The early 2010s had a number of blockbuster action movies that would either light the world on fire or come and go without immediate fanfare. In the former corner, you’ve got The Raid, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and the original John Wick. And in the latter, there’s Pacific Rim and one Mad Max: Fury Road, a movie that still feels like revelation years later.
Fury Road released May 15, 2015, and was the first Mad Max movie since Beyond Thunderdome back in 1985. Franchise creator George Miller tried making a fourth movie off and on throughout the decades, but the stars finally aligned at the top of the decade when Tom Hardy, soon to be the breakout of Christopher Nolan’s Inception, was revealed as the new Max. Mel Gibson played the wandering wastelander in the first three films, but the actor’s age and his controversies at the time led to a recast. And that was just one of several shakeups during a tumultuous years-long production.
Miller’s original idea of “violent marauders fighting for human beings,” first hatched in 1998, went unchanged years later, even as everything else around the movie did. From Hardy and costar Charlize Theron’s on-set clashes (partially owed to his disruptive tardiness), to location changes and a forced production pause (and plenty other roadblocks), it’s a wonder this movie exists. It’s equally incredible that it all led to a critically acclaimed, award-winning movie considered one of the best of its decade and in the action movie genre. To give an idea of how eye-opening this film was, Hardy publicly apologized to Miller during a press event in Cannes for his frustration during filming and not understanding the director’s intent, only to get the full picture when seeing the finished product.
When Fury Road came out, it was thoroughly examined for its exploration of what feminism and toxic masculinity look like in a post-apocalyptic wasteland obsessed with car culture. It’s a movie with a lot on its mind, and it’s as subtle about those things as a man shredding on a flamethrower guitar next to giant speakers. But if you’re not into such things, or had no clue what Mad Max even really was, you likely didn’t see this in theaters; at the time of its release, it was famously beat out by Pitch Perfect 2 at the opening weekend box office. The two films could be considered the Barbenheimer blueprint: they’ve got nothing in common beyond both being headlined by women, but the internet wasn’t at the point back then to where it was willing to riff on a perceived clash between two movies seemingly on opposite ends of the masculine/feminine spectrum.
Or maybe it’s just Mad Max itself that’s the issue. Since Fury Road, the series has been sustained via the 2015 game from Avalanche Studios—not a direct tie-in to the film, but semi-connected to it—and 2024’s Furiosa, a prequel starring Anya Taylor-Joy as a young version of Theron’s future Imperator. The game got a mixed reception and the prequel a fairly strong one, but neither struck a chord with audiences at the time. Furiosa was famously a bomb (one of several for Warner Bros. over the past year), and the game’s underperformance resulted in its planned DLC being canceled. (In its case, releasing the same day as Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain was not a wise move, and pleas to shift the game’s date were ignored by WB.)
Acclaimed as the last two films have been, Mad Max is surprisingly unable to maintain a mainstream cultural presence. Time certainly plays a factor into things—unless you’re Star Wars, decades between installments hasn’t really done favors for any franchise—and it might also come to how easily it can be perceived as a homunculus of other properties like Borderlands and Fallout, who share some of its DNA. On paper, it feels like Mad Max in its current form is one big hit away from mainstream audiences fully Getting It right away instead of months or years after the fact. If Furiosa coming out feels like a miracle, it might be a very long shot that Miller will get to reteam with Hardy for Wasteland, a Max-starring prequel intended as the capper to this desired trilogy.
Even so, that Fury Road and Furiosa get to exist at all is enough. Both films feel authored and fully realized like Miller wanted to get everything in his head on screen before he couldn’t, and it’s just great that what’s on his mind includes lightning sandstorms and bikers paragliding with explosive-tipped lances. Time has been kind to Fury Road, and with luck, the same will be true of Furiosa when its own significant anniversaries hit. The series seems comfortable existing on its own modest ambitions, and maybe that’s enough as it and Miller keep riding on.
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