The opening of the film sees Max captured by a War Boys raiding party, who take him back to the Citadel as their prisoner. While nothing is explicitly spelled out, we do get a few glimpses into their bizarre quasi-religious practices, including coating themselves in white powder, spraying chrome spray paint in their mouths, and an overall obsession with entering Valhalla, an afterlife populated by those who died in battle in Norse mythology. These guys have a cultish devotion to Joe, and view him as nothing short of a god. Their job is to go out and hunt for people and supplies, as well as shepherd oil and ammunition from Joe’s outlying facilities. He reigns from inside the rock fortress, which is only accessible via a human-powered elevator.Įnacting his will on the Citadel’s population and beyond is an army of fanatics he leads called the War Boys. The population is ruled by a tyrant known as Immortan Joe, who maintains his iron grip by controlling the water supply (pumped from underground wells). The Citadel is a “city” built around a giant rock formation that doubles as a fortress. This particular installment centers around a nondescript region of (probably) Australia, and a settlement called the Citadel. World war follows, and in the aftermath, little of civilization remains (although in the original Mad Max, things were still organized enough to have a standing police force). The state of the world is more or less the result of us running out of oil, which causes a global energy crisis. About this Wasteland, why is the world all messed up? It’s simply one more legend of the “Road Warrior,” and his journey through the wasteland. It’s not a direct sequel to Beyond the Thunderdome (the third one), it’s not a prequel, and it’s certainly not a remake. Fury Road definitely works best on this level.
Both the second and third films are implied to be stories told decades after they happened, long after Max has faded from memory into myth.
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It’s best not to think of the Mad Max movies as a series of sequels, but more as an anthology of stories centering around a particular character. There’s a very, very loose chronology connecting the original Mad Max trilogy, and while we’re supposed to assume this is the same guy each time, every installment is more-or-less standalone. All you really need to know about Max though is he’s a man who’s distilled himself into one single instinct: survive. There’s definitely not a ton of backstory on the guy in Fury Road, as the character has been the star of three Mad Max movies prior to this one.
He’s “mad” (at least in this movie) because he’s certifiably insane. Max Rockatansky (somehow still the least silly name in the film) is a former police officer turned drifter, wandering the wasteland after the death of his wife and child.
So who is this Max guy, and why is he so mad? So if you’re wondering what the hell an Imperator is, and why this Max guy is so angry, we’ve got you covered.
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That being said, the movie spends approximately 14 seconds explaining anything before all hell breaks loose, so it’s pretty easy to miss a ton of director George Miller’s rich (and utterly insane) worldbuilding. Mad Max is all anyone is talking about this weekend, and for good reason (spoiler alert: it’s pretty mindblowing).