THE Mad Max The franchise presents a dizzyingly exciting vision for the post-apocalypse, but not all of the last-minute details in the franchise's films make much sense. THE Mad Max The films have had an immeasurable impact on pop culture and science fiction, with a unique setting providing the standard imagery for the common post-apocalyptic story. However, the series is riddled with inconsistencies that can be maddening to try to resolve when all the films are presented next to each other.
The franchise's canon is incredibly vague, with visionary creator George Miller preferring Max Rockatansky's stories to be more like half-remembered folktales told by survivors of the apocalypse, rather than a concrete series that can be definitively placed in a setting. Mad Max timeline. While this forgives the series' narrative flaws, it doesn't take into account the more scientific and logical leaps Mad Max movies often do. In fact, films have a lot to answer for.
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The Apocalypse got a lot worse after the first Mad Max movie
The degree to which the Wasteland advances is completely absurd
THE Mad Max The series holds the rare distinction of a film franchise in that the first film is the one most rarely seen by casual viewers. Those who return to the original Mad Max after being introduced by people like Mad Max: Fury Road You might be surprised to learn how civil society is still in the first film. Although crime and chaos may be rampant, there are still police services, hospitals, operating gas stations, vacations, and even musical instruments like saxophones still being used for leisure.
Yet somehow, by the time of the second film, Australia had already become a lawless wasteland of invaders dressed in evocative leather suits decorated with skulls. Before Max's leg injury from the first film had time to heal, the apocalypse had advanced to an absurd degree, with the culture of violence and social Darwinism quickly taking root among the general population. Something like Matt Reeves Planet of the Apes the movies do a much better job of tracking their apocalypse over time.
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Mad Max's son is known as “Sprog”
An important person in Max's life doesn't even have a first name
The driving force of Max's motivation in the first film is protection of his family, which turns into a burning desire for revenge after his wife and son are cruelly murdered by the nefarious outlaw Toecutter's biker gang. Jesse Rockantansky is a significant and memorable character, but Max's youngest son doesn't even have a proper name. Instead, the film (and Max) simply refer to the young man as “Sprog”, a generic Australian slang word that simply means child.
The reason Max doesn't have a proper name for his son is beyond the reach of sense or reason, even within the world's bizarre setting. It can be argued that couples in the Mad Max universe refrains from naming its young until they have survived to a certain age in order to avoid being emotionally crushed by the high infant mortality rate, but as discussed previously, modern civil society was still more or less around (if starting to destabilize) by the first film. Even as a nickname, “Sprog” is unaffectionate and almost derogatory.
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Max places cartoonish trust in the dog
His canine murder contraption borders on the absurd
Max seems to be bad at naming things in general, like his canine companion in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior is simply credited in the film as “Dog”. However, it's the amount of trust that Max places in this lost guy that borders on the ridiculous, even for the irreverent and sometimes silly post-apocalyptic world. At one point, holding Captain Gyro hostage, Max prepares his shotgun to blow his poor prisoner's head off if Dog tugs on the toy bone in his mouth, pulling a string that in turn pulls the shotgun's trigger.
The Rube-Goldberg machine is an absolutely caricatured aspect of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior which feels notably different in tone from the rest of the franchise. The toy bone and wire seem to indicate that Max has used this setup with some success before. Trusting Dog not to actually kill someone by randomly pulling the bone (or pulling the trigger on an empty gun, revealing the ruse) entails some strangely high levels of thinking for the blue heeler.
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The same actor plays two different but very similar characters
George Miller's Casting Decisions Are Pretty Questionable
Speaking of Captain Gyro, Bruce Spence's performance as the cunning opportunistic aviator is one of the strongest elements of the second film's cast. It's only fitting that Bruce Spence returned to play a pilot again in Mad Max 3: Beyond Thunderdome, helping to save Max's new friends at the end of the film. Despite having the same personality and aptitude for flying machines, George Miller insisted that Jedediah from the third film is actually a completely separate character from Captain Gyro.
It's easy to see why this casting decision is so confusing, as Max appears to already know Jedediah when they officially meet at the end of the film, growling “You!” upon seeing his face. Both Jedediah and Captain Gyro, being pilots played by Bruce Spence, are incredibly pointless, and the distinction only ends up as a disservice to the overall plot. It would have been much cooler to see Captain Gyro re-appear in the third film, paying off some loose ends with much-needed fan service.
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Furiosa's escape is hard to believe
The origin of Furiosa's missing arm suspends a lot of disbelief
Not just the oldest Mad Max films filled with absurd elements, with modern films having many strange choices of their own. One of the prequel's most exciting promises Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga it was the opportunity to find out how Furiosa lost her arm once and for all. After several dangers, the true events behind Furiosa's loss of a limb leave a lot to be desired, both from a narrative and logical point of view.
Captured by Dementus, Furiosa is bound by her arm and strength to watch as her attackers drag Imperator Jack's body in circles around her, killing him brutally and slowly through road eruptions while kicking up enormous clouds of dust. The film expects the audience to believe that somehow, in the case of humiliating the captured Furiosa, neither Dementus nor any of his men managed to realize that she ripped off her own arm and escaped. Despite the dust, it's hard to justify Furiosa simply sneaking away while she's literally in the spotlight.
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Legions of war vehicles refute gas as a scarce resource
Mad Max's story and action are inherently at odds
No need to analyze each individual Mad Max film with a fine-toothed comb to detect inconsistencies. In fact, two fundamental aspects of each film in the franchise are fundamentally opposed. Each film makes a big deal out of the scarcity of precious resources in the Wasteland, with gasoline, in particular, being an important commodity. After all, the entire plot of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior revolves around a single gas tanker truck.
However, if gas is supposedly such a scarce resource, the inhabitants of the Wasteland are certainly eager to throw it away, parading around in loud, noisy and certainly not very fuel-efficient war machines, which greedily gulp down the gas at the same time. barrels. It's hard to reconcile the fact that every battle over gas wastes gallons of the very resource it's fought over. Admittedly, vehicular combat starring bicycles and hybrid cars wouldn't be as exciting.
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Max recovers the interceptor in Fury Road
Max's exclusive car has been destroyed multiple times
While Max may have driven many vehicles in his namesake film series, none are more iconic than his original Interceptor. Originally a prototype police vehicle commandeered by Max on his first quest for revenge, the 1973 Ford XB Falcon Interceptor V8 has become not only a staple of the series, but one of the most recognizable classic cars in film history. Even more incredible than the car's incredible engine and powerful appearance is its apparent ability to come back from the dead.
After being heavily modified by Max between films, the Interceptor is destroyed halfway through Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. However, somehow the car is inexplicably restored to its former glory in Mad Max: Fury Road despite losing an entire film, only to be destroyed, rebuilt, and destroyed again. In fact, this is some of the most compelling evidence that Fury Road happens before Beyond the Thunderdome and not later, as the release order would have you believe.
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The Citadel is more fantasy than science fiction
The fortress suspends disbelief in what is possible in the post-apocalypse
For the most part, the excellent art department at Mad Max the films give the series' world its signature feel. Every vehicle, item and piece of clothing is salvaged or cobbled together from scrap and trash, and nothing is spared in the relentless apocalypse. But the limits of what the residents of the Mad Max the world can realistically create is noticeably expanded in a few key areas, with the Citadel of Mad Max: Fury Road being a particular highlight.
The Citadel, both in name and appearance, seems something out of the ordinary. Lord of the Rings franchise rather than a post-apocalyptic settlement. Somehow, the fortress already existed as a series of hollowed-out rock mesas where water is pumped from an underground aquifer, a setup that seems absurd for a pre-apocalypse world. It's hard to believe that the survivors of the Wasteland would be able to carve Immortan Joe's sigil into the rock face so delicately, let alone geoengineer such a marvel literally from scratch.
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When the nuclear bombs fell is difficult to analyze
At some point, the nature of the Mad Max apocalypse changed
Even the very reasoning behind what caused the Mad Max the apocalypse has waxed and waned throughout the films, with no consistent answer or timeline for the fall of human civilization ever presented. The first two films seemed to be very interested in the social turmoil, economic conflicts and oil shortages in the wake of the Persian Gulf War behind the downfall of humanity. The opening narration in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior professes this, pointing the finger at the inner cruelty of human beings as the culprit behind the apocalypse.
Put Mad Max 3: Beyond Thunderdome, however, the franchise introduced the idea of nuclear attacks causing the downfall of humanity, allowing people like Bartertown to rise from the remains of nuclear armageddon. Modern films take the lingering effects of nuclear fallout to an even more dramatic degree, with large swaths of the population now suffering from physical deformities and tumors, not to mention the literal deserts of the evaporated seabed, once lush with water. But it is impossible to say where in chronology the atomic bombs actually fell.
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The gigantic sandstorms in Fury Road make no sense
Nuclear fallout can't explain everything about the Mad Max world
Many of the oddities of the more recent Mad Max the films can, in fact, be explained by the worldwide detonation of many nuclear warheads, from the mutant population to the evaporated oceans. But some features of George Miller's post-apocalyptic landscape cannot be explained even by the science of nuclear armageddon. Enter the sandstorms of Mad Max: Fury Road, Inclement weather on an impossible scale that makes no sense as a symptom of any kind of atomic bomb.
Sandstorms do happen in the Australian Outback, but they are usually more similar in scale to the blinding storm seen at the start of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. Although occasional whirlwinds or dust devils form, nothing on the biblical scale of destruction described in Mad Max: Fury Road, complete with enormous cyclones strong enough to suck up cars and glass-forming lightning could form even with the help of a post-nuclear landscape. These storms are a big element of Mad Max films that make little sense.