'Mad Max' Looks Very Different From Its Sequels — And That's What's So Great About It (2024)

There is perhaps no more indelible image from the Mad Max franchise than that of the Wasteland, a post-apocalyptic vision of what Australia might look like if water and plant life became more precious than gold. Roving gangs decked out in bones and leather speed through the desert in souped-up vehicles, scavenging for resources. So it's a little shocking to revisit George Miller's 1979 original and see that it doesn't take place in a wasteland, but rather in a society on the verge of becoming one. Save for the marauding biker gangs, the world of the first Mad Max looks very much like the world we live in today.

In many ways, The Road Warrior (aka Mad Max 2) feels like the proper start to the series, as it establishes the universe that would be expanded upon in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, Mad Max: Fury Road, and the prequel Furiosa. It's easy to discount the first film as more of a warm-up to what Miller would accomplish with a bigger budget and more resources. Yet despite its modest trappings, the initial Mad Max still retains the power to shock and disturb us by presenting a vision of the future that doesn't feel fantastical, but rather very likely.

Mad Max

R

Action

Thriller

Fantasy

See Also

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Sci-Fi

In a not-too-distant dystopian future, when man's most precious resource -- oil -- has been depleted and the world plunged into war, famine and financial chaos, the last vestiges of the law in Australia attempt to restrain a vicious biker gang. Max (Mel Gibson), an officer with the Main Force Patrol, launches a personal vendetta against the gang when his wife (Joanne Samuel) and son are hunted down and murdered, leaving him with nothing but the instincts for survival and retribution.

Release Date

April 12, 1979

Director

George Miller

Cast

Mel Gibson , Joanne Samuel , Hugh Keays-Byrne , Steve Bisley , Roger Ward , Tim Burns

Runtime

82 Minutes

Main Genre

Action

Writers

George Miller , James McCausland , Byron Kennedy

Tagline

The Maximum Force Of The Future

George Miller's 'Mad Max' Has Unexpected Origins

Set sometime in the near future, the film centers on Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson), a police officer waging war against a biker gang terrorizing a small Australian town ravaged by economic and ecological collapse. The gang's leader, known as Toecutter (Hugh Keays-Byrne, who later played Immortan Joe in Mad Max: Fury Road) delights in terrorizing motorists on the highway, leading to gruesome car crashes. One of those crashes claims the life of Max's partner, Goose (Steve Bisley), leading him to retreat to the countryside with his wife, Jessie (Joanne Samuel), and infant son. But Toecutter and his crew find Max in his hideaway and kill his wife and son in a horrifying motorbike accident. This pushes Max over the line into vigilantism, and he exacts his revenge with his car and his rifle.

Prior to becoming a filmmaker, Miller worked as an emergency room doctor, and witnessed firsthand the carnage resulting from auto accidents. Mad Max was born out of these terrifying images of speeding hunks of metal colliding into each other, as Miller envisioned a world where vehicles suddenly turn into weapons. The car crashes in the film have a visceral power from occurring on highways that ordinary people drive down every day. While the subsequent entries would up the ante in terms of stunt driving, there's something terrifying to the thought that a simple road trip could turn deadly should a deranged motorcyclist make your vehicle a target.

'Mad Max' Makes Sci-Fi Feel Frighteningly Feasible

Though it's technically a dystopian future movie, Mad Max feels as if it's set in the present, save for a few minor design choices in art direction, makeup, and costuming. Whereas the sequels take place in a barren desert landscape where the only remnants of civilization are automobiles, the original envisions a small town that's been taken over by lawlessness. Storefronts have been boarded up, gas and water have become scarce, and people live in constant fear that they may be attacked at any moment by violent gangs. While the police try to maintain order on the highways, there's only so much they can do to protect their citizens.

While it's easy to blame these contemporary design choices on budgetary restraints, there's something unsettling about watching people try to go about their daily lives even as society is collapsing around them. The majority of dystopian future movies — be it Blade Runner, Children of Men, or, for that matter, the other Mad Max movies — tend to take place in a world that's already beyond saving, as technological advances have led to a complete depletion of resources. While it's disturbing to watch, there's a certain amount of comfort audiences can take knowing that they're watching an act of imagination. After all, these are science fiction films. That's not the case with Mad Max, which looks as though it could take place in any rural town you'd drive through today, and is that much more terrifying because of it.

The Original 'Mad Max' Is Just as Horrifying as the Wasteland

In many ways, the original Mad Max presents the most accurate view of how people might react to civilization crumbling around them — which is to say, pretend it isn't happening until it's too late. While things have certainly gotten bad in the world the film presents, there are still enough traces of society to trick people into going about their daily lives in the hope that they might find some semblance of normalcy. It's not so different from how people behave in real life as temperatures continue to rise across the globe.

The success of the first Mad Max gave Miller the ability to take the series in even more fantastical directions, and in the Wasteland he created one of the most distinctive visions of the apocalypse ever put on screen. Yet as horrifying as that is, there's something tangible about the futuristic imaginings of the first film that continues to creep under our skin. In the world of the original Mad Max, there is nowhere to hide from impending death and destruction. Max tries to keep his family safe from harm, yet even an idyllic nature getaway has evil lurking around the corner. A viewer can see themselves in his journey from lone protector of law and order to one-man chaos agent if pushed too far. It's a frighteningly realistic scenario, more so today than it was when the movie was released 45 years ago, when climate change and economic ruin seemed like fanciful concepts for sci-fi stories.

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