Welcome to George Miller’s Wasteland. It’s a post-apocalyptic world not too far removed from our own. A hellscape where resources have run dry, pushing humanity to barbarism, tribalism and a twisted sense of justice. The scarcity of supplies has made gasoline one of Earth’s most precious resources, as the only thing left to do for those who have the strength is to keep moving in search of a better place. It’s enough to make anyone go a little mad. And that’s certainly the case for Max Rockatansky as he travels the scorched deserts like a mythic wraith, spilling blood and fire in an effort to hold back the complete death of the world, if only a little.
Miller, a former med student, conceived of Mad Max (1979) alongside writer James McCausland, and independently produced it with fellow med student Byron Kennedy. The film, made for $400,000 and starring a then-unknown Mel Gibson, set a Guinness World Record for the most profitable film. It also became a critical, yet controversial, success for its levels of violence. The film is credited for starting the New Wave of Australian cinema and is regarded today as one of the most significant international releases, as well as one of the best science fiction films. Miller was 33 years old.
Today, Miller at 79 shows no sign of slowing down. After two sequels, Miller lost interest in the series following the tragic death of his friend and producing partner Kennedy in 1983. Yet, as the world approached a new Millennium, Miller was drawn back to the Wasteland, and in 1998 he began thinking about the film that would eventually become Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). That film, which recast Max with Tom Hardy and introduced a new protagonist, Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), became a critical sensation, an Oscar best picture nominee and introduced a whole new generation to the madness of Miller who at that point was better known among younger general audiences for Happy Feet (2006).
The latest installment in Miller’s Mad Max saga is now Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, a prequel to Fury Road that charts how a young woman from a peaceful oasis was made into the warlord Imperator. Anya Taylor-Joy portrays a younger version of Theron’s breakout character, while Chris Hemsworth takes on the role of the villainous Dementus. Before its release, Miller had planned to continue the saga and return to Max’s story. With Furiosa now in theaters, allow me to look at the narrow road that came before it and rank the Mad Max movies.
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5. Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)
The third entry in the Mad Max franchise found Miller in the midst of grief over the death of Kennedy, who was tragically killed in a helicopter crash. Miller debated whether to continue with the film, as said his heart was no longer in it. He eventually brought in his friend and theater director George Ogilvie to co-direct Beyond Thunderdome.
Despite that, and the first and only PG-13 rating, the third Max Max film is quite charming and imaginative. Don’t let its last place on this list fool you into thinking Beyond Thunderdome is a bad movie. It feels essential to laying the path to Fury Road, particularly in its introduction of Bartertown, a seemingly civilized trading post run by Aunty Entity (Tina Turner). Yet Max (played by returning star Gibson) quickly finds himself indebted to Entity and is sent to the Underworld, a refinery that turns pig shit into methane gas. There, Max is forced to contend with Master Blaster (Angelo Rossitto and Paul Larsson), who seeks to rise from the Underworld and take power from Entity. Forced to fight Master Blaster in a gladiatorial ring known as the Thunderdome, Max discovers the true nature of Aunty Entity and is banished to the Wasteland where he becomes a hero to a group of primitive children.
The film feels more kid-friendly in an Indiana Jones sense, and Gibson softens Max a bit. But there’s still fantastic world-building, a focus on the importance of myths and legends for children and a rockin’ Grammy-nominated Turner power ballad, “We Don’t Need Another Hero (Thunderdome).”
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4. Mad Max (1979)
Admittedly, Miller’s first foray into the Wasteland took a couple viewings for me to connect. Part of it was having prior knowledge about the controversy surrounding its violence — which didn’t seem all that violent, even by ’70s standards. And the other part was that it was slowly paced. Yet, upon rewatches, I came to appreciate Miller’s deliberately paced struggle between order and chaos in a dying world.
Max (Gibson), a member of the Main Force Patrol, a poorly funded police organization, runs afoul of a motorcycle gang led by Toecutter (Hugh Keays-Byrne) who take to terrorizing the streets. Just when Max considers resigning following the murder of his partner, Toecutter’s gang kills Max’s family, taking away the only people he ever loved along with his sanity. What follows is a grounded revenge thriller, as Max hunts down the members of the gang one by one.
The simple yet effective story is propelled by the strangeness of the Melbourne setting, at least to non-Australian eyes, and its empty roads. But perhaps even more impressive than the movie is the story of its making, which was done without filming permits or authorized road closings. Yet, Miller’s guerilla-style filmmaking proved to be so exciting that the Victoria police force volunteered to help out, making the film a true community collaboration.
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3. Mad Max 2 (1981)
Image Credit: Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection Long before Fury Road, this is the film science-fiction fans grew up hearing about. The film that would come to inspire the punk-junk look of future dystopic media, from Waterworld (1995) to Fallout (2024). Miller ramps up the action in this sequel and takes Max (Gibson) into a world that has fully collapsed.
Released in the U.S. under the title The Road Warrior, the movie established Max at his most iconic: the leather-clad drifter, scrounging for food and fuel with his Australian Cattle Dog, and moving from place to place in his black V8 Pursuit Special. Taking a page from Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954), Max finds himself protecting a group of settlers from Lord Humungus (Kjell Nilsson) and his band of marauders who seek the settlers’ fuel supply. In this film, we’re given a sense of Miller’s impressive use of stunt work to push the narrative forward, and the third-act tanker diversion remains one of the best sequences in Miller’s filmography.
The sequence shows the clever survival tactics employed by Max, who is equal parts trickster and warrior. Miller also begins shaping Max into a legendary figure here, an unconventional Campbellian hero who becomes identifiable through his clothes and weapons and undergoes an arc that finds him in the role of savior that he never sought out. As much as Max is coded as a loner, Mad Max 2 suggests that the only thing holding him back from madness is the company of others.
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2. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)
Image Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures Miller’s latest — and possibly last after disappointing at the box office (movie Gods, forbid!) — expedition into the Wasteland is the perfect companion piece to Fury Road, deepening the relationships and themes in that chapter. As a prequel, the fates of some characters are already determined. But the narrative here is far more than about who lives or dies, or even how Furiosa loses her arm. It’s an essential piece within Miller’s franchise that shades in the map of this world and creates parallel arcs that reflect on Max, who he is and what he might have become had the world turned in a slightly different direction.
The film charts the saga of young Furiosa, stolen from the Green Place as a child only to eventually rise up to become the greatest warrior of the Wasteland. The character, portrayed by Theron in Fury Road, is played here by Alyla Browne as a child and Taylor-Joy as a young woman, and both actors put their stamp on the character while still honoring the character launched by Theron. An increasing ferocity is shared between Browne and Taylor-Joy’s performance, an outward rage that contrasts Theron’s simmering rage.
The film is divided into five chapters, forming a cinematic epic poem that covers the key points in Furiosa’s young life as she contends with her kidnapper, the crazed warlord Dementus (Hemsworth), and his war against the Citadel and its leader, Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme), and learns how to be a road warrior from Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke). Furiosa is markedly different from Fury Road, in that it’s a quieter, less adrenaline-fueled affair, more akin to Miller’s first two Mad Max films. Yet, it’s still fueled by some of the most bombastic action and stunts to be captured on screen, and populates the world with characters all worthy of their own solo adventures within the Mad Max saga.
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1. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
Caught in development hell for nearly two decades, Miller spectacularly re-fueled the Mad Max saga with Fury Road. One of the greatest films of the decade, and a feat of imagination and experimentation, Fury Road managed to pull off a genre-redefining deconstruction of the male hero and an ode to the power of community. And he did it on wheels.
With 150 stunt performers, many of whom were Cirque du Soleil performers, all supervised by the second-unit director and stunt coordinator Guy Norris, Fury Road was made 90 percent practically. And as a result, the world feels tactile. You can feel the heat coming off the sun and engines, and smell the diesel fumes in the air. Miller utilized new techniques in both the film’s fast-paced editing, done by Margaret Sixel, and its over-exposed look, achieved by John Seale, that fully transported audiences to a new world. And that’s before we even get to the story, which puts Furiosa (Theron) in the driver’s seat as she fights to escape the cruel dictator Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) and free his wives whom he uses as breeders: Splendid (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley), Toast (Zoe Kravitz), Capable (Riley Keough), Dag (Abbey Lee) and Cheedo (Courtney Eaton).
Max (Hardy) becomes a useful tool in their escape as he seeks redemption, alongside disgraced War Boy Nux (Nicholas Hoult). The film serves to illuminate people as humans rather than things, and it’s something that Furiosa and Max both learn throughout their “road trip.” Despite all the death and chaos, Fury Road is strangely life-affirming in its hesitant approach to hope and eager fight to survive, not just alone but alongside others. We may very well look back on Fury Road a few decades from now and say it was the film of our time, the one that made us fight, survive and come together to restore what was stolen. That’s worth having hope in.
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