Here's How You Can Watch Every Mad Max Movie
George Miller is, of course, the veteran director behind such beloved childrens' films as Babe: Pig in the City and Happy Feet. But, check out this piece of obscure trivia: did you know that he also helped invent the post-apocalyptic film genre by writing and directing all four films in the Mad Max series? Mind blowing!
We jest, of course. Those four flicks are Miller's crowning achievements, action masterpieces that helped to make a household name out of Mel Gibson and — much, much later — provided a stellar showcase for the talents of Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron. In fact, Miller's debut feature was 1979's Mad Max, a low-budget affair that was initially released only in Australia. In it, police officer Max Rockatansky's (Gibson) pursuit of a vicious gang, led by a psychopath known as "Toecutter" (Hugh Keays-Byrne), turns extremely personal after his wife and infant son are killed by the gang. The movie dropped like a bomb on the cinematic landscape; its violence was rather extreme (especially for the time), its vehicle-based action sequences were impressive even without taking the flick's meager budget into consideration, and its depiction of a society teetering on the brink of collapse struck a chord with audiences living through escalating nuclear brinksmanship between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. and an international energy crisis driven by skyrocketing oil prices.
Once it secured international distribution, Miller's little film raked in the cash like nobody involved could have foreseen, grossing over $100 million worldwide and becoming — for two solid decades, until the release of The Blair Witch Project — the single most profitable film ever made (via BBC America). You can catch it in all its low-budget, high-speed, blood-soaked glory on Netflix — but in order to watch the other films in the series, you'll have to head over to a much more appropriately-named streamer.
Catch most of the Mad Max action in an appropriate place
That's right: Miller's other three works of post-apocalyptic craziness, serendipitously enough, reside on HBO Max. Mad Max 2, released in the United States as The Road Warrior, upped the ante with a bigger budget, crazier stunts, and a Western-flavored story which saw Max — now a drifter wandering through the wasteland after the complete collapse of society — assisting a ragtag band of settlers under continuous assault from a roving gang of marauders calling themselves, well, the Marauders. While the flick didn't post the stellar box office numbers of its predecessor, it mostly earned rave critical reviews owing to its absolutely relentless pace and expertly shot and edited action sequences. Wrote the great Roger Ebert in his three-and-a-half star review, "[The Road Warrior] is a film of pure action, of kinetic energy ... one of the most relentlessly aggressive movies ever made ... The experience is frightening, sometimes disgusting, and (if the truth be told) exhilarating. This is very skillful filmmaking."
Next up is 1985's Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, in which Max runs up against the intelligent, conniving Aunty Entity (Tina Turner, in a rare turn as an actress), the ruler of "Bartertown" where all conflicts are resolved by way of a duel to the death in the titular gladiatorial arena. The flick once again racked up the critical raves but didn't exactly set the box office on fire. A fourth installment, the idea for which Miller began kicking around in the '90s, languished in that fabled corner of Hollywood known as Development Hell for the better part of two decades. Fortunately, to say it was worth the wait would be an understatement.
Mad Max: Fury Road might be the best action movie of all time
Thirty years after Beyond Thunderdome, Miller improbably revived his signature franchise (no, not Happy Feet) with Mad Max: Fury Road, a blast of pure kinetic action that became an instant classic. The story is simplicity itself: captured by the "War Boys," henchmen of the despotic Immortan Joe (Keays-Byrne again), Max (Hardy) finds himself teaming up with one of the madman's trusted lieutenants: the one-armed, ridiculously badass Imperator Furiosa (Theron), who is intent on delivering a phalanx of Joe's "wives" — one of them very, very pregnant — to a fabled "Green Place" of Furiosa's lost childhood, where they can live in peace. Of course, this place turns out to no longer exist as it does in Furiosa's memory — and the pair end up embarking on a different mission, to liberate Joe's stronghold and bring relief, and much-needed water, to its inhabitants.
This plot is the frame upon which Miller and his crew of (presumably crazy, fearless) stunt performers hang some of the most kinetic, adrenaline-pumping, flat-out bananas action sequences ever put to film. If you have somehow yet to experience it, let us just put it this way: If the image of a spiky-haired, post-apocalyptic madman riding a rig made out of speakers into battle while wielding a flame-throwing electric guitar appeals to you, well, this is the movie for you. (The only movie for you, really.) Theron's ferocious performance as Furiosa totally steals the show from Hardy, who still manages to acquit himself nicely with his presence alone, no small feat given his near-absence of dialogue.
Mad Max: Fury Road is a simply awesome action spectacle at its finest, and it, too, can be streamed right now on HBO Max.