Furiosa comes out this month, so what better time to watch and rewatch the entire George Miller series that birthed the upcoming film?
I really had no idea that the first film was called Mad Max, I thought it was The Road Warrior and then the second film was called Mad Max 2. I was wrong, because there was naming confusion with the second one in how it was billed and released in America. Regardless, this was the first entry, and it was not what I was expecting.
Firstly, it is not in the desolate, apocalyptic world that the following films inhabit, which is what I was expecting. I’m sure it being Miller’s first major feature and having a small budget plays into that, but it is vastly different. There’s no desert, there’s a lot of grass and trees, and more importantly, there’s water everywhere. It’s not really clear when or what’s going on, only that it’s in the near future, and that the world seems to be slowly going out of control, yet still has some semblance of society. There are houses, a futuristic but different police force, and an apparent system of law. Yet, we begin to see this society start to spin out, though it is in the style of A Clockwork Orange more than it is post-nuclear. It’s not really established what has happened or what is going on, just that there is a gang that is causing chaos and Max (Mel Gibson) is an officer trying to hunt them down and stop them - especially after they’ve hurt his family later in the film.
This film seems almost entirely separate from the following, but I guess it worked enough for Miller to get his bag for the proceeding universe he created and launched Mel Gibson into stardom.