It is not easy to make sense of Mad Max’s ever-changing age throughout the franchise’s four movies, but the age of his actor and apparent chronology of the series can be used to discern this information. The Mad Max movies are a masterpiece of off-the-cuff world-building. Hard as it may be to believe now, the original thriller was only set in the future to save on production costs and was never even intended to be a sci-fi story.
However, since then Road Warrior’s iconic villains ensured that the Mad Max franchise essentially invented the post-apocalyptic action movie aesthetic and the sunburnt style of the series has endured in popularity throughout the sci-fi genre for decades. Despite this, it is hard to discern the chronology of the Mad Max movies in concrete terms, and even harder to work out the history of their star. Just attempting to discern what age Mad Max is in each movie proves that the franchise is more confused and contradictory than it initially appears to the casual viewer.
If viewers assume that Max is intended to be the same age as his actor at the time of filming, then the original Mad Max’s hero is around 22 years old (as was series star Mel Gibson during filming in 1978). Assuming Max is not immortal (as some fans claim) and ages normally, by the time he returned to screens in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, he was 24 like Gibson. According to this logic, in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, the character is 28, and finally, by the events of Mad Max: Fury Road, the character should be around 35-36 like his new actor Tom Hardy was during filming. Now, while these ages look right for the character and do align with the standard “Mad Max, Road Warrior, Beyond Thunderdome, Fury Road” chronology that the series is presumed to follow, they don’t tell the entire story.
Mad Max (1979)
Max Is In His Early 20s When His Story Begins
Max’s story starts in a relatively recognizable world where, although society is beginning to crumble, the off-screen apocalypse has not yet occurred. Lawlessness is increasingly commonplace thanks to fuel shortages, with writer/ director George Miller being inspired to write Mad Max by dire climate predictions from the late ‘70s. However, as the all-important apocalyptic event has not yet happened, it’s pretty clear what age Max is here. While Gibson was only 22 while shooting the movie, Max might be a little older since he is already married and has a young child. Presumably, Max is in his early twenties.
The Road Warrior (1981)
Max Hasn’t Aged Much Between His First Two Screen Outings
The wheels soon come loose as the Mad Max franchise continues thanks to its unexplained apocalypse. The Road Warrior arrived two years after Mad Max, so viewers can assume that Max should be in his mid to late twenties in this sequel. This certainly fits Gibson’s real-life age, so although a lot has changed in the franchise’s desolate setting during the intervening two years, this still seems to make sense. However, proceedings become stranger when the next installments are taken into account. After The Road Warrior, every subsequent Mad Max movie makes the timing of the series harder to follow.
Beyond Thunderdome (1985)
The Mad Max Timeline Gets Murkier With The Third Installment
Beyond Thunderdome was filmed only three years after The Road Warrior, so Max should still be around 28 years old. Indeed, that is the age Gibson was filming the movie, that is the age Max looks, and that would explain how Aunt Entity and the time to establish an alternative society in the intervening years. However, when Miller told a press conference that 2024’s prequel Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga “Probably” takes place after Beyond Thunderdome, he inadvertently made the series timeline a complete headache. Supposedly, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga’s action happens “45 years” after the apocalypse.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)
Furiosa’s Mad Max Prequel Makes Max’s Age Harder To Parse
For anyone still following, Max should technically be at least 67 years old by the time Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga takes place. After all, it has been 45 years since the world ended, and he was, at the very least, around 22 years old before that. This makes it tough to work out just what age Max is supposed to be in the later movies. To make matters worse, the actor who plays him in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, former stuntman Jacob Tomuri, is 44 years old, 8 years older than Tom Hardy when he played Fury Road‘s Max.
Fury Road (2015)
Max Is Definitely Older By The Events of Fury Road
Although its star was only 35 years old during filming, according to Miller’s timeline, Max should be roughly 83 in Fury Road. Fury Road is set 15 years after Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, which is set 45 years after the apocalypse, before which Max was at least 22 years old. As such, he has to be at least 83 or, as might be more likely, there could be an issue with the franchise’s timeline. Fury Road’s Max looks much closer in age to Furiosa and his old self than he ostensibly should, implying the series isn’t entirely clear about its events.
Mad Max: Fury Road’s prequel comics, for example, note that the nuclear war which wreaked devastation on Max’s home country occurred in 2015. This does track with the setting of the original Mad Max, which took place in the “Near future” sometime after 1979, depicts a pre-nuclear war world, and is thought to be set in the mid-’80s. However, the fact that Beyond Thunderdome is set after the nuclear war and features a character who left his crashed airplane in 1999 confuses this chronology somewhat. As if the uncertain timing of this contentious off-screen nuclear war was not already trouble enough for canny viewers, there is also the issue of the cause of the Mad Max universe’s apocalypse changing from movie to movie.
|
Mad Max Movie |
Max’s Age |
|---|---|
|
Mad Max |
22 |
|
The Road Warrior |
24 |
|
Beyond Thunderdome |
28 |
|
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga |
30 (or possibly 67) |
|
Fury Road |
35/36 (or possibly 83) |
The end of the world has no consistent cause between the Mad Max movies, with some saying it was civilizational collapse due to fuel shortages, some blaming nuclear war, and some implying a combination of both caused the apocalypse. Meanwhile, the fact that both Fury Road and the far more grounded, realistic original Mad Max feature the same actor as their lead villain has even led some viewers to theorize that the world never ended and Max merely became more delusional between installments. As a result, it is impossible to say for certain what age Max is in each movie, since many can’t even agree on whether the apocalypse even happened in Mad Max’s universe. That said, using the age of each movie’s star as a guide provides a good idea and a satisfactory answer for most Mad Max viewers while also reaffirming that the movies take place in their order of release (outside of their 2024 prequel).
Source: Polygon
