So, Mad Max: Fury Road seems to have been a hit. I’m very surprised – I’m a big fan of the original trilogy (well, more of the two first movies, but even the third one has its moments), but I didn’t think a new movie over thirty years later would be so well-accepted by the audience of 2015. Of course, the joke’s on me: I had forgotten how the original movies had also been surprise hits (again, at least the first two).

The first movie in the series is named, appropriately enough, Mad Max. Starring Mel Gibson as the protagonist, Max Rockatansky, it was released in 1979 in Australia. The film shows modern society collapsing because of fuel shortage, with at least the Australian outback, specifically, becoming a lawless land, with criminal gangs terrorizing the region. The only remaining authority is the Main Force Patrol (motorized cops, basically), but it’s almost ineffective; there’s a moment in the movie when they capture Johnny the Boy, one of the members of Toecutter’s gang (the movie’s antagonists, a criminal biker gang), but the gang’s victims are so afraid of payback that no one shows up to testify against him (not even a couple who had been raped earlier). Fifi Macaffee, the chief of police, despairs and says the cops are free to do anything it takes to stop the criminals, as long as “the paperwork is clean”.

Max Rockatansky; Toecutter (played by Hugh Keays-Byrne, who also plays Immortan Joe in Fury Road); and Bubba Zanetti, Toecutter’s main henchman and the one who comes the closest to killing Max. Interestingly, despite Toecutter being the gang’s leader, he is the muscle, but Zanetti is the brain.

Things don’t stop there: Toecutter’s gang sets Jim “Goose”, Max’s friend and partner, on fire and nearly kills him. Max is horrified and goes to quit the force. Fifi tries to convince him to stay, but Max isn’t doing it just because of what happened to Goose:

“I’m scared, Fif. You know why? It’s that rat circus out there. I’m beginning to enjoy it. Look, any longer out on that road and I’m one of them, you know? A terminal crazy, only I got a bronze badge to say I’m one of the good guys.”

Fifi manages to convince him to go out on vacation with the family before making his final decision. But when it rains, it pours: who do Max’s family run into but Toecutter’s gang, who kill his son and brutalize his wife, leaving her in critical condition. Max then takes a car which had been tuned especially for him (“the last of the V8 Interceptors”, as described in the second movie) and goes on a crusade against Toecutter’s gang, killing them all, leaving Johnny the Boy for last: Max ties him up with a chain to a car with the fuel leaking and gives him a choice, to try and saw off the chain, or to saw off his own leg, otherwise he’ll burn just like Goose.

Mad Max was a highly lucrative film thanks to its low budget (but the movie doesn’t look cheap, don’t worry!) and its enormous success in Australia. Unlike so many American movies in the eighties (like Cobra, for instance), it doesn’t glorify vengeance, violence, the cliché of the “protagonist who breaks the rules in order to do what’s right” or the (terrifying) idea that the police needs to ignore the rules; on the contrary, it draws a parallel between societal decay and Max’s own moral decay. It’s true that Toecutter’s gang only has murderers and rapists, horrible people all in all, but Max doesn’t kill them to serve justice, only his own hatred, and at the end of the story he remains completely empty inside. So the movie doesn’t work only as a warning against excessive dependency on oil, it also shows that Mad Max’s form of “justice” can only exist in a world equally mad, when everything is falling to pieces.

The second movie is Mad Max 2 (released in the United States as The Road Warrior, since the first one wasn’t so well-known by the American audience). Released in 1981, it was the first movie in the series to be an international hit and was also responsible for making Mel Gibson a Hollywood star. It’s already set in the post-apocalyptical world popularised by the series, one in which a nuclear war finished what remained of civilisation. As stated in the opening narration:

“To understand who he was, you have to go back to another time, when the world was powered by the black fuel and the desert sprouted great cities of pipe and steel. Gone now… Swept away. For reasons long forgotten, two mighty warrior tribes went to war, and touched off a blaze which engulfed them all. Without fuel they were nothing. They’d built a house of straw. The thundering machines sputtered and stopped. Their leaders talked and talked and talked. But nothing could stem the avalanche. Their world crumbled. The cities exploded. A whirlwind of looting, a firestorm of fear. Men began to feed on men. On the roads it was a white line nightmare. Only those mobile enough to scavenge, brutal enough to pillage would survive. The gangs took over the highways, ready to wage war for a tank of juice. And in this maelstrom of decay, ordinary men were battered and smashed… Men like Max… The warrior Max. In the roar of an engine, he lost everything and became a shell of a man. A burnt-out, desolate man, a man haunted by the demons of his past, a man who wandered out into the wasteland. And it was here, in this blighted place, that he learned to live again.”

(The Cold War reference is gone by the time of the third movie, by the way.)

That is how things stand when Max gets involved with the conflict between the gang (perhaps “barbarian band” is a more apt description) of Lord Humungus’ “dogs of war” and a community which managed to put a refinery into operation. Humungus wants that refinery, and everyone who tries to escape the “city” is chased and killed. Max strikes a deal with Papagallo, the community’s leader: he’ll bring them a truck he had found abandoned in the desert, one they can use to bring the fuel tanker when they try to escape; in exchange, he wants enough gas to fill up his car’s tank and leave.

He gets them the truck and is getting ready to leave, but Papagallo tries to convince him to stay, maybe build a future with them. Max adamantly refuses, and Papagallo verbally tears into him:

“What is it with you, huh? What are you looking for? C’mon, Max, everybody’s looking for something. You’re happy out there, are you? Eh? Wandering? One day blurring into another? You’re a scavenger, Max. You’re a maggot. Did you know that? You’re living off the corpse of the old world. Tell me your story, Max. C’mon. Tell me your story. What burned you out, huh? Kill one man too many? See too many people die? Lose some family? Oh, so that’s it, you lost your family? That makes you something special, does it? Do you think you’re the only one that’s suffered? We’ve all been through it in here. But we haven’t given up. We’re still human beings, with dignity. But you? You’re out there with the garbage. You’re nothing.”

Max ignores the speech and leaves, but he’s attacked by some of Humungus’ thugs. His pet dog is killed and the bandits set off the booby trap in his car, the V8 Interceptor, causing it to explode. Max, nearly dead, is rescued by the Gyro Captain and taken back to the “city”, where Papagallo is getting ready to drive the truck. Max offers to take his place, he replies it’s too late for deals, but Max says he’s not interested in any deals.

Max Rockatansky, cosplaying as Rob Halford (joke shamelessly stolen from the webcomic Manly Guys Doing Manly Things), and Dog, his pet dog; Lord Humungus, cosplaying as S&M Conan; and the Gyro Captain (played by Bruce Spence, who would later play Jedediah in the third movie – also an autogyro pilot, but not the same character!) and his pet snake (“It’s my snake, I trained it, I’m going to eat it!”).

The movie’s last act is a thrilling car chase scene (one of the best even to this day!). Many die during the battle, including Papagallo, until finally Humungus and his main henchman are killed by Max, and the remaining savages give up the chase. Max finds out that the truck had actually been filled with sand – the fuel was hidden in the other vehicles – and the Gyro Captain leads the survivors to the coast, where they become the Great Northern Tribe. Max stays behind, and was never seen by any of them again.

Mad Max shows a good man falling in ruins morally and spiritually, mirroring what happens to society around him; paradoxically, Mad Max 2 shows the same man rediscovering his humanity when the world is already ruined. Not just him: while the “innocent civilians” in the first movie are ruled by fear of Toecutter’s gang, Papagallo’s community tries to fight against Humungus. Not all of them – some try to escape and are killed –, but enough to help Max stop worrying only about his suffering and pay attention to the world around him, enough to fend off the marauders and rebuild civilisation, even if it’s only a small spot.

Even the villains of both movies work those themes: Toecutter is a complete lunatic who rules his gang with strength and intimidation, someone who takes advantage of the decay around him (or maybe let himself be overtaken by it), while Humungus is someone who, like Max, Papagallo and so many others, suffered losses (just pay attention to some of his lines, like “Be still, my dog of war. I understand your pain; we’ve all lost someone we love.”), but chose to abandon his humanity instead of fighting for it.

Some might see the truck-filled-with-sand trick as confirmation that Papagallo’s speech was full of empty words and that the refinery people only wanted to use Max as bait, but I’d argue against that reading for the following reasons:

1) Papagallo was entirely willing to drive the truck himself. He even refuses Max’s offer to be the driver at first; Max has to insist and make it clear he’s not doing it to get anything in return before Papagallo accepts the offer.

2) Many of the refinery people (including Papagallo) fight and die defending the truck.

3) In the end, does it make any difference whether the truck had gas or not? Max already knew it would be the main target of Humungus’ attack and voluntarily took the risk. Why, he even laughs when he finds out the trick!Another interesting element of the first movies in the tetralogy is that Max isn’t an action hero like the ones that would come later: James Braddock, John Matrix, John Rambo and others, nearly superhuman people capable of slaughtering dozens of minions almost without breaking a sweat. He’s in great shape, has very fast reflexes and, above all, is an excellent driver, but he’s no super fighter or anything of the sort. He even suffers long-term injuries: right in the beginning of Mad Max 2 we see him limping with the same leg that was seriously wounded by Bubba Zanetti in the first movie. In this regard, we can compare him to John McClane of the first Diehard (and only the first one! The sequels exaggerated things further and further as they progressed), who also gets seriously hurt during the movie and doesn’t display superhuman abilities.

Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, from 1985, is the weakest of the movies starring the former cop, but it’s probably also the most famous. It opens with Max (who lost his V8 Interceptor in the previous movie, remember) having his camels and supplies stolen by Jedediah, the gyro pilot of this movie. He wanders aimlessly until he finds Bartertown, a city in the middle of the desert where people can gather and trade freely, as long as they respect its laws – in other words, an oasis of civilisation in the middle of all the savagery.

Bartertown was founded by Aunty Entity, but it’s really run by someone else – two people, actually: Master, a little person who has the necessary knowledge to keep the methane refinery under the city working, and Blast, a brainless brute who’s invincible in a fight. Together, they’re MasterBlaster, and they run Bartertown. Just like in the last movie, Max is forced by circumstances to get involved with the power struggle between Aunty Entity and MasterBlaster, and as a result, Blaster (who wasn’t the bloodthirsty thug he seemed to be, but rather, a mentally handicapped person with a child’s intelect) is killed, Master becomes a slave in all but name, and Max is forced to wander out into the desert without food or water.

Max Rockatansky for the first half (more or less) of the movie, now cosplaying as a hair metal singer; Tina Turner as Aunty Entity (“WE DON’T NEED ANOTHER HEEEEEEEEEERO!”); and MasterBlaster (“Who run Bartertown?” “MasterBlaster runs Bartertown!”).

Fortunately (and I mean REALLY fortunately) for Max, he’s rescued by Savannah Nix, the leader of a group of children who survived the crash of a Boeing 747. Those children grew up as a sort of tribe and even developed a mythology in which Captain Walker (the plane’s pilot) would return one day and take them to a paradise called Tomorrow-Morrow Land. The movie’s climax takes place when Max leads the children and rescues Master from Bartertown (his knowledge will be useful to help them rebuild society) and then stays behind to hold off Entity’s forces while Jedediah takes the others with him so they can all escape. In the end, Max is captured, but Aunty Entity spares his life; and once again, Max has saved other people, only for him to go back to wandering across the desert.

This is the movie in which Max starts to become something greater (or lesser, depending on your point of view) than a character: an archetype, a sort of character prototype. Simplifying enormously the concept, it’s similar to how women in many “007” movies can be divided into femme fatales and damsels in distress.

So why do I say that Max starts becoming an archetype in Beyond Thunderdome? Firstly, because he no longer seems to suffer from old wounds (he no longer limps with the leg hurt in the first movie, for instance); secondly, because his physical abilities are a lot closer to those of a classical 80’s action hero (just take a look at the scene where Aunty Entity tests him to see if he’s capable of facing Blast, when he takes down with ease several attackers at once); thirdly, and most importantly, because he no longer has his own character arc – that is to say, the movie no longer delves into his personality or motivations, Max’s role in the story is entirely centered around the tribe of lost children, he’s only there to play his part as the hero. In other words, the movie no longer shows Max Rockatansky, the man, but only Mad Max, the road warrior, the man who became a legend. It’s no coincidence that when he enters the Thunderdome (the arena in which all of Bartertown’s legal and trade disputes are resolved by means of duels to the death), the presenter announces him as “the man with no name” (a reference to the classic Western characters played by Clint Eastwood)!

It’s possible this is due to the fact that the movie wasn’t originally planned as a “Mad Max” film: George Miller conceived the plot of a man getting involved in a power struggle between two factions in a city in the middle of the desert and only later had the idea of putting Max in that role. But maybe this can be explained as a consequence of the events in the second movie.

See, it’s very interesting that both the Gyro Captain and the Feral Kid, the two people to whom Max is the closest during the story, remain with the refinery people (with the Gyro Captain, who had previously been an outsider, even becoming their leader), but Max himself chooses to remain behind. One way to look at it is that Max might have overcome the need to hold on to his anger and pain, but he hasn’t really filled the emptiness left inside, at least not enough to live with other people. That might explain why he’s back to worrying only about his survival in Beyond Thunderdome, to the point he essentially accepts a contract on someone’s life, but then spares Blaster’s life when he finds out he’s basically a child, and later sacrifices himself (he had every reason to think Entity would have had him killed) to give the lost children a chance to build a life.

Finally, Fury Road. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, don’t worry, I won’t give any spoilers. To sum up the movie’s plot: Max Rockatansky (now played by Tom Hardy, who has also played Bane in The Dark Knight Rises) is yet again forced by circumstances to get involved in other people’s conflicts, this time between Immortan Joe, a warlord worshipped as a god by his own personal army, and Imperator Furiosa (“Imperator” is a title, by the way), Joe’s right-hand woman who tries to escape Joe’s grasp and brings his “wives” (concubines and breeding mares would be more appropriate terms) with her.

Tom Hardy as the “new” Max Rockatansky (supposedly, this movie isn’t a remake, but an actual sequel); Charlize Theron as Imperator Furiosa; and Hugh Keays-Byrne (Toecutter!) as Immortan Joe. Witness it!

The setting has changed a bit since the last movie. Society as we know it is still in ruins, but it seems there’s a new order slowly rising (Joe has set up an infrastructure that lets him support a private army, for instance, even providing them with bullets – that’s a lot more than Toecutter, Humungus or even Entity had) – too bad it’s nothing more than isolated feuds ruled with iron hands by despots. Ah, the more things change…

As for Max, this is the movie in which he fully becomes an archetype: he barely shows signs of pain or exhaustion, his combat skills are truly exceptional (especially in the scene when he faces the Bullet Farmer), and once again he has no character arc of his own – to the point that Furiosa is the true protagonist. In Beyond Thunderdome, Max got involved with other people’s problems and didn’t grow or change in the course of the story, but at least the movie followed him and his exploits – the plot was still centred on his actions; in Fury Road, he is entirely superfluous to the plot. The movie could easily have had just Furiosa and the “wives” as the main characters and we would still have a complete movie.

Does that make it a bad movie? No, not at all! It’s actually a very good film, at least as good as the second one (I still prefer Mad Max 2, but this one is definitely better than the other two), with some of the best action scenes in the whole series (though sometimes it’s a bit too shaky for my tastes) and filled with typical “Mad Max” bizarreness (there’s a flamethrowing guitar! And it’s real, as in, there’s no CG there!). But maybe it’s not such a good Mad Max movie. Oh, it has all of the series’ classical elements – a world devastated by greed and stupidity (“WHO KILLED THE WORLD?”), marauders preying on the remains of civilization, people trying to find some sort of humanity or redemption in the midst of all the chaos –; the only thing it’s missing is the character Max.

George Miller has said that this was a conscious choice on his part, that Max is similar to the wandering samurai or gunslinger of Westerns and Jidaigeki films. But Max used to be a character, not just an archetype; and in many of those movies, the stories were based on the wandering protagonists even as they helped other people fulfil their goals, not themselves. One need only compare Lone Wolf and Cub’s Itto Ogami (who often takes a secondary role in any story which isn’t directly related to the main plot of his vendetta against the Yagyu clan) with Toshiro Mifune’s character in Yojimbo and Sanjuro to see the difference. I wonder if, similarly to what happened with Beyond Thunderdome, Miller actually conceived the movie with only Furiosa and Joe’s “wives” and only decided to add Max later.