Road Warrior Comparison

Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, known to American audiences as The Road Warrior, and Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, named at the time of its release as simply Star Wars, are two very different pieces of film belonging to the genre of science fiction. The first tells the story of a man in a dystopian Australian wasteland being enlisted by a group of helpless survivors to fight against pillaging raiders; the latter tells the story of intergalactic warriors embarking on a mission to overthrow a genocidal emperor. Although both of these movies have very different themes and plot elements, they do share one characteristic commonly found in the realm of science fiction films: the influence of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa.

Akira Kurosawa was

For Rashomon, through implied rape and murder, violence comes to symbolize the lawlessness of the characters and retells the conflict at the center of the court’s trial. The Road Warrior takes violence as a symbol of the lawlessness of the civilized world and essentially becomes the conflict: the battle between the villagers and invaders. Going further, however, the psychological deterioration of the characters in Rashomon, when told through violence, is implied with strategic cinematography. At first glance, it would be assumed that psychological deterioration is told through The Road Warrior by the on-screen kills and bloodshed, but The Road Warrior mimics Rashomon’s method in terms of character psychology. Rashomon is much less graphic than George Miller’s production, but both use violence and lighting as a symbol of psychological deconstruction. In her article “Analysing the Portrayal of Violence in Mad Max and Rashomon”, Motley View writer Katie Wellbrook elaborates that Kurosawa manipulates lighting and shadow on the wife’s face as she, in her retelling of the event in question, commits murder, showing that “…her innocent exterior is tainted by her desire for power and violence.” This same method of lighting is used by George Miller on Max. Following the film’s opening montage and explanation for the state of the world, the camera cuts

The villagers, starving and desperate, seek out help. They eventually are helped by a group of Ronin, masterless samurai, who come together to train the villagers and help them fend off their attackers. The critical success of the film has led the plot to become one of the most remade in the history of cinema (Desser), inspiring films such as Western classic The Magnificent Seven and even the animated A Bug’s Life. Aside from necessary changes and other small creative liberties, George Miller essentially transplants the story of Seven Samurai from feudal Japan to post-society Australia. In the second of the Mad Max series, Max comes across a group of post-apocalyptic villagers holding out against the threat of sociopathic scavengers. The villagers, in exchange for gasoline, receive the help of Max to fight back against their own attackers. There are a few differences, however. For instance, Max is the lone savior to the villagers, and they are not completely helpless like their Kurosawa counterparts. The villagers in Seven Samurai were only capable of arming themselves after killing wounded bandits and taking their gear. For Kurosawa, this helps show the cowardly nature of the villagers and establish that neither side can be taken as a pure representation of good or evil (J. Anderson). This change makes sense, however, in order to accommodate the change in setting and stay true to