Mad Max - Ranked

The Mad Max world is not sacred to me. I watched The Road Warrior years ago thought it was pretty good, but I was too young to appreciate how great it truly was. Years later, the first trailer for Fury Road got me very interested in the franchise, so I watched the first one, which I thought was okay, and I rewatched Road Warrior and enjoyed it much more. I skipped Beyond Thunderdome for some reason at the time. I watched Fury Road and loved it, but until the trailers for Furiosa started dropping, I hadn’t thought of the franchise all that much.

Being the completionist I am now, I decided to watch all four existing films leading up to watching Furiosa opening weekend. I’m still not fanatical about the series. In other words, I don’t care that Tom Hardy took over Mel Gibson’s part in Fury Road, and I don’t care that the new film isn’t about Max at all. I just enjoy the world and the action George Miller has created over the years. So with that, here are my rankings and random thoughts concerning all five Mad Max films.

1. Mad Max: Fury Road

I’ve watched this entry the most and each time I find myself devoid of thought, just dumbstruck by the awesome action and world-building. At the time of its release, I didn’t have enough to say about it to properly review it, and that’s still the case. This has exactly what I want from an action movie. It keeps me entertained enough to never stop and think about any of it, which is different from a “turn your brain off” movie. This one can be thought about and dissected, but I feel like I’m doing it a disservice when I try that. Much like a Warboy ready for Valhalla, it deserves to be witnessed.

Random Thoughts

It makes for a great image, but that is a terrible water distribution method.

This does such an efficient job of setting up the world and how it works in just ten minutes. Visual storytelling at its finest.

For instance, when Immortan Joe runs off to check on his breeders, instead of him just running down a hallway, he runs through a gardening system showing another example of how they have sustained life in the Citadel.

This moves at such an amazing pace and is such a rush I don’t really have any random thoughts or thoughts at all as I watch it. I just enjoy it no matter how many times I’ve seen it. This is the reason why I never reviewed it back when it first came out. I couldn’t think of much more to say other than, “It’s awesome!” So what’s the point? I can’t think of a movie that simply needs to be watched more than Fury Road. Sure, you can get into themes of survival and gender and whatnot, and if that’s where the film takes you, great. But I can never get past how enjoyable it is to simply watch it, all slack jawed and stupid.

2. Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior

This one gets better every time I watch it, and had I grown up watching it, the nostalgia factor might have put it at the top of my list. Lord Humungus is my favorite villain of the franchise, and I dig the action of the time. This gets compared to Fury Road a bit, but it’s an unfair comparison as this is much slower when viewed side by side. I think Miller would have liked to have made this with the same pace and amount of action as Fury Road, but he had limitations. Those limitations don’t make this a lesser movie. Instead, we get a bit more time to breathe making this an easier watch than Fury Road. This may sound like a strange compliment, but The Road Warrior is a movie I can fall asleep to, whereas I would never put on Fury Road when I was going to bed.

Random Thoughts

The opening narration is what always makes me think the first film is post-apocalyptic because it claims that it all took place after nuclear war. But that is some serious retconning because if that’s the world after the nukes drop, then it’s not nearly as bad as we were led to believe.

Playing Fallout retroactively makes this movie even better.

I’m a little ashamed to admit that the first time I heard the Humungus speech was when South Park parodied it. 

Imagine surviving in the Wasteland for years then you get taken out because Bruce Spence in a gyrocopter drops a snake onto your car.

I love the shot of Max on the gyrocopter after Spence rescues him.

“It’s over! We’ve won, boy!” Why the fuck do you think that, you Michael York-looking dipshit?

This might be the most rewatchable film in the series. It has some great extended action sequences, but the stuff in the downtime is pretty great because of the world-building. I think I still prefer Fury Road overall, but I have to be in the right mood to enjoy it because it just never stops. The Road Warrior gives you time to breathe, which makes it a more generally enjoyable experience.

3. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

This could easily take second place upon a rewatch, but as it stands I put this on the same level as The Road Warrior, which is a compliment to the film. I wasn’t all that wild about the premise of this one at first because I felt like we learned enough about Furiosa in Fury Road. But once I watched it, I was won over because I liked revisiting the specific world of Fury Road, and the new characters were welcome. The action is amazing again (the amount of CG used didn’t bother me as much as it has others, and I honestly didn’t notice any glaring issues, but maybe that will change when I get to watch it again at home), and Miller found a way to add something new with the truck blender and the aerial combat. It did feel a little too long (I don’t think any of these movies should be over two hours), but overall I was just happy to be back in the Wasteland.

Random Thoughts

I was not expecting an extended conversation about vengeance near the end, but I liked it.

Chris Hemsworth finally gets to go full Australian.

“No time for long goodbyes. We did some mighty things togethah. Goodbye.”

Good for Nathan Jones to still be able to pull off the Rictus Erectus physique almost a decade later.

4. Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome

This, like The Road Warrior, would have been great to watch as a kid, but unfortunately I watched it for the first time a couple weeks ago. The first third of this is great, then it turns into a Peter Pan story and gets way too wacky for what I want from the series. But man, the Bartertown stuff is good. If the whole film was about the power struggle in that town that Max stumbled upon, this would likely be my number three. As it is, this is bottom tier for me. Still, a third of a good Mad Max movie is something.

Random Thoughts

I kind of like how loose this series is with continuity. Things and people are what Miller needs them to be. So Bruce Spence was actually a nice guy who ended up living in some peaceful place at the end of Mad Max 2? Fuck that. He’s still a pilot, but now he’s a camel thief.

Once again, playing the Fallout games makes this series more enjoyable.

Imagine you’ve spent years in the wasteland somehow accumulating a whole team of camels, then Bruce Spence and his shithead son come swooping down in a gyrocopter and rob you blind.

You know this is going to be goofier when Max has a pet monkey instead of a dog.

I remember thinking at the end of Mad Max 2, “You know what this series really needs for the next one? Tina fucking Turner.”

I thought I had seen this before, but if I have, I have forgotten every bit of it.

It’s a bit disappointing that there’s so little vehicle action in this (Max’s car at the beginning is being pulled by camels, for fuck’s sake), but it makes sense as a continuation of the previous film. Gas was extremely precious years ago, so it would make sense that bigger settlements have cropped up since fuel is so scarce.

And while I prefer Miller in full auto action mode, I also enjoy the world-building stuff, and it’s ballsy that he would follow up such vehicular mayhem with a battle for pigshit town.

One of the options on the wheel is “Spin Again.” So society is a distant memory but someone remembered Wheel of Fortune?

I am not digging this Peter Pan shit…

Okay, so there’s finally some car action, but it’s not enough to make up for this turning into a kids’ movie for half an hour.

One car looks like a Batmobile but with a cow pattern. Cool?

I appreciate the Wild West style Miller’s going for with the train and the carriage cars and the man with no name, but the Peter Pan subplot really sucks the life out of all that. I mean, how do we go from Lord Humungus and a razor sharp boomerang embedded in a fuckboy’s skull to kids hitting people with frying pans and babbling about Tomorrow-Morrow Land?

5. Mad Max

I know it might seem like sacrilege to some for the original to be at the bottom, but it’s simply the least entertaining of the series. I still like it, but the middle really drags for me, and the action, while great for the time, pales in comparison to what was to come. This is an adequate, low-budget introduction that laid the groundwork for greater things to come.

Random Thoughts

This is refreshingly apocalypse-light. Shit’s bad, but society is still basically normal. Well, Australian normal.

I guess this is actually a pre-apocalypse movie.

This series has the best screaming goons. Just people jabbering like nutcases because they can’t help it.

I remember being a little unimpressed with the action the first time I saw this twenty years ago, but watching it now, that opening chase sequence is pretty great.

There isn’t enough saxophone-playing in apocalyptic movies.

The saxophone scene is foreshadowing Lethal Weapon for Gibson, since it also features him as a widower drinking as saxophone music plays.

Toecutter is such a good villain name. At first, you think, “What’s the big deal? He cuts your toe?” Then you think, “Man, cuts on your toe fucking suck!” Then you realize, “Wait, does it mean he straight up cuts toes off? I don’t want to mess with that dude.”

After Toecutter’s gang demolishes the car and drags the victims out, there’s one dude just sitting on top of the car clapping. If I end up in a pre- or post-apocalyptic gang, that’s the job I want. It’d be like being the dancing guy in The Mighty Mighty Bosstones.

Yeah, this is definitely pre-apocalypse since one of the gang members gets released by his lawyer. I don’t remember many members of the bar in Fury Road.

Okay, this is starting to feel like a bookend movie because the middle is a bit of a slog.

Max goes to his chief to resign, and his chief is watering his plants in front of his birds, smoking a cigar, and shirtless but still wearing a scarf. This world deserved to end.

Until the last twenty minutes or so, this could have just been called Sane, but a Little Troubled Max.

For anyone else who forgot this, I just want to remind you that Max’s son is named Sprog.

Upon a five second Google search, I learned that Sprog is just slang for “child.” Fuck you, internet. I wanted his actual name to be Sprog.

Also found out Toecutter is possibly just slang, too. I sure didn’t see him do any toe cutting, unless he did it quietly. But that wouldn’t make much sense. Who would call themselves “Toecutter” and then be sneaky about cutting toes?

I don’t think Max needed to have the sirens on during that last chase. He was beyond police procedure at that point, since he wasn’t technically a cop anymore, and he was acting purely out of vengeance. But I guess it was courteous of him to still turn the siren on.

Max turns into Jigsaw at the end.