How A Stunt Gone Wrong Made Its Way Into The Final Cut Of Mad Max 2
No filmmaker crafts a car chase as deftly as George Miller does and the "Mad Max" films prove it. One of his crowning achievements is the climax of "Mad Max 2" or "The Road Warrior" (its title in the U.S. thanks to the first "Mad Max" being an initial flop there).
During the film, Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson) stumbles on some settlers in the Wasteland. They're besieged by the forces of Lord Humungus (Kjell Nilsson), who want the town's gasoline supply. This story culminates with Max driving a decoy tanker truck to lead the raiders away from settlers escaping with the real gasoline.
Lord Humungus' men are in smaller vehicles and their chase of the tanker looks like a wolf pack on the trail of a buffalo. The smaller vehicles get swatted away by the truck, causing spectacular crashes. During the "Mad Max 2" shoot, the danger of these crashes wasn't staged either, as stuntman Guy Norris found out the hard way.
Break a leg out there!
"Mad Max 2" was the then-21-year-old Norris' first job on a movie. He had his work cut out for him, as he played several of Humungus' henchmen. In 2015, he recounted to Wired: "Essentially every character that jumped onto the tanker was me. I'd put on a different wardrobe, jump. Then put on different wardrobe and jump again from a different position."
One of Norris' roles was a bike raider (the one with the mohawk, nose ring, and red rectangle painted over his face). Said raider drives right into a crashed buggy and goes flying. The camera captures him flying through the air, as intended. If you look closely though, you'll notice that his legs make contact with the buggy right as he's launched into the air. That was not planned and Norris broke his femur from the impact. That also meant he didn't land properly on the cushion — a pile of empty cardboard boxes.
Luckily, there was a doctor on-hand. Who? None other than the picture's director. Before taking up filmmaking full-time, Miller had worked as an emergency room doctor — I wouldn't be surprised if the stress and time management skills he learned there prepared him to make movies. While the "Mad Max 2" crew waited for an ambulance, Miller tended to Norris' leg.
Staying in stuntwork
As you can tell, though, the leg-breaking stunt still ended up in the movie; it was too good a shot to not include. While Norris did manage to return to the set for a fight scene with Mel Gibson, he was still in no condition to do that stunt again. Since Norris kept working with Miller (he was a stunt coordinator on "Happy Feet" and "Mad Max: Fury Road"), I'd guess there were no hard feelings about Miller including the shot. If I broke my leg pulling off a shot then I'd dang well want it included in the final cut, otherwise, the injury would have been for nothing.
Norris' work on "Fury Road" again included stunts involving cars — an occupational hazard of working in the stunt department in a "Mad Max" movie. The film's last stunt, when the 16-wheel "Doof Wagon" drives into the tanker truck that Nux (Nicholas Hoult) just crashed? Norris was the one driving the 16-wheeler into the truck, all without slowing down. This time, he walked away without any broken bones.
Norris returned for the latest "Mad Max" film — "Furiosa" — as Miller's 2nd unit director. We'll have to wait and see what sort of stunts and car crashes they cooked up together this time.