I had seen Road Warrior for many years before I ever saw MadMax, and it surprised me how different the first move was from the sequel.
The first movie was very low budget.
We loved it in college because a couple of us had Kawasaki KZ 650s & 750 motorcycles.
Yeah, the first one was supposed to be a society just starting to slip over the edge, and by the time of the “The Road Warrior” it was fully gone.
"The chain in those handcuffs is high-tensile steel. It'd take you ten minutes to hack through it with this [hacksaw]. Now, if you're lucky, you could hack through your ankle in five minutes."