Max Rockatansky is the
title character
The title character in a narrative work is one who is named or referred to in the title of the work. In a performed work such as a play or film, the performer who plays the title character is said to have the title role of the piece. The title of ...
and
antihero
An antihero (sometimes spelled as anti-hero) or antiheroine is a main character in a story who may lack conventional heroic qualities and attributes, such as idealism, courage, and morality. Although antiheroes may sometimes perform actions ...
protagonist
A protagonist () is the main character of a story. The protagonist makes key decisions that affect the plot, primarily influencing the story and propelling it forward, and is often the character who faces the most significant obstacles. If a st ...
of the Australian post-apocalyptic action film series ''
Mad Max
''Mad Max'' is an Australian post-apocalyptic Action film, action film series and media franchise created by George Miller (filmmaker), George Miller and Byron Kennedy. It began in 1979 with ''Mad Max (film), Mad Max'', and was followed by thre ...
''. Created by director
George Miller and producer
Byron Kennedy
Byron Eric Kennedy (18 August 1949 – 17 July 1983) was an Australian film producer known for co-creating the ''Mad Max'' series of films with George Miller.
Early life
Byron Kennedy was born in Melbourne. At the age of 18, he formed his own ...
, the character was originally played by actor
Mel Gibson
Mel Columcille Gerard Gibson (born January 3, 1956) is an American actor, film director, and producer. He is best known for his action hero roles, particularly his breakout role as Max Rockatansky in the first three films of the post-apocaly ...
in the first three films from 1979 to 1985, and later
Tom Hardy in the
fourth in 2015.
Films
''Mad Max''
In ''Mad Max'', Max Rockatansky is a Main Force Patrol officer tasked with maintaining law and order on the roads of a
dystopian
A dystopia (from Ancient Greek δυσ- "bad, hard" and τόπος "place"; alternatively cacotopiaCacotopia (from κακός ''kakos'' "bad") was the term used by Jeremy Bentham in his 1818 Plan of Parliamentary Reform (Works, vol. 3, p. 493). ...
Victoria, Australia
Victoria is a state in southeastern Australia. It is the second-smallest state with a land area of , the second most populated state (after New South Wales) with a population of over 6.5 million, and the most densely populated state in Au ...
. Max is quiet, rarely speaking to any great extent, and never paying much attention to his steadily increasing reputation. He and his wife, Jessie, have an infant son, referred to only as "Sprog" (slang for "child") in the film.
Though the best officer on the force, he is secretly afraid that he is becoming as cold and heartless as the criminals he pursues. He reaches a breaking point when a gang of criminally insane bikers led by the Toecutter burn Max's partner Goose alive inside a borrowed
ute
Ute or UTE may refer to:
* Ute (band), an Australian jazz group
* Ute (given name)
* ''Ute'' (sponge), a sponge genus
* Ute (vehicle), an Australian and New Zealand term for certain utility vehicles
* Ute, Iowa, a city in Monona County along ...
. The sight of Goose's charred body in a hospital bed prompts Max to tender his resignation from the MFP. However, he is convinced by his commanding officer to take a vacation before committing to his decision. Max goes on holiday with his family, but this leads to a chain of events that ultimately results in the Toecutter's gang killing Jessie and Sprog. Overwhelmed with grief and rage, he goes AWOL from the MFP, steals their
Pursuit Special
The Pursuit Special, also referred to as the Last of the V8 Interceptors, is the iconic black GT Falcon muscle car featuring a distinctive supercharger driven by the title character Mad Max during much of the ''Mad Max'' franchise, where it app ...
("the last of the V8 Interceptors") and systematically pursues and kills each gang member responsible. Max is injured in an ambush set for him by the Toecutter, where he is shot in the left leg and has his right arm run over at the elbow. Despite his injuries, he manages to fatally shoot gang lieutenant Bubba Zanetti and pursues the Toecutter to his death. After hunting down final gang member Johnny the Boy and leaving him in a death trap, Max drives out into the wasteland, leaving the fading remnants of civilization behind him.
''Mad Max 2''
In this film, set about three years after the first film, Max, while wandering the wasteland of the
outback
The Outback is a remote, vast, sparsely populated area of Australia. The Outback is more remote than the bush. While often envisaged as being arid, the Outback regions extend from the northern to southern Australian coastlines and encompass a n ...
in his new home, the battle scarred
Pursuit Special
The Pursuit Special, also referred to as the Last of the V8 Interceptors, is the iconic black GT Falcon muscle car featuring a distinctive supercharger driven by the title character Mad Max during much of the ''Mad Max'' franchise, where it app ...
, discovers a besieged group of people manning a remote
oil drill
An oil well is a drillhole boring (earth), boring in Earth that is designed to bring petroleum oil hydrocarbons to the surface. Usually some natural gas is released as associated petroleum gas along with the oil. A well that is designed to produ ...
ing station and
refinery
A refinery is a production facility composed of a group of chemical engineering unit processes and unit operations refining certain materials or converting raw material into products of value.
Types of refineries
Different types of refineries ...
. After losing nearly all of his remaining worldly possessions, including his dog and his car, Max, with few options left, agrees to help the refinery's denizens to escape through hordes of marauding motorcycle gang members and their leader Humungus. In this film, although Max has lost everything, he is able to find, at least in part, his humanity once again. However, he still cannot form any significant bonds with others and chooses to continue wandering the wasteland alone.
''Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome''
In this installment of the ''Mad Max'' series, it has been eighteen years since Max Rockatansky left his life behind him following his revenge killings of the Toecutter and his gang, and fifteen years after his defeat of the Humungus. Since that time he has wandered through the outback, scavenging whatever he needed for survival. His hair has grown long, and very few remnants of his old police uniform remain recognizable. After falling foul of Aunty Entity, the dictatorial leader of the settlement of Bartertown, Max is exiled into the desert. He stumbles across and is rescued by a tribe of children living in a wilderness oasis, the descendants of survivors of a crashed airliner, becoming their saviour and protector against the vicious world outside. In this movie, Max is able to come full circle, regaining his humanity and soul once again, and sacrificing his own well-being for the sake of others.
''Mad Max: Fury Road''
Sometime after ''Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome'', the opening to ''Fury Road'' finds Max haggard and alone with his car. After his Interceptor is wrecked and he is captured by a gang known as the "War Boys", he is imprisoned and used as a live
blood donor
A blood donation occurs when a person voluntarily has blood drawn and used for transfusions and/or made into biopharmaceutical medications by a process called fractionation (separation of whole blood components). Donation may be of whole bloo ...
for the gang. Strapped to the hood of a car in pursuit of the War Boys' renegade general,
Imperator Furiosa
Imperator Furiosa is a fictional Character (arts), character in the 2015 film ''Mad Max: Fury Road'' and the 2024 prequel film ''Furiosa (film), Furiosa''. She is a war captain under Immortan Joe but turns against him in order to free "The Five W ...
, Max escapes and reluctantly helps Furiosa in her quest to help five women escape from the War Boys' despotic leader,
Immortan Joe. After the group defeat their pursuers, Max parts ways with the survivors of the group and disappears.
Games
''Mad Max'' (1990)
The first video game to feature the character was released in 1990 for the
Nintendo Entertainment System
The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit third-generation home video game console produced by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan in 1983 as the commonly known as the The NES, a redesigned version, was released in America ...
. The game's plot is loosely based on ''Mad Max 2''.
''Mad Max'' (2015)
Max's journey to the Plains of Silence takes an unexpected turn when a group of War Boys run him off the road and steal his clothes, his supplies, his weapons, and his car before leaving him to rot in the desert sun. Traversing the wasteland in search of his prized Interceptor, Max meets a hunchbacked mechanic named Chumbucket, an overzealous individual that's hell-bent on crafting the perfect vehicle, the Magnum Opus. After giving Max hope of exacting vengeance on Scrotus, the two form an unlikely partnership and set out in the base of the Opus in search of food, water, allies, upgrades, and redemption in a world devoid of sanity.
Equipment
During the first two films, Max makes use of a
Pursuit Special
The Pursuit Special, also referred to as the Last of the V8 Interceptors, is the iconic black GT Falcon muscle car featuring a distinctive supercharger driven by the title character Mad Max during much of the ''Mad Max'' franchise, where it app ...
, though he drives a different vehicle (an MFP Interceptor) earlier in the first film. Between the second and third films, after the destruction of the Pursuit Special, Max acquires a roll-cage equipped vehicle based on a pick-up truck and set up to be used as a camel-drawn wagon at need. This is later stolen from him. He later steals it back after it has been modified to run on methane and uses it during the final chase sequence.
He wears the black MFP issue uniform of heavy duty riding leathers, which become ripped and patched through the course of the series. During his time with Main Force Patrol, he is armed with a revolver which he does not use, favouring a
sawn-off shotgun
A sawed-off shotgun (also called a sawn-off shotgun, short-barreled shotgun, shorty or a boom stick) is a type of shotgun with a shorter gun barrel—typically under —and often a shortened or absent stock. Despite the colloquial term, b ...
which he uses in the second and third films. In the third film, he uses a more traditional shotgun, and, after accumulating even more weapons, surrenders them all in
Bartertown, which ''
The Scotsman
''The Scotsman'' is a Scottish compact newspaper and daily news website headquartered in Edinburgh. First established as a radical political paper in 1817, it began daily publication in 1855 and remained a broadsheet until August 2004. Its par ...
'' calls a moment of self-parody.
Abilities
Max possesses considerable skill with firearms and is an excellent shot, but his most apparent skill is combative driving: he can shoot accurately with one hand while driving with the other. At the time of ''Mad Max'', he was considered the "top pursuit man" in the MFP. He can easily pursue or evade gangs in the wasteland, whether overrunning another vehicle at high speed or ramming vehicles off the road. This skill is apparent with trucks as well as automobiles, as he drives a semi truck after sustaining serious injuries in the second film.
Max displays fast reflexes in ''Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior'' by grabbing a snake before it can bite him and in ''Mad Max: Fury Road'' stomping a two-headed lizard that runs towards him from behind. This leads Aunty Entity to choose him to kill Master Blaster in ''Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome'', as he was the first to survive her "audition." Max also displays a fair amount of mechanical and electronics ability, performing minor repairs on his own vehicle and rigging two to explode should someone tamper with them or his fuel tanks. He also improvised a time delay fuse with only a cigarette lighter, a lamp housing and the leaking fuel of an overturned vehicle.
Max is primarily a survivalist in the wasteland and can tolerate discomfort and pain in achieving a goal, but unlike many movie protagonists, Max is susceptible to realistic and sometimes permanent injury: his left knee is blown out by a gunshot towards the end of the first film, he walks with a slight limp with the help of a leg brace in the second film, and the knee is still tightly bandaged in the third film. In ''Fury Road'', Max's left knee brace makes another appearance and still appears to affect his mobility, albeit only slightly. An injury to his left eye as a result of the crash of the Pursuit Special in ''Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior'' is evident years later in ''Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.''
Reception
''
Entertainment Weekly
''Entertainment Weekly'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''EW'') is an American digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, and popular cul ...
'' ranked the character eleventh on its list of the top twenty "All-Time Coolest Heroes in Pop Culture" in April 2009. The magazine also listed the characters portrayed by
Kevin Costner
Kevin Michael Costner (born January 18, 1955) is an American actor, producer, film director and musician. He has received various accolades, including two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, and two Screen Actor ...
in ''
Waterworld
''Waterworld'' is a 1995 American post-apocalyptic action film directed by Kevin Reynolds and co-written by Peter Rader and David Twohy. It was based on Rader's original 1986 screenplay and stars Kevin Costner, who also produced it with Charl ...
'' and ''
The Postman
''The Postman'' is a post-apocalyptic dystopia science fiction novel by David Brin. It is about a man wandering the desolate Oregon countryside who finds a United States Postal Service uniform, which he puts on and then claims he is a mail carri ...
'' as "copycat descendants" of Max Rockatansky. ''
Total Film
''Total Film'' is a British film magazine published 13 times a year (published monthly and a summer issue is added every year since issue 91, 2004, which is published between July and August issue) by Future Publishing. The magazine was launched i ...
'' ranked him #75 in their Top 100 Movie Characters of All Time.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rockatansky, Max
Mad Max (franchise) characters
Film characters introduced in 1979
Fictional survivalists
Fictional mercenaries
Fictional Australian police officers
Fictional police officers in films
Fictional vigilantes
Fictional drivers
Fictional characters with post-traumatic stress disorder
Male characters in film