Before the Wasteland, George Miller Gave Us A Glimpse At Where We’re Headed

Two weeks ago, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced that the famed Doomsday Clock had been set at a mere 89 seconds to midnight. Created by J. Robert Oppenheimer, Albert Einstein, and other scientists concerned by the threat of the Atomic Age, the project has long been a controversial representation of how close humanity stands on the edge of annihilation. From the beginning, people have always wondered in fear about The End, and there are few periods in history where that fear was as widespread as during the height of the Cold War.

The tangible threat of mutually assured destruction hung over the world like a mushroom cloud, and one need only look at the kinds of art that came out of the ‘70s and ‘80s to get a glimpse at how real this terror was. One example in particular stands distinct from the rest. In 1979, George Miller introduced the world to Max Rockatansky — but unlike the cinematic apocalyptic hellscape of Fury Road, the original Mad Max is noteworthy for how frightfully familiar it feels in its depiction of a world right on the brink of collapse.

Despite the 36 years that exist between the two of them, the original Mad Max and the Wasteland of Fury Road and Furiosa share a few commonalities, most notably in the visual language that Miller consistently uses to showcase road carnage. It’s the same bag of tricks that would later earn the franchise multiple Oscar nominations. Miller’s camera is just as dynamic in 1979 as it is in 2015, weaving and tracking and hovering over the action in a way that makes you feel like you’re watching from inside your own speeding deathtrap. The editing is also decisive and impactful, cutting from the interior of a car to its high-speed, practical destruction with a suddenness that will give you whiplash.

Of course, this is an understanding of the physical toll of car crashes that was honed long before Miller stepped onto a film set. Seven years before shooting the first Mad Max, Miller was finishing up a residency at St. Vincent’s Hospital, where he saw firsthand the brutal damage an automobile accident could cause. A morbid fascination with gore and viscera is what interested Miller about Australian exploitation cinema (also called Ozploitation) in the first place — even his first ever short film, Violence in the Cinema, is preoccupied with the fragile relationship between audience’s repulsion at on-screen violence and our insatiable appetite for it.

While there are naturally many similarities between the start of the franchise and where it ends up, the first Mad Max is notable for its differences as well — primarily the state of the world. Unlike the other films in the series, the original is set in Australia right before the nuclear collapse detailed by The Road Warrior. Even without the total desolation of later entries, it’s easy to see that what’s left of “civilization” is gripped by ever-escalating chaos, the streets a warzone beset upon by roving psychotic motorbike gangs and “protected” by the reckless Main Force Patrol. The Mad Max films have always showcased the destructive potential of high-speed chases, but there’s a new layer of anxiety that comes from watching people go 120 mph in a residential neighborhood.

The MFP try to keep some semblance of order but in truth they’re just another side of the same coin — their authority exists as part of the same system of bumbling, inefficient machismo that represents survival in this nigh-dystopian future. Much in the same way that the Cold War, in a simplistic view, was a game of chicken between the major world powers at the time, the tentative “law and order” upheld in the world of Mad Max is predicated on an almost pro-wrestling style of masculine posturing, evidenced by the Nightrider’s delirious battle cries in the opening chase as well as the dangerous and haphazard lengths the MFP will go to in order to catch their man. This absurd and heightened conception of power and manhood feels cartoonishly authentic in 2025, from the toxicity of the self-described Manosphere to world leaders making geopolitical decisions to project an idea of strength and authority.

It’s within this violent turmoil that we meet Max Rockatansky for the first time, played with a steel-jawed assurance and rugged charisma by Mel Gibson. He’s not quite the unhinged survivalist we know in other films, and that’s partly due to the tender and ill-fated romance between him and his wife Jessie (Joanne Samuel). Not only are the scenes between them uncharacteristically sweet for the franchise, but it’s easy to understand the way that Max’s family represents the anxiety of losing control. With the future of the world on such an uncertain precipice, so much collective angst revolves around the kind of world we’re leaving behind for the people we care about, and how powerless people feel to change it.

Inevitably, the death of his wife and son eventually turn Max Rockatansky into Mad Max, a self-destructive husk driven by vengeance and survival, hunting down the men responsible in his jet-black Pursuit Interceptor during the film’s iconic and savage climax. In his desperation, Max succumbs to the same aggressive performance necessary to survive in the Wasteland, abandoning the warmth that we saw in him around Jessie and fully committing to the image of himself crafted during his time in the MFP — a ruthless, brutal Road Warrior, searching for purpose and absolution. The original Mad Max is, of course, a high-octane, gasoline-drenched action Ozploitation thriller, but it’s also a tragically tangible cautionary tale, one that conjures up a vision of society not all that far from where we are now, in an attempt to hopefully scare us away from making the Wasteland a reality.