After the disappointment of Beyond Thunderdome, it seemed for years like the Mad Max franchise was dead in the water. A fourth movie languished in development hell, plagued by setbacks, and it didn’t seem like Max Rockatansky’s on-screen adventures would ever continue. Then, against all odds, in 2015, George Miller blessed moviegoers with Mad Max: Fury Road, a reboot that successfully reinvigorated the franchise and renewed interest in its post-apocalyptic fictional universe.
Although a direct sequel to Fury Road has been stalled, Miller is hard at work on a prequel movie starring Anya Taylor-Joy that will flesh out the backstory of Charlize Theron’s ass-kicking heroine Furiosa. This prequel has the opportunity to establish a Mad Max cinematic universe with a grittier, more visceral R-rated alternative to Marvel’s family-friendly actioners.
After the first Mad Max movie took place in a bleak near-future that was somewhat recognizable, The Road Warrior made the leap into a post-apocalyptic wasteland in the distant future. The movies are so great that audiences have been willing to let any inconsistencies slide, but if the Furiosa prequel sets out to expand the franchise’s reach, it’ll need to clear up some of the shakier worldbuilding to create opportunities for more spin-offs.
Around the time Fury Road hit theaters, a fan theory circulated around that the Max played by Tom Hardy was actually “the feral kid” from The Road Warrior all grown up and inspired by Mel Gibson’s Max to take his name and help people. Miller personally debunked this theory, but it is an interesting idea to explore the future of this world and the knock-on effect of the legendary adventures of Gibson’s Max. Since Miller said the fan theory about “the feral kid” is incorrect and that Hardy’s Max is the same character as Gibson’s Max, the door is wide open for a renowned action filmmaker with a penchant for practical effects and an affinity for The Road Warrior to tell that kid’s story.
There could even be a movie from the perspective of one of the series’ classic gas-guzzling villains. As it stands, there are a couple of holes in the Mad Max mythology. It’s supposedly a world in which resources like gasoline are in short supply and people are being slaughtered for them, but everybody drives everywhere. In order to track people down and kill them for gas, they waste a ton of gas engaging them in a car chase. More spin-offs like the Furiosa prequel could fill in the gaps in the franchise’s mythos.
While Beyond Thunderdome was a generally disappointing movie, the titular concept was an interesting one. The idea of a gladiatorial arena in a dystopian future in which people fight to the death for the amusement of desert scavengers is primed to be a gritty sci-fi thriller with plenty of social commentary. Beyond Thunderdome bungled it with its very ‘80s execution, but there’s enough promise in the concept for a modern filmmaker to revisit it and tell a new story set around it.
After expanding the Mad Max franchise with the Furiosa-centric prequel, Miller should refocus on the mainline movies and get moving on the sequel to Fury Road with Tom Hardy, reportedly titled Mad Max: The Wasteland. Then, other visionary filmmakers can step in and tell their own stories in the Mad Max universe. There are plenty of great directors, like Guillermo del Toro, who rank Miller among their influences and the Mad Max movies among their personal favorites. These are the directors Warner Bros. should be hiring to direct action-packed Mad Max movies – and, based on Warners’ notorious history of meddling in DC movies, they should leave those directors to do their jobs.
Miller can remain onboard any potential spin-offs as a producer. The Mad Max franchise is his baby, after all. Whereas Disney cut out George Lucas entirely after purchasing Lucasfilm and charging ahead with the Star Wars saga, Miller would retain creative control of the Mad Max franchise (albeit marred by tensions with Warner Bros.) and take on an advisory position on other directors’ Mad Max spin-offs.
Whatever happens, every Mad Max movie should follow Miller’s process for Fury Road. Miller didn’t write a properly formatted script and instead used storyboards as a script in order to tell the story as visually as possible. This process resulted in a movie with wall-to-wall action that doesn’t allow a frame to go by without giving the audience new information. Fury Road set a very high benchmark for this franchise.
The world in which the Mad Max movies take place is a rich universe full of untapped potential. Future movies could flesh out the society of Mad Max’s future and venture into other genres with a spaghetti western set in a barren post-apocalyptic wasteland or even a brutal heist movie set in Max’s lawless world. Since Miller has played more fast and loose with the rules of his lore than other fictional universe architects like J.R.R. Tolkien or George Lucas, the sky is the limit for other filmmakers to swoop in with their own vision for a Mad Max movie. The Furiosa prequel is certainly exciting – Miller has an almost spotless track record and Taylor-Joy is one of the greatest actors working today – but it could just be the beginning.