Wez was one of the more memorable villains in The Road Warrior, but what’s the secret connection between him and a later Mad Max baddie, Immortan Joe from Fury Road? Beginning in 1979 with George Miller’s sparse, critically acclaimed thriller Mad Max, the franchise of the same name has evolved over the years from a raw and realistic revenge thriller into a post-apocalyptic sci-fi action extravaganza. The tonal shift may be almost as extreme as different entries of the Evil Dead franchise, but despite changing styles and shifting story speeds, the Mad Max movies all address similar ideas.
While the installments of the Mad Max series may vary in tone, the movies (all directed by Miller) are united in their focus on recurring themes. The first sequel, 1981’s The Road Warrior, sees Max attempt to help a struggling desert-stranded community to avoid the wrath of an insane cult leader, and the movie looks at tribalism and its human cost in a world ravaged by precarity and division. Meanwhile, 2015’s Fury Road (which saw Tom Hardy make his Mad Max debut), touches on similar themes with its tale of a parched desert city run by a megalomaniacal overlord.
There’s one minor villain who ties the two franchise installments together, and his depiction illustrates Miller’s shifting view of militarism, madness, and the society (or lack thereof) found in Max’s cinematic universe. A henchman obsessed with hunting down Mel Gibson’s titular antihero, The Road Warrior’s Wez was a memorably creepy addition to the rogue’s gallery of villains featured throughout the Mad Max franchise. But he originally had a heartbreaking backstory that made sense of how his madness came about, and it’s one that ended up being used later in the series in a more famous Fury Road baddie whose backstory utilized the same theme in a more effective and focused manner.
Who Was Wez?
In the finished version of The Road Warrior, Wez is a henchman of Lord Humungus, and is a thinly sketched villain with an obsessive hatred of Max that begins when the titular hero evades him in the movie's high-octane opening sequence. But originally Wez was intended to be a disturbed Vietnam veteran whose untreated PTSD contributed to his paranoia and volatile, violent behavior throughout the action of The Road Warrior. Viewed through this lens, Wez’s obsessive pursuit of Mad Max takes on a poignant second meaning, as the henchman is unable to process his life in the post-apocalyptic environs of The Road Warrior as anything other than a series of fight-or-flight, kill-or-be-killed wartime traumas. Eventually, series creator George Miller opted not to use this backstory in the sequel, but the premise did make a transformed appearance later in the series.
How Wez's Unused Backstory Influenced Immortan Joe
A more major franchise villain, Immortan Joe’s canon backstory revealed him to be a former army general who used his military experience and shattered psyche for personal gain in the post-apocalyptic wasteland setting of the Mad Max series. The prequel comics released alongside Fury Road revealed that Immortan Joe gained followers in the wasteland due to his apparent strength of character and fearless resolve, both of which are put-ons that he adopted in the military to ensure obedience from subordinates. He then used this projection of hyper-aggressive strength to gain influence and territory, eventually slaughtering civilians in his coup of the Citadel, seeming tough but mainly allowing his cultish War Boys do his violent bidding as opposed to putting himself in direct danger.
Why Immortan Joe’s Villainy Worked Better
Veteran director Miller’s second attempt to touch on themes of militarism was more focused than his first and offered a more effective and realistic depiction of militarism’s often dangerous relationship with societal breakdown. Much like the homoeroticism of The Road Warrior’s villains, the PTSD angle seems somewhat tasteless in retrospect, although Miller’s movie intended to humanize the character with a backstory. Wez is arguably unfairly villainized for the mental toll military service took on him. Like any war veteran, many of whom were conscripted against their will, Wez isn’t responsible for the effect of the war on his psyche. As such, depicting the character as a murderous villain, even in the heightened world of Mad Max, contributes to the dangerous misconception that PTSD sufferers are more likely to harm onlookers than themselves.
In contrast, Immortan Joe’s toxic worldview is more clearly tied to the cruel treatment of subordinates that was normalized during his time in the army, and his brutal mistreatment of women, his followers, and the Citadel’s citizens is directly tied back to his abuse of military power. Put simply, Joe isn’t a villain because of his PTSD (after all, Max is a fellow sufferer, something Fury Road makes clear with his frequent flashbacks). Instead, Immortan Joe is a villain because he has opted to take the cruelest excesses of war and codify them in a society that he rules with an iron fist, not only rejecting a chance to create a more peaceful world but choosing to actively endanger the lives of his War Boys and torture his "wives" with constant, lethal conflict.
Why Mad Max Still Needs Wez
While Immortan Joe’s cruelty toward his War Boys is a fitting illustration of the often callous disregard for infantry soldiers throughout the history of warfare, the pointed critique of brutality in the face of crippling mental illness seen in Wez’s backstory still deserves a place in the Mad Max universe. As the title implies, Max himself is a man who has been made hard and crazed by a string of vicious traumas meted out on him, and Fury Road’s flashbacks made it clear that this stream of misfortunes and horrors he has witnessed has taken a mental toll on him. But Max is also repeatedly called upon throughout the series to choose mercy and understanding over callous disregard for humanity, and the character’s ability to build a better society, even as a near-mute drifter, holds the series together.
As such, a character whose instability is rooted in the very real PTSD inflicted by the brutality of war still has a place in the Mad Max universe, and the original plan for The Road Warrior’s villain couldn’t be a better idea in a post-Joker cinematic environment. Where Fury Road extended sympathy toward Nicholas Hoult’s potentially one-note villain Nux, and redeemed the character after clarifying just how he became brainwashed through no fault of his own, later Mad Max movies could include Wez (or a character styled after him) as a foil to the eponymous antihero. Such a character could be a valuable addition to the franchise, provided their experience PTSD contributes to their outlook but isn't unfairly blamed for their villainous behavior.