The Joads in “The Grapes of Wrath” traveled Route 66 to reach California, the “promised land.” (Photo courtesy of 20th Century Fox, Getty Images)

What’s more American than the invention of the road movie, founded on the simple premise that travel can spark change? Remove yourself from comforts – familiarity – to uncover a side of yourself previously unknown. Route 66 offered a path on the open road to opportunity and adventure. The journey proved fruitful for some, for others a bitter end.

For one family during the Great Depression, that road is a necessity. The Joads need work in “The Grapes of Wrath,” and the Mother Road provides them with hope, even as it beats them down. In the end, Tom Joad (expertly performed by a young Henry Fonda) would travel that road alone as a wanted man for the murder of the man responsible for killing a respected labor organizer. In the spirit of union power, his final monologue is more concerned with the nation’s future than his own.

“I’ll be everywhere, wherever you look. Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there,” Fonda’s Tom Joad says over Alfred Newman’s melodramtic score. “If Casy knowed, why, I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad, an’ I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry, an’ they know supper’s ready. An’ when our folks eat the stuff they raise an’ live in the houses they build, why, I’ll be there.”

Tom Joad must become more than a single individual. Like the Mother Road, he’s the story of many.

Bruce Springsteen often notes how moved he is by “The Grapes of Wrath,” even dedicating a song to Tom Joad’s final words, “The Ghost of Tom Joad.” Each chorus references lively highways – broadly referenced, to maintain a more biting metaphor – that lead nowhere good, and that lack of goodness means “the ghost of Tom Joad” is nearby.

For Springsteen, John Steinbeck’s book explores hopelessness and injustice. But is that the only interpretation available?

It could have ended there on an abstract, poetic note. The score sure implies as much. But executive producer Darryl F. Zanuck perhaps didn’t like that sour note. So he gave Ma Joad the final say on the matter, overriding director John Ford, as it is surmised in movie lore.

“Rich fellas come up an’ they die, an’ their kids ain’t no good an’ they die out,” says Ma, portrayed by Jane Darwell, who earned an Oscar for her work on the film in 1941. “But we keep a’ comin’. We’re the people that live. They can’t wipe us out. They can’t lick us. We’ll go on forever, Pa, ’cause we’re the people.”

The Joads face many challenges on Route 66, only to find survival in Central California less promising. But those final words imply the hope that began their journey will eventually arrive.

Roughly 29 years later, Henry Fonda’s son would explore that same stretch of road in “Easy Rider,” a story that rejects simple summations or happy endings.

“Easy Rider” follows a couple bikers riding the backroads from California to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, doing biker things along the way to fund their trip. But as the Joads know, Route 66 can lead to hostile terrain. As proud counterculture figures, Wyatt (Peter Fonda) and Billy (Dennis Hopper) enjoy the peace of the road and beauty on display, easily shirking rude and hostile folks en route. Alas, the Mother Road warns these riders of something worse, beautiful it may be.

The pair meet their end 600 miles away from that ideal on Louisiana Highway 105. Once more, the Main Street of America leads somewhere troubling for our riders, gunned down simply for driving on the wrong road at the wrong time.

By the 1980s, 66, also known as the Will Rogers Highway, settled into a more subdued portrayal, protected by shared nostalgia. The Griswolds pass the Gateway Arch in St. Louis in National Lampoon’s “Vacation.” Pee-Wee Herman (Paul Reubens) encounters the Cabazon Dinosaurs in his 1985 feature debut by first-time director Tim Burton, “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure.”

In “Rain Man,” Route 66 represented a path less traveled. Rather than use the modern, faster mode of transportation, (AKA flying), Raymond (Dustin Hoffman), demands that his brother Charlie (Tom Cruise) drive, which would substantially extend their trip.

While the actual route is never explicitly identified, Route 66 serves as a primary shooting location. The brothers even stay at the Big 8 Motel in El Reno, Oklahoma, though the film made that location notable to anyone who isn’t a Route 66 historian. Like other road movies, Charlie evolves by the conclusion of their long drive. The route does what it does best.

The road forces Charlie to slow down, experience something beyond his selfish desires. Fast forward 18 years, “Little Miss Sunshine,” also shot on Route 66, comes to a similar conclusion. A troubled family travels to Redondo Beach for a beauty pageant, but they become closer in the process, even if the journey claims a grandfather (played by the late Alan Arkin).

That same year at the box office, the Mother Road found its biggest on-screen advocate. To tell the story about a historic route lost to all, the automobiles speak for themselves in the Pixar film, “Cars.”

“I’m in this little town called Radiator Springs,” Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson) tells his talent agent after going missing for a time. “You know Route 66? It’s still there!”

At the beginning of “Cars,” Lightning McQueen accidentally exits Interstate 40 and discovers Radiator Springs off the long-forgotten Route 66. The town is a fictional place, a compilation of many stops along the route, though many presume it is Seligman, Arizona. Like other tourism locations, once that pesky I-40 opened, entire towns lost essential revenue streams and began to disappear. The stellar small businesses Lightning patronizes no longer serve clientele when their once bustling thoroughfare was replaced by something more streamlined.

That’s Lightning himself. He is the new, shiny, polished, overly stock car, while town judge Doc Hudson (Paul Newman) – a 1951 Hudson Hornet, popular for families during Route 66’s heyday – is another relic of the former racing era. But the route provides Lightning with lost wisdom through Doc’s mentorship.

Steinbeck might have coined the phrase “the Mother Road,” but Pixar’s “Cars” depicts the nostalgic vibe most associated with Route 66 that’s often displayed in diners and breweries, films and TV series. For more than 80 years, films on the Main Street of America transported travelers from the Midwest to the West, giving them hope, adventures and now, a bit of nostalgia.

Peter Fonda (1940-2019) greeted fans and signed “Easy Rider” memorabilia at Harley Davidson of Glendale in 2008. (Photo by Edwin Folven)