- Alternate Character Interpretation:
- Max's central conflict is being torn between duty to his family and his duty to fight criminals. He worries that if he remains a cop, he'll slowly become no better than a criminal. Most viewers remember Max's roaring rampage as vengeance for his lost family, choosing to kill them all or die trying because he has nothing to lose. However, Max's wife is actually still alive and reportedly "salvageable" the last we see her.note The sequels wipe this away by making Max's entire family unambiguously dead, giving him truly nothing to lose.
- The Nightrider and his girlfriend are generally seen as Dirty Cowards, but some fans view them as being remorseful as the adrenaline of the situation wears off, or even think that the Nightrider is a pre-emptive victim of Go Mad from the Apocalypse who knows what is coming and is talking about the world as he rants about everything being gone.
- Aluminium Christmas Trees: The "Anarchie Road" sign is a vandalised version of a real sign with the real name on it - the real name is "Anakie", it actually is that road (the film was largely made on the south-western outskirts of Melbourne) and Anakie is pronounced exactly the same way as Anarchy.
- Anti-Climax Boss: The Toecutter, as all it takes for Max to finish him off is to chase him down until he gets run over by a truck.
- Common Knowledge:
- Max's iconic black coupe is frequently called the Interceptor by fans, and even by a character in the sequel. However, it is identified as a Pursuit Special when unveiled and repeatedly over the film (the car Nightrider stole was another Pursuit Special). A different car, Max's previous squad car, is named the Interceptor, with "Interceptor" printed on the trunk; another car in the opening chase, March Hare, also has "Interceptor" on its trunk lid.
- Contrary to popular belief, Mel Gibson did not do his own dubbing in the American version of the movie. Samuel Z. Arkoff, co-founder of American International Pictures, confirmed in his biography Flying Through Hollywood By The Seat Of My Pants that Gibson remained in Australia and was not involved when they had the film's dialogue re-recorded. It's unknown who did his dubbing for the film, but some assume it was the late Peter Fernandez.
- Do Not Do This Cool Thing: The film was meant to show the dangers of reckless driving.
- Ensemble Dark Horse:
- Roop and Charlie may vanish around the halfway point but have lots of fans for being Those Two Guys and having some decent humor, poor luck in the chases and some backbone as shown when they confront Johnny the Boy at the station.
- The Nightrider (along with his alternately worried and excited girlfriend), for being a Large Ham Starter Villain.
- May and her Creepy Good farmhand only appear in a couple of scenes but are quite popular.
- Harsher in Hindsight: Max suffering a nervous breakdown from the tragedy in his life becomes harder to watch in light of Mel Gibson's own real life personal problems.
- Hilarious in Hindsight:
- "Nightrider" was probably a very scary name before 1982.
- The Lancer is called Goose, who is similarly doomed.
- There's an amusing scene early on where Goose is telling some unfortunate diner about a horrifying car accident where a man got his face ripped off. That man wouldn't happen to be named Joe, would he?
- Similarly, Toecutter, played by the same actor who would later play Immortan Joe, tells Jesse, "If you should lose the face, you've got nothing." Guess Joe didn't listen to his own advice.
- In the early 2000s vehicles of Australian police agencies got bright, garish liveries not unlike MFP vehicles had. Bonus points for Australian Federal Police, when shortened, is just one letter off.
- Ho Yay: Mudguts and Cundalini are introduced waltzing together in the street, are rarely seen apart, and Mudguts keeps Cundalini protectively close after the latter loses his hand.
- Memetic Mutation: Nightrider's demented ramblings ("I'm a rocker! I'm a roller! I'm an out-of-controller”, actually an AC/DC lyric) consist the most oft-quoted piece of dialogue, particularly "I am a fuel-injected suicide machine!", which has been the name of several
punk rock songs and even showed up in one of the most famous promos of Sid Eudy. - Misaimed Fandom: While it was meant to show the dangers of reckless driving, the hoons and rev-heads who saw it felt that their lifestyles had been validated.
- Narm: Seeing May blazing away at the bikers with her shotgun and always missing during such a tense scene can have this affect.
- Paranoia Fuel: Max goes on vacation to take a break from the criminals who are slowly causing him to lose his sanity. And they follow him.
- Slow-Paced Beginning: A common criticism is that the "good stuff" doesn't really start until the last act.
- Special Effect Failure:
- When Goose's utenote is run off the road, you can clearly see the stunt driver wearing a protective helmet.
- The truck that Toecutter collides with head on clearly has a metal plate with the front of a truck painted on it. When you see the collision from the side you can clearly the plate sticking out in front. This is justified as the movie had a very small budget and the crash would’ve severely damaged the truck. However the obvious metal plate can be overlooked since the crash itself is absolutely amazing and holds up very well for a low budget movie made nearly fifty years ago.
- Vindicated by History: Despite turning a massive profit on its meager budget, the film was mostly relegated to the late-night B-Movie crowd in the early '80s. After the more popular sequels The Road Warrior and especially Fury Road, it came to be seen as an influential sci-fi classic and a major example of what exceptional talent can accomplish with virtually no money.
- The Woobie:
- The poor girl in the car that gets attacked by Toecutter's gang. Not only is she beaten and raped, she's chained up as well and is so terrified she can't even talk to the police at first.
- Hell, even her boyfriend, too. He's implied to have had the same thing happen to him with the added humiliation of the police treating him like a joke when he tries to flee minus his pants.
- Goose: He gets burned alive and is left in a vegetative state for life.
- Max by the end of the film is utterly broken by the hospitalization of Jessie and the death of Sprog. As the Feral Kid put it in the next film, "In the roar of an engine, he lost everything."
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/YMMV/MadMax1
Go To