The Mad Max franchise presents a dizzyingly exciting vision for the post-apocalypse, but not every last minute detail of the franchise’s movies makes a lot of sense. The Mad Max films have had an immeasurable impact on pop culture and science fiction, with a unique setting that provides the default imagery for the average post-apocalyptic story. However, the series is laden with head-scratching inconsistencies that can be maddening to try to resolve when all films are laid out next to one another.
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The canon of the franchise is incredibly loose, with visionary creator George Miller preferring the stories of Max Rockatansky to be more like half-remembered folk tales told by survivors of the apocalypse rather than a concrete series that can be definitively placed on a Mad Max timeline. Even if this forgives the narrative plot holes within the series, it doesn’t account for the more scientific and logical leaps Mad Max movies often make. In truth, the movies have a lot to answer for.
10 The Apocalypse Is So Much Worse After Mad Max’s First Movie
The degree to which the Wasteland advances is utterly absurd
The Mad Max series holds the rare distinction of a cinematic franchise in which the first film is the most seldom seen by casual viewers. Those who do return to the original Mad Max after being inducted by the likes of Mad Max: Fury Road may be surprised to learn just how civil society still stands in the first film. While crime and chaos may run rampant, there are still police services, hospitals, working gas stations, vacations, and even musical instruments like saxophones still being used for leisure.
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Yet somehow, by the time of the second film, Australia has already denigrated into a lawless wasteland of raiders clad in evocative leather outfits decorated with skulls. Before Max’s leg injury from the first film has had time to heal, the apocalypse has advanced to an absurd degree, with the culture of violence and social Darwinism quickly taking root among the general populace. Something like Matt Reeves’ Planet of the Apes movies does a much better job pacing out its apocalypse over time.
9 Mad Max’s Child Just Being Known As “Sprog”
An important person in Max’s life doesn’t even have a proper name
The driving force of Max’s motivation in the first film is the protection of his family, which morphs into a burning desire for revenge after his wife and son are callously murdered by the biker gang of the nefarious outlaw Toecutter. Jesse Rockantansky is a meaningful and memorable character, but Max’s young son doesn’t even get a proper name. Instead, the film (and Max) simply refer to the young lad as “Sprog”, a generic word in Australian slang simply meaning child.
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Why Max doesn’t have a proper name for his infant son is beyond the scope of sense or reason, even within the bizarre setting of the world. It could be argued that couples in the Mad Max universe refrain from naming their young until they’ve survived to a certain age in order to avoid getting emotionally crushed by the high infant mortality rate, but as previously discussed, modern civil society was still more or less around (if beginning to destabilize) by the first film. Even as a nickname, “Sprog” is quite unaffectionate and almost derogatory.
8 Max Places A Cartoonish Amount Of Trust In Dog
His canine murder contraption borders on the nonsensical
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Max seems to be bad at naming things in general, as his canine companion in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior is simply credited in the film as “Dog”. However, it’s the amount of trust Max places in this fellow stray that borders on the ludicrous, even for the irreverent and sometimes silly post-apocalyptic world. At one point, holding the Gyro Captain hostage, Max rigs his shotgun to blow his poor captive’s head off should Dog jerk on the toy bone in his mouth, pulling a wire that in turn pulls the shotgun’s trigger.
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The Rube-Goldberg machine is a downright cartoonish aspect of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior that feels notably different in tone from the rest of the franchise. The toy bone and wire seem to imply that Max has used this setup to some degree of success before. Trusting Dog to actually not kill someone by randomly jerking on the bone (Or pull a trigger on an empty gun, giving away the ruse) implies some oddly high levels of thinking for the blue heeler.
7 The Same Actor Plays Two Different, But Very Similar Characters
George Miller’s casting decisions are quite questionable
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Speaking of the Gyro Captain, Bruce Spence’s performance as the shrewd aviator opportunist is one of the strongest elements of the second film’s cast. It’s fair enough that Bruce Spence came back to play a pilot again in Mad Max 3: Beyond Thunderdome, helping to save Max’s new friends right at the end of the film. Despite having the same personality and aptitude for flying machines, George Miller has insisted that the third film’s Jedediah is actually a completely separate character from the Gyro Captain.
It’s easy to see why this casting decision is so confusing, as Max seems to already know Jedediah when they first officially meet towards the end of the film, growling “You!” upon seeing his face. Both Jedediah and the Gyro Captain being pilots played by Bruce Spence is incredibly senseless, and the distinction only ends up as a disservice to the overarching plot. It would’ve been much cooler to see the Gyro Captain re-appear in the third film, paying off some loose ends with much-needed fan service.
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6 Furiosa’s Escape Is Hard To Believe
The origin of Furiosa’s lost arm suspends too much disbelief
Image via Warner Bros.
It isn’t just the older Mad Max movies that are riddled with nonsensical elements, with the modern movies having plenty of odd choices all their own. One of the most exciting promises of the prequel Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga was the opportunity to learn how Furiosa lost her arm once and for all. After several close calls, the true events behind Furiosa’s loss of limb leave much to be desired, from both a narrative and logical point of view.
Captured by Dementus, Furiosa is strung up by her arm and force to watch as his raiders drag the body of Imperator Jack in circles around her, brutally and slowly killing him via road rash while kicking up massive plumes of dust. The film expects audiences to believe that somehow, in the event meant to humiliate the captured Furiosa, neither Dementus nor any of his men managed to notice that she ripped her own arm off and escaped. Despite the dust, it’s hard to justify Furiosa simply slinking away while at the literal center of attention.
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5 Legions Of War Vehicles Disprove Gas As A Scarce Resource
Mad Max’s story and action are inherently at odds
One needn’t parse through each individual Mad Max movie with a fine-toothed comb to pick out inconsistencies. Indeed, two very foundational aspects of each film in the franchise fundamentally oppose one another. Each movie makes a big deal about the scarcity of precious resources in the Wasteland, with gasoline in particular being a hot commodity. After all, the entire plot of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior revolves around a single tanker of gas.
Yet if gas is supposedly such a scarce resource, the denizens of the Wasteland sure are eager to throw it away by parading around in loud, noisy, and certainly not very fuel-economical war machines that greedily drink down gas by the barrelful. It’s hard to reconcile the fact that every battle over gas wastes gallons of the very resource it’s fought over. Admittedly, vehicular combat starring bicycles and hybrid cars wouldn’t be as exciting.
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4 Max Gets The Interceptor Back In Fury Road
Max’s signature car has been destroyed multiple times
While Max may have driven many vehicles in the film series of his namesake, none are more iconic than his original Interceptor. Originally a prototype police vehicle commandeered by Max in his first quest for vengeance, the 1973 Ford XB Falcon Interceptor V8 has become not just a staple of the series, but one of the most recognizable classic cars in cinema history. Even more incredible than the car’s awesome engine and powerful looks is its apparent ability to come back from the dead.
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After being heavily modified by Max in between movies, the Interceptor is destroyed around the halfway point of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. Yet somehow, the car is inexplicably restored to its former glory in Mad Max: Fury Road despite missing an entire film, only to be destroyed, rebuilt, and destroyed again. If anything, this is one of the most damning pieces of evidence that Fury Road takes place before Beyond Thunderdome rather than after it, as the release order would have one believe.
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3 The Citadel Is More Fantasy Than Science Fiction
The fortress suspends disbelief as to what is possible in the post-apocalypse
For the most part, the excellent art department of the Mad Max films give the world of the series its signature feel. Every vehicle, item, and piece of clothing is salvaged or cobbled-together from scrap and refuse, and nothing is spared in the unforgiving apocalypse. But the limits of what the residents of the Mad Max world can realistically create is noticeably stretched in a few key areas, with the Citadel of Mad Max: Fury Road being a particular standout.
The Citadel, in both name and appearance, looks like something out of the Lord of the Rings franchise rather than a post-apocalyptic settlement. Somehow, the fortress already existed as a series of hollowed out rocky mesas that water is pumped into from an aquifer deep underground, a setup that seems nonsensical to a pre-apocalypse world. It’s hard to believe that the survivors of the Wasteland would be able to even carve Immortan Joe’s sigil into the rock face so delicately, let alone geo-engineer such a marvel from the literal ground up.
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2 When The Nuclear Bombs Dropped Is Hard To Parse
At some point, the nature of Mad Max’s apocalypse changed
Even the very reasoning behind what caused the Mad Max apocalypse has waxed and waned over the course of the films, with no consistent answer or timeline for the fall of human civilization ever presented. The first two films seemed to be very keen on societal turmoil, economic strife, and the scarcity of oil in the wake of the Persian Gulf War behind the downfall of humanity. The opening narration in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior professes as much, pointing the finger at the inner cruelty of human beings as the culprit behind the apocalypse.
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By Mad Max 3: Beyond Thunderdome, however, the franchise has introduced the idea of nuclear attacks causing the downfall of humanity, allowing the likes of Bartertown to rise from the scraps of nuclear armageddon. The modern movies take the lingering effects of nuclear fallout to an even more dramatic degree, with large swathes of the population now bearing physical deformities and tumors, not to mention the literal deserts of evaporated seafloor once lush with water. But it’s impossible to tell where in the chronology atomic bombs actually fell.
1 The Giant Sand Storms In Fury Road Make No Sense
Nuclear fallout can’t explain everything about the Mad Max world
Much of the oddities of the more recent Mad Max movies can indeed be explained away by the worldwide detonation of many nuclear warheads, from the mutated population to the evaporated oceans. But some features of George Miller’s post-apocalyptic landscape can’t be explained by the science of even nuclear armageddon. Enter the sand storms of Mad Max: Fury Road, inclement weather on an impossible scale that doesn’t make sense as a symptom of any kind of atomic bomb.
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Sand storms do indeed happen in the Australian Outback, but they’re usually more similar in scale to the blinding flurry seen towards the beginning of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. While occasional twisters or dust devils do form, nothing on the biblical scale of destruction depicted in Mad Max: Fury Road, complete with massive cyclones strong enough to suck in cars and strikes of glass-forming lightning, could ever form even with the help of a post-nuclear landscape. These storms are one huge element of the Mad Max movies that make little sense.
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