THERE’S NO POINT revisiting the past unless it has something to tell us about the present. Fortunately, the latest anniversary-inspired re-release of an old movie turns out to be remarkably relevant to our current landscape. Twenty years down the road, Mad Max–the car-chase movie that launched Mel Gibson into stardom and announced former medical doctor George Miller as perhaps the most talented and kinetic of Australia’s new wave directors–still offers some nice thrills and spills, but time has revealed it as an oddly prescient indictment of I-695 sponsor Tim Eyman.
The opening title card places the story “a few years from now,” and in this near-future, social spending will be so brutally slashed that the very Hall of Justice (police headquarters) will be a decrepit, rundown warehouse, and cities will be abandoned for dusty ghost towns and the open road. The proliferation of private auto ownership at the expense of public funding, encouraged by I-695, points us right toward this breakdown of urban centers and social services. One would hope that at least the nation’s highways would remain a beacon of freedom, but no! Obviously motivated by the minimal licensing tab, roving gangs of filthy, violent, and sexually ambivalent hooligans think nothing of roaring along in souped-up hotrods and motorcycles, whose annual fees they couldn’t even dream of paying before.
In this near-future, compassion for others has become outmoded and irresponsible; your own bottom dollar has become the brutal benchmark. “Speed is just a matter of money,” advises a sign at a junkyard. “How fast can you go?” With community a thing of the past, and the world reduced to a wasteland marked only by endless strips of asphalt, is it any wonder the cops have degenerated into leather-clad action junkies prone to vigilante behavior?
Eyman has already set his sights on opening up the HOV lanes, and then it’s on to property taxes. One recalls with a shudder that, in the Mad Max sequels, not only has gasoline become scarce and ultra-valuable, but even the few private residences have vanished, replaced by desert enclaves whose inhabitants must fend off nomadic invaders. We have been warned.