Mad Max

The series follows Max, who starts the series as a police officer in a future Australia which is experiencing societal collapse due to war, critical resource shortages, and ecocide.^[1] As Australia devolves further into barbarity, gangsters kill Max's family and Max becomes a wandering drifter in the radioactive wasteland. He periodically encounters remaining pockets of civilisation, which rope him into their political machinations or personal problems. Max, who is habitually wary of others, frequently struggles to decide whether to help others or go his own way. Ultimately, he assists the survivors in the nick of time before departing into the wasteland once more. Most Mad Max films suggest that the characters of Max and spin-off character Imperator Furiosa have crossed over into the folklore of a survivor civilisation.


The series has been well received by critics; Mad Max 2 and Fury Road in particular have been ranked among the best action films ever made. The series has also had a significant influence on popular culture, most notably apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, and encompasses works in additional media including video games and comic books. In 2016, Fury Road became the first film of the Mad Max franchise to receive Academy Award recognition, winning six of its ten nominations.

Premise and continuity[edit]

The first Mad Max film is a mostly traditional origin story. In a dystopian Australia where the government no longer has the capacity to effectively protect its citizens, Max Rockatansky is a skilled policeman trying to keep order on the highways. When Max takes his family to the beach for a holiday, a vicious biker gang murders his wife and child. Max kills the gang in revenge. Disillusioned by the collapse of ordered society, Max quits his job and becomes a wanderer in the increasingly devastated wasteland.


The remaining Mad Max films follow Max's comings and goings in the wasteland. By Mad Max 2, the old society has essentially collapsed, and gangs and warlords dominate the wasteland. Isolated pockets of civilisation remain, desperately preserving remnants of pre-apocalyptic technology, especially oil refineries (Mad Max 2, Furiosa, Fury Road). By the time of Beyond Thunderdome, Furiosa, and Fury Road, society has devolved into a barter economy. Furiosa and Fury Road also suggest that Christianity has been replaced by new religions native to the wasteland.


During his wanderings, Max periodically encounters remaining pockets of civilisation, which rope him into their political machinations or personal problems. Typically, Max goes along for self-interested reasons, but eventually his motives become more altruistic. Mad Max films typically highlight their protagonists' struggle to reclaim their humanity in a dystopian wasteland that has taught them to place little value on kindness and decency.


Most Mad Max films are told from the perspective of a questionably reliable narrator retelling the story many years after the fact, suggesting that the characters of Max and Furiosa have crossed over into the folklore of a survivor civilisation.^[2][3][4] (Although Fury Road lacks a narrator, Miller has said that in his mind, it was also "based on the Word Burgers of the History Men [cf. folktales told by bards or griots] and eyewitness accounts of those who survived."^[5]) Miller "sees Mad Max as a series of legends about the titular character, the kinds of campfire stories that might be passed around in the Wasteland at dark."^[6] Because Mad Max films are generally told as folklore, the Mad Max franchise has historically been less concerned with continuity than most science fiction or fantasy franchises, like Star Wars or Star Trek. There is "no strict chronology,"^[7] and the films are allowed to contradict each other.^[6] At least one critic has suggested that "the franchise’s canon cannot be reconciled in any way — barring the introduction of time travel."^[8]