The Warriors (1979)

QFS No. 178 - The invitation for June 4, 2025
The Warriors is one in a line of post-apocalyptic New York films, John Carpenter’s Escape from New York (1981, QFS No. 61) being one of the preeminent in the subgenre which we saw a few years ago together. Throw in a little Soylent Green (1976), I Am Legend (2007), Cloverfield (2008), the terrible End of Days (1999) and top it off with this week’s selection and you’ve got yourself the makings of a viable subgenre.

I’ve seen The Warriors before and I count myself as a fan. Is it a great movie? Let me put it this way – it’s a lot of fun. We shall debate its greatness together! The film features one of the great propulsive opening sequences you’ll see in any movie and the post-apocalyptic world building (as we say now) is truly terrific. It also contains an abundance of memorable moments, so maybe that does make it a great movie…

Join us on Tuesday for the film (or films) or watch at home and we’ll discuss next week Wednesday!

The Warriors (1979) Directed by Walter Hill

Reactions and Analyses:
Near the end of their epic journey in The Warriors (1979), The Warriors, the eponymous gang whose journey the film chronicles, finally ride on the subway to their home turf, Coney Island. They’ve been behind enemy lines, so to speak, in rival gang territory, being chased by every other gang after being accused of assassinating popular leader figure Cyrus (Roger Hill).

After racing through New York at night, surviving baseball bats, knives, fists, they’re battered and bruised and have a moment of respite. At a stop on the subway, a “civilian” group of New Yorkers enter. Youngsters, just about the age of young men in The Warriors, enter and sit across from the gang members. The foursome is dressed as if they’ve come from a wedding, and they have that giddy energy of people who’ve partied all night.

The Warriors have survived the night and are making their way back to home at Coney Island on the subway as party revelers enter, late in The Warriors (1979).

The revelers calm down for a moment and look at the bedraggled gang across from them – bruised, bloodied, clothes in tatters. Marcy (Debroah Van Valkenburgh) shows that she’s self-conscious about her appearance and tries to adjust her clothes. The group gets off at the next stop and The Warriors continue on.

People from above ground looking down on people from below.

It’s the only scene of its kind in the film and it struck our group as uniquely important. For a film with limited overt social commentary and politics, here’s a subtle moment of commentary. It’s the only time in the film that a group from above ground, from the non-gang world of The Warriors truly appears in the film. It’s as if a light is shone on the gang, as if all their fighting, all their struggle – what was it all worth? Was it all trivial, even laughable, in their contained world of fighting over territory through their gang affiliation?

As if to put a punctuation on it, in the following scene director Walter Hill has the light of day finally appear in the film and The Warriors have arrived back in their home turf, Coney Island. With the light also brings clarity. Swan (Michael Beck) says, “This is what we fought all night to get back to?” He has a moment of realization, too. He seems to be grasping with the futility of it all. What are we doing in this, our small world?

Daybreak and the Warriors have returned to their home turf.

For a film that was, at the time, criticized for glorifying gang violence and gang membership and incited violence at screenings around the country, it’s clear upon re-viewing it in 2025 that the film is in fact the opposite. The message of the film comes across upon close viewing. Their battles over tiny tracts of land make the gangs seem almost ridiculous in their futility, in their provincial world view.

One of the many borderline preposterous but entertaining gangs in The Warriors.

Having seen the film before, this social commentary aspect of The Warriors previously eluded me. It’s clear as day, now, that Hill is both honoring the struggle of The Warriors but also pulling the lens back into a bigger picture. Now that Swan and the gang have survived the larger world of New York, their eyes are open, their views expanded. They can never truly go back home.

Hill created a rich and thorough world in The Warriors, a land ruled by gangs through a ravaged city what felt like on the verge of collapse replete with a galaxy of nighttime disasters. Just the opening intercut montage of the gangs gathering for the meeting with Cyrus paints a picture so excellently of a world rife with unique villains and antiheroes. By the late 1970s, the logical conclusion of many was that New York City was well on its way to becoming just that. Crime, gangs, graffiti, urban decay, a city about to become bankrupt – all a reality to contemporary New Yorkers. So when Cyrus invites the gang members to a peaceful meeting and offers a truce because they, the gangsters, collectively outnumber the police five-fold, this must not have felt like too much of a stretch for New Yorkers.

“Can you dig it?” Cyrus (Roger Hill) has assembled the gangs of New York and attempts to inspire them to work together because they outnumber the police, and therefore can rule the city

But in this exaggerated version created by Hill, the gangs even have their own radio station. A Greek chorus narrating the journey of The Warriors and the other gangs of the city. And Hill envisioned the film as Greek mythology, along the lines of Xenophon’s “Anabasis” which accounts an army of mercenaries who are behind Persian lines and need to survive in order to return home. There are the Lizzies gang, sirens who lure The Warriors by seducing them and bring them into their lair. And the radio DJ (Lynne Thigpen), whose lips are the only thing the audience sees, acts as that Greek chorus whose role in Greek mythology was to narrate the epic journey. The DJ also reminded our QFS group of another use of radio as narrator in a New York-set film – Do the Right Thing (1989) directed by Spike Lee. A known cinephile and lover of movies who was coming of age in New York at the time The Warriors was released, it seems likely Lee took at least some inspiration from The Warriors for his Mister Senor Love Daddy character played by Samuel L Jackson who “narrates” the story as if an omniscient observer from the local DJ radio station.

The DJ (Lynne Thigpen) whose lips are the only thing we see acts as our Greek narrator in the Warriors’ epic journey.

Samuel L Jackson as the DJ Mister Senor Love Daddy in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989) also acts as narrator.

The Warriors has its imperfections and some illogical aspects to it to be sure. For example – why do none of the gangs use guns except for the Lizzies, who seduce, capture and nearly shoot to death The Warriors in their lair? And why are they so bad at shooting? Why does Luther (David Patrick Kelly) of The Rogues gang shoot Cyrus in the first place? Is it just pure nihilism as he claims: “No reason. I just... like doing things like that!” Is he a police officer plant, meant to kill someone who was going to unit the gangs together and therefore was a threat to the power order in the city? And why are The Warriors so easily distracted? They’re going through rival gang territory but stop for a woman or for women or some other dalliance when they’re on the run and being hunted? They don’t know for a long time they’re being framed for the murder of Cyrus, but they do know they’re behind enemy lines, so to speak, and not on safe ground.

“I just like doing things like that” is Luther’s (David Patrick Kelly) response to killing Cyrus. Seem fishy.

All of these inconsistencies and imperfections aside, Hill created a world in The Warriors that remains still a part of what we are now. Concerned about borders, about territoriality, about who we let wear our colors. It’s playing out in our streets now and in our world broadly as it has for as long as people have perceived resources and space are limited. When the truth may be closer to Swan’s realization, that maybe fighting over a small piece of land for a place to belong is futile and ultimately not worth it. 

Final showdown between rival gangs.

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)

QFS No. 2 - The invitation for May 6, 2020
SR note: Since this was only the second time we had a virtual film chat, the invitation format had not been standardized as this was a novel concept for all of us. Enjoy!
Thank you to all of you who joined our first ever Quarantine Film Society get together last week. It featured filmmakers, filmmaker adjacents, and civilians. It was a lot of fun and technology only failed us (well just me) once.

But it was a success in that we talked about the movie, about filmmaking, and went off topic a reasonable amount of times. So wonderful to see you all who joined – we spanned three time zones!

So this week, let’s pick something perhaps totally opposite from the elegant, graceful, fantastical imperial China depicted in last week’s selection. Since we’re all living in the apocalypse or perhaps the early stages of it, let’s watch something informational and perhaps a little cautionary.

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985). Yes.

Okay, two confessions: first – I truly love Road Warrior and Mad Max: Fury Road. Second – I have never seen Thunderdome save for a few glimpses on WGN while growing up in Chicago.

As perhaps with you, “thunderdome” is my stand by phrase for anything that has no rules with chaos as its only governing principle and where destruction is the norm. It entered the zeitgeist after this film and entered our collective lexicon even if you haven’t seen the movie.

Related point – if you come to our home you will see that we have our fenced-in children play area in our main room which we have dubbed “Baby Thunderdome.” No holds barred, very few rules and the only directive is “to survive.” So far, both children have. But for how long?

One of my crowning achievements as a parent is to make the term “thunderdome” part of our family’s daily vocabulary. Truly, nothing will top that. It has become canon.

Anyway, I really admire George Miller’s commitment to this kinetic and unflinching version of the apocalypse and I want an excuse to watch it – and to help prepare for our real-world version thereof. And also I’m looking for additional tips to make our baby version of thunderdome approach this on-screen version even more.

So here it is. Join us if this crazy departure is worth your time.

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985) Directed by George Miller and George Ogilvie

Reactions and Analyses:
Written in December 2023 - In hindsight, this seems like an odd choice for our second film. Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome is not exactly a work of art that has endured the test of time. (You could argue that The Road Warrior, 1981 and Mad Max: Fury Road, 2015 have.) But in May 2020, it definitely felt like we were on the brink of an apocalypse and, well, let’s prepare ourselves with the insights from a film that shows our possible near-to-distant future.

Why is this film so vastly inferior to its predecessor and its successor? It has the same basic set up and premise as those films do - a single man, in a post-apocalpytic wasteland, looking out only for himself, finds himself bound by his moral code to care about others and to guide them in their quest - despite his desire for solitary survival.

Not knowing anything about the film other than the word “thunderdome” becoming a part of the standard English lexicon and that “thunderdome” appears in the titles, it seemed as if Thunderdome would have a more definitive narrative role in film. The title prepares the viewer to imagine that that Thunderdome will perhaps represent a climactic or thematic aspect of the film. “Fury road” certainly does - a mad escape route, a main thoroughfare literally and figuratively for that Mad Max movie.

But here, Thunderdome happens almost at the beginning of the film. Very early on, Max (Mel Gibson) has to fight in this gladiatorial arena against Master Blaster (Angelo Rositto, Paul Larsson and Stephen Hayes - which is amazing that it took three people to portray this wild creation). Ultimately, Max survives, does not kill Master Blaster, but Aunty (Tina Turner) wins and exiles Max into the Wasteland.

Mad Max (Mel Gibson) swinging through Thunderdome in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985) directed by George Miller. The sheer inventiveness of the Thunderdome concept is pretty astonishing and worth examining for its art direction, costume design, special effects and stunt work.

Brief aside about Thunderdome - the set piece is a true stroke of George Miller genius. It’s perfectly conceived, and I mean that in a filmic sense. It’s entirely impractical as a way of adjudicating disputes and is almost illogical in how it could’ve come to be. Setting aside that, it’s a perfect terror-dome by which all other terror-domes are measured - the art design, the filmmaking, the novelty of it - this is all pure Miller.

The rest of the film doesn’t really follow suit, in part because when you showcase your most ingenious idea up front, it’s hard to go anywhere after that. There are exceptions, of course - you could argue that the battle on Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back (1981) puts its greatest set piece up front with the battle on the snow planet to start the film. Following that model, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome would have to have its emotional “set piece” at the end. It’s not a film that sets up an emotional set piece, and certainly not in the way The Empire Strikes Back does of course.

The chase sequence on the railroad tracks is also pretty spectacular so there is a companion action piece in the film. But our criticism of the film is certainly not in its action pieces, which remain top notch even when seeing the film thirty-five years after its release.

It’s entirely possible that this film is far too unusual compared to the others in the series. Road Warrior is straightforward in its concept, as is Fury Road, in its basic plot. But the plot in Beyond Thunderdome is convoluted. The film focuses far more on the world created than the plot. So then you’re forced to reckon with how unusual it all is. In that I mean - let’s start with Bartertown. It’s powered by literal pig shit. The Underworld is really a disgusting place that, even now, I’m wincing just picturing it. The interlude of the tribe of children and teenagers is long and trying to be overly sentimental but it’s odd and defies logic. They are descendants of a crashed 747 when the apocalypse began, which is a truly inventive creation - but thinking about it for a few seconds it doesn’t really make sense how they exist. I know that all of the Mad Max films stretch credulity, but there are aspects in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome where the stretch is either a bit too much or there are one too many. Throw in a weak plot, then you have a recipe for a film with astonishing visuals but very little else.

Aunty (Tina Turner) and Max in the Thunderdome. Just give us more Thunderdome, that’s all we want.

I don’t think we gathered valuable insights into what to expect or how to survive our own seemingly inevitable apocalypse by watching this film. Still - no one pictures a post-apocalyptic world as inventively as George Miller. This film reminded us just how difficult it is to create that world and how masterfully he has done it in the other iterations of the Mad Max saga.