Mad Max

Premise and continuity The exact causes of the collapse of civilization in the series are never specified, but some details are given. In the timeline of the first three films, the 1979 oil crisis caused by the Iranian Revolution worsened, leading to worldwide energy shortages and unrest. Tensions boiled over when Iranian forces attacked Saudi Arabia , igniting a massive war in the Middle East and around the world. In the timeline of the later two films ( Fury Road and Furiosa ), the collapse happened around the 2010s, and was caused by a combination of resource wars and subsequent environmental damage .

The first Mad Max film takes place in the original timeline and is a mostly traditional origin story. In a dystopian Australia where the government no longer has the capacity to effectively protect its citizens, Max Rockatansky is a skilled policeman trying to keep order on the highways. When Max takes his family to the beach for a holiday, a vicious biker gang murders his wife and child. Max kills the gang in revenge.

Disillusioned by the collapse of ordered society, Max quits his job and becomes a wanderer in the increasingly devastated wasteland. The remaining Mad Max films follow Max's comings and goings in the wasteland. By Mad Max 2 , global war has destroyed the remaining world governments. The old society has essentially collapsed, and gangs and warlords dominate the wasteland.

Isolated pockets of civilisation remain, desperately preserving remnants of pre-apocalyptic technology, especially oil refineries ( Mad Max 2 , Furiosa , Fury Road ). By the time of Beyond Thunderdome , Furiosa , and Fury Road , society has devolved into a barter economy , with chattel and sex slavery being widespread. Furiosa and Fury Road also suggest that Christianity and other pre-apocalypse World religions have been replaced by new religions native to the wasteland. While most of the wasteland appears to be desert-like there have been a few green areas as seen in Beyond Thunderdome and Furiosa .

During his wanderings, Max periodically encounters remaining pockets of civilisation, which rope him into their political machinations or personal problems. Typically, Max goes along for self-interested reasons, but eventually his motives become more altruistic. Mad Max films typically highlight their protagonists' struggle to reclaim their humanity in a dystopian wasteland that has taught them to place little value on kindness and decency. Most Mad Max films are told from the perspective of a questionably reliable narrator retelling the story many years after the fact, suggesting that the characters of Max and Furiosa have crossed over into the folklore of a survivor civilisation.

(Although Fury Road lacks a narrator, Miller has said that in his mind, it was also "based on the Word Burgers of the History Men [cf. " Because Mad Max films are generally told as folklore, the Mad Max franchise has historically been less concerned with continuity than most science fiction or fantasy franchises, like Star Wars or Star Trek . There is "no strict chronology," and the films are allowed to contradict each other.