influenced by Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), so too had Miller been influenced in his development of Mad Max (1979), another epic tale of yet another lone cowboy riding along the trail of the classic narrative (Brennan 2005; Barbour 1999).

According to Bordwell and Thompson (2004, p. 69), a narrative is “a chain of events”, causes and effects that lead an audience from one situation to another. The journey taken by Max is welded within a dramatic linkage of events that cause our hero to take us with him down “Anarchie Road”. At the film’s beginning, Max is introduced as the stand-alone, strong, masculine figure – short shots of boots, leather-clad limbs, dark sunglasses – the enigma who will become the successful last hope in the police pursuit of the evil Nightrider. But it is this initial heroic achievement that sets loose that chain of cause-effect events that will finally posit Max on the never-ending highway through the “prohibited area” – the zone into which only a hero dares drive.

Nightrider’s companions, the “scoot-jockeys” under the leadership of Toecutter, are already primed for their own version of vengeance, when Goose, Max’s best friend, makes himself a target by challenging Toecutter’s prodigy, Johnny-boy. Max looses his best friend, which causes him to question his position in this desolate world. Rather than giving people back their heroes, as his boss, Fifi Macaffee, would prefer, Max’s preference is for the idyllic bliss of domesticity, the solace of family and the warmer climes of northward. But it is not to be. An incident between the bikers and Max’s wife, Jessie, causes the bikers to once again seek revenge, though rather than ‘an eye for an eye’, ‘tis more ‘the hand that giveth, then taketh away’. Just when it seems Max has been able to remove himself and family from that vengeful path, the bikers catch up, killing his dog (that perhaps had been a replacement for this man’s best friend), his wife and child. His eyes scream “no more” and our hero finally realises that the force is with him – he is the only one, the only hope left.

Rather than the Nightrider being “the chosen one; the mighty hand of vengeance”, this role belongs to Max. As an example of “classical Hollywood cinema”, the narrative of this text, which “centers on personal psychological causes”, takes its audience from the desolation of a dystopic world to a land of hope and potential redemption – or at least as far as the highway (Bordwell & Thompson 2004, p. 89).

References

Top of Page