At the end of ROAD WARRIOR/MAD MAX 2 the narrator clearly states that the people found a new leader: the Gyro Captain; and that "... in the fullness of time I [meaning himself, "the Feral Kid"] became the leader of the Great Northern Tribe." Therefore, he took over after the time when the Gyro Captain had served as leader. He needed time to grow up and to learn to speak rather than grunt -- right?
Who cares about what the Gyro Captain became ?
It separates viewers who listen and understand from those who don't.
The Gyro Captain and Jedediah the Pilot are separate characters who appear in two separate stories, regardless of whether both are played by the same actor. In Sergio Leone's Man With No Name Westerns, Gian Maria Volonte portrays the villain in two different pictures, neither the same character. And Lee Van Cleef is a hero in FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE, yet the villain in THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY. Were those audiences confused? No.
The viewers of years ago had more sense than to waste time debating whether characters with different names, personalities, and behaviors are intended to be the same person. But today, the Internet allows all sorts of distracted people (who are only half-watching a film anyway) to feel that their uninformed opinions are not to be challenged.
Director Anthony Mann's WINCHESTER '73, THE NAKED SPUR, BEND OF THE RIVER, THE FAR COUNTRY, and THE MAN FROM LARAMIE all star James Stewart playing an embittered man who is out to fulfill a personal mission. All five Stewart roles are different characters and have different names: regardless of whether they all carry a holstered pistol.
Jedediah and the Gyro Captain are both pilots. They are also distinctly different characters (who don't even relate in the same way to Max). If you insist that they are the same man just because you recognize the same performer, you demonstrate a shallow grasp of movies.
Most great films deserve a more appreciative audience than they get.
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MrRazorz
10 years ago
Jedediah and the Gyro Captain are both pilots. They are also distinctly different characters (who don't even relate in the same way to Max). If you insist that they are the same man just because you recognize the same performer, you demonstrate a shallow grasp of movies.
Actually, there are a couple of moments in the film which suggest a prior connection between Max and Jedediah.
Firstly, when Max first enters Bartertown, Jedediah sees him across the marketplace and smiles as if he recognises him. But he doesn't recognise him from stealing his wagon, since they never saw one another close up. Max was running far behind the wagon when Jedediah dropped from the plane, and in any case Max had his face covered.
Towards the end of the film, when Max and the kids burst into Jedediah's house, Max points at him and says "
You! It's your lucky day! 'Cause you've got a plane!"
How would Max know this? As stated above, he never saw Jedediah close up, and probably never saw Jedediah Jr at all. But if confronted by an old face from the past - one who knew how to fly, and lived by ambushing and robbing people - then he might have put two and two together and figured out that the guy who ambushed him with a plane a few days back might just be the same man...
None of it's conclusive, but it leaves room for speculation.
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PrimeMinisterOfTheSinister
10 years ago
Actually, there are a couple of moments in the film which suggest a prior connection between Max and Jedediah.
Firstly, when Max first enters Bartertown, Jedediah sees him across the marketplace and smiles as if he recognises him. But he doesn't recognise him from stealing his wagon, since they never saw one another close up. Max was running far behind the wagon when Jedediah dropped from the plane, and in any case Max had his face covered.
Towards the end of the film, when Max and the kids burst into Jedediah's house, Max points at him and says "You! It's your lucky day! 'Cause you've got a plane!"
How would Max know this? As stated above, he never saw Jedediah close up, and probably never saw Jedediah Jr at all. But if confronted by an old face from the past - one who knew how to fly, and lived by ambushing and robbing people - then he might have put two and two together and figured out that the guy who ambushed him with a plane a few days back might just be the same man...
None of it's conclusive, but it leaves room for speculation.
Yep. It's clearly supposed to be the same guy. Yes, it doesn't make sense from a continuity standpoint that it's the same since at the end of 'The Road Warrior' they say that he stays and becomes their leader, but when they wrote that they probably didn't have any idea what they were going to do for the third movie. They may not even have known that they were going to make a third movie. Then, when they make the third movie, they decided to bring back the character. Maybe no one noticed the error or maybe they didn't care. One thing I've learned over the years is that filmmakers don't care nearly as much as film watchers about this kind of thing.
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MrRazorz
10 years ago
Yep. It's clearly supposed to be the same guy.
Well, maybe not "clearly" the same guy, but there's enough there to leave it ambiguous.
Yes, it doesn't make sense from a continuity standpoint that it's the same since at the end of 'The Road Warrior' they say that he stays and becomes their leader
I've heard the theory that the Captain led the Great Northern Tribe for a few years, fathered Jedediah Jr (with the Captain's Girl) and then left the tribe and took his son back to the wasteland for some reason. Maybe he was widowed or divorced, or they were exiled. You can pretty much make up any story you want.
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davidupar
10 years ago
I never see it like that, but I assume they are two different characters... maybe they are brothers/twins.
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Skaven252
10 years ago
All five Stewart roles are different characters and have different names: regardless of whether they all carry a holstered pistol.
Everyone in the Wild West carries a gun (to generalize) so it did not make them distinct. However both in Mad Max 2 and 3 aircraft are rare, which made the pilot character very distinct. Perhaps this explains some of the confusion.
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