With Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga playing in theaters worldwide, it’s time to travel down the Fury Road and rank the five films in George Miller’s masterful franchise.
Ever since the late 1970s, audiences have been wowed by Miller’s postapocalyptic saga as Max Rockatansky and other denizens of the Australian Wasteland battle for survival.
As we soak in the majesty of Miller’s latest action spectacular, let’s take a look at how all five of these films stack up against each other. They’re all very good at worst, and at their best, they represent the absolute pinnacle of action cinema. Let’s spray some chrome and ride epic to Valhalla!
5. Mad Max
The first film in the franchise was a low-budget triumph that established Miller as a meaningful force in global cinema. As viewers learned about how the world fell into chaos and Max went, well, mad, you got an enticing glimpse at the kinetic action Miller wanted to bring to life with these movies. The world-building and chase scenes got off to a strong start, as did the way Miller framed his actors.
4. Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome took the bold step of eschewing the chase-bound thrills of its predecessors and opted for a stranger dive into what the Wasteland had to offer. Tina Turner brought some welcomed gravitas as the villain, and Miller’s eye-popping vistas had never looked better. This one felt the closest to where cinema could take Miller’s vision with the technologies he had at his disposal to make his imagination run wild. It’s just a step down from the second film.
3. Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior
The ferocious second installment brought Miller’s uncanny ability to mount action sequences to center stage with an immensely satisfying sequel. Rather than dwell in the drama of its lead, Miller just lets this one rip with the silent creativity of a Buster Keaton movie and the wily antics of a Looney Tunes cartoon. The central chases were game-changing for their time, and they’ve aged tremendously. While Miller perfected the format a few decades later, The Road Warrior still rules.
2. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
Following Mad Max: Fury Road was never going to be easy, but Miller veered into full-fledged Biblical epic territory with Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. It’s a spectacular sequel, adding a new layer of sweeping emotion and vengeful venom as it spans years of Furiosa’s journey from a green oasis to the Fury Road. Miller wisely avoids trying to recreate a masterpiece and still manages to scrape the same ceiling that made its predecessor such a groundbreaking moment in cinema.
Chris Hemsworth delivers one of the great villainous performances of the decade so far as Dementus, while Anya Taylor-Joy takes the Furiosa baton from Charlize Theron with ease. Some of the war rig and motorbike sequences in this rival the best scenes in Mad Max: Fury Road, while the more methodical world-building and deepened dramatic stakes added meaning to the series.
1. Mad Max: Fury Road
The golden standard for action films in the last 15 years, Mad Max: Fury Road defied all expectations and reset the bar for what franchise films can aspire to be. Miller’s magnum opus cemented him as a generational filmmaker and without peer in the way he could craft action pieces with practical effects that felt genuinely impossible to pull off. There’s only so much you can say about one of the greatest movies of all time. It’s a generational achievement that only gets better.
