Mad Max, His Hands and a Map
How a videogame adaptation struggles with depicting a iconic movie character.
This essay was written for the Waypoint 101 videogame club.
In the entire run time of Mad Max 2 (1981), Max throws precisely one punch.
This is relatively consistent across all four of George Miller’s Mad Max films. My personal count of all the films has the punch count at somewhere between seven to ten, the imprecision coming down to some moments of rapid editing and imprecision over how one may define a “punch”. Regardless of the exact count, it is indisputably a low number for the protagonist of an action film franchise.
But in the 2015 videogame adaptation of Miller’s dystopian series Max throws thousands of punches. Perhaps tens of thousands for players who’d seek out 100% completion. It’s a staggering difference. Max throws more blows with his fists in the game’s opening cutscene than he does in both of the first two films combined. This is how the game adaptation loses sight of how the films make the character of Max Rockatansky compelling. Because in the films, Max’s humanity is expressed through his hands. Watch them carefully and you’ll notice how Max routinely fails to maintain his cool, disassociated persona and instead allows his personality or emotions show through actions preformed by his hands. These slips are key to reminding the audience that yes, this is still a human being and not one of the psychopaths of the Australian wasteland. To remind the audience that Max, while clearly deeply troubled is still worth cheering for along the way. That there’s something within that character that someone watching can relate to.
For the purposes of keeping this essay coherent, the only film I’m going to cite as a comparison to the videogame is Mad Max 2. It’s clearly the film that most strongly influences the videogame. While the game may share much more in terms of production design with Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), its plot beats and motifs all come from the 1981 film. Both open with a car chase in media res, both feature strongholds under siege, both feature an eccentric sidekick character that Max begrudging allows to tag along, both have characters question and berate Max about his “purpose”, and so on. The game’s emotional and thematic core is lifted directly from Mad Max 2. And while useful comparisons could be made with any of the films, Miller’s original sequel is clearly the one watched most often in the Avalanche Studios offices.
Max Rockatansky as Movie Hero
Over and over again his hands betray the “Mad Max”
If there’s one scene to watch to understand Miller’s framing of Max’s hands it’s certainly the one where Max gifts the remnants of a music box to the Child.
While captured and sitting bored in the corner, Max notices the Child enter the camp. He stops fidgeting with the metal in his hands as he looks down on the boy, wordlessly, almost totally still. He reaches into his jacket to pull out the remnants of an old music box. Max plays the tune for the child and with a flick of his wrist tosses it down to him, who happily runs on his way with his new toy.
But notice what parts of Max move in this sequence. His face is entirely neutral or expressionless. His body is almost entirely still, frozen in his sitting pose entirely except for those hands of his. Hands that reach into his jacket, pull out the music box, play it and tosses it down to him entirely on their own. It’s the first instance in the film where Max shows any kind of true warmth to another human being and it is expressed entirely by his fists. This is clearly a purposeful decision by Miller, who included Max’s hands on frame during frontal shots of him playing the tune as well as in the reverse shots of the Child appreciating the music. Max’s hands are present in 72% of the shots in this sequence, more than anything else. All the while Max tries to maintain his stoic distance from the emotion of the moment, he refuses to smile, adopt more welcoming body language or even attempt verbal communication with the Child. But Max’s hands betray that effort and out him to the audience as someone who is in fact willing to make some level of self sacrifice for others, capable of a moment of warmth.
And that’s not the last time Max’s hands betray his intended demeanour. When the leader of the stronghold presses Max on his personal history, Max tries to walk away to escape dredging up memories. But as Pappagallo says just the right thing to aggravate Max, his fists fly up to deliver a silencing blow that betrays Max’s internal self loathing to the audience. Later when Max tries to volunteer to drive the tanker, Max tries to stand tall and strong. But again his hands betray that by needing to reach out and steady himself, grabbing hold of objects to support his weight. Later still when Max has rolled the tanker the audience sees his hands shift from tending his own wounds to holding the Child in a reassuring manner. Betraying his self-serving persona as someone who is in fact willing to help others first. Over and over again his hands betray the idea of the “Mad Max” he tries to portray to the world and instead clues the audience in to the kind of person Max would like to think he left in his past.
In Mad Max 2, Max’s hands do the heavy lifting of Max’s character development. Max isn’t one to have deep meaningful conversations with others so the film needed some way of conveying his true character without words. Without his “speaking” hands, Max would just be another lunatic in a world gone mad. There’d be no difference between him and the bikers that chase him down the dusty highways. It’s his hands that make Max into a hero.
Max Rockatansky as Videogame Hero
The Max that’s willing to square up with eight foot tall undying superhumans
But what of Mad Max (2015), how does Frank Rooke’s videogame depict Max’s hands in comparison to Miller’s film? Well, he certainly dehumanizes them from a visual standpoint.
By selecting upgrades in the “knuckledusters” and “wrist armour” skilltrees, Max’s hands take on a look of machine rather than man. His hands are covered in strips of metal and bolts designed with killing in mind. It’s hard to picture Max showing the music box to the Child in Mad Max 2 while wearing these. They are too clunky, too cumbersome to make the kind of subtle gestures that could inform the audience about Max’s internal thought process. This Max is simply the silent badass that Miller’s version tried to use as a facade to those around him. As a character he’s unapproachable, as selfish and cold as the psychopaths he comes up against. This is the Max that throws thousands of punches over the course of the game. The Max that’s willing to square up with eight foot tall undying superhumans that wield staves with chainsaws on both ends. And so Max blurs into his surroundings, becoming a willing participant of the modern wasteland instead of a relic of the humanity’s past ideals.
In addition, the player will inevitably instruct Max to climb back into his car, where he escapes the gaze of the player. And so, while not being seen and not being heard Max simply ceases to exist at all. The car’s ride along mechanic will bark suggestions at the player through Max. But he rarely responds, the hint isn’t for him anyways. Absent from the camera’s eye Max doesn’t even have much of a chance to display his humanity. He becomes a puppet of the player’s agency, so what would Max even have to express? His hands have no traits to betray even if they were compelled to do so.
Admittedly there are moments scattered here and there over the course of the game where Max’s hands do function in a manner similar to the film. There’s a cutscene where Max pulls a child out of her hiding place and wraps his arms around her. Comforting her as he carries her back to her mother. Or when Max finds thirsty wanders in the desert and stops to share some water. But these singular moments are few and far between. Surrounded by hours of punching starving fanatics to loot their corpses. These moments of kindness seem like anomalies instead of indications of his true self. Max’s base motivations too self-serving for his acts to seem genuine.
I don’t want to leave the impression that Mad Max is a bad videogame because it fails to specifically replicate the character of the films. The game could have been a wild departure and still succeeded in its own way. No, the videogame fails because it sheds elements of Max’s character and doesn’t seek to replace them with anything to maintain interest in the character. Rooke’s Max is just a prick, the plot knows it, the other characters seem to know it for the most part and the player learns it pretty damn quick. Even in the game’s climax this Max is willing to needlessly sacrifice the only person who believes in him in order to exact some amount of meaningless revenge. Who cares about his hands, or how ever else the character chooses to express himself because he has nothing human to impart at all.
At least that’s what I thought right up until the final moments I had with the game. I was zipping across the map while doing some assorted side missions while trying to capture screenshots for this piece. I pulled open the map to see where I could find some enemies to fight and that’s when I realized what the map had come to represent, Max’s history of his humanity. You see completing the main story requires the player to complete very little of the open world missions or locations. If a player mainlines the game there are entire zones of the map that remain unseen left grey on the map as they are unnecessary for the completion of the main story. But I HAD done a bunch of side content here and there across the game world. Every green check mark on the map was some task that Max took on unnecessarily. The map was the log of Max’s compassion. Campsite by campsite the map depicted where the game’s Max had let bits of his humanity slip out through unneeded acts of bravery. The map, and Max’s fingerprints left on its lands are the game’s equivalent of Max’s hands. The example of his selflessness or true nature.
Is that enough to make this game “good”? No not by a long shot. The game is still a repetitive grindfest with a very poorly told story that treats its women like garbage. But I have to say that I came to some level of understanding about how games and film can impart meaning in vastly different ways. I pulled into one of the game’s stronghold’s for the last time and admired the way it had been built up due to Max’s actions. It happened slowly but the game found a way to find to show little bit of the real Max Rockatansky in its kind of way. But this depiction of Max doesn’t earn that legacy, he’s far too selfish. He doesn’t warrant being remembered as a hero. Or even mythically, as the road warrior.
