Are all the Mad Max movies chronologically connected? Franchise's timeline explored

With Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga finally releasing in theaters, George Miller has once again brought us to the dusty and sandy Wasteland that has become a staple of the long-running franchise. However, one must also recognize that Furiosa is perhaps the only film in this series that has a direct chronological connection to another film.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, which is a prequel, is the first movie in the long-running franchise to be directly connected with another film, Mad Max: Fury Road. While this might come as a shock considering that the character of Max Rockatansky is something that binds all five films in the franchise together, there are enough timeline discrepancies here where not all the films chronologically connect to each other.

Director George Miller initially confirmed this during the 2015 Cannes Film Festival when he was talking about Fury Road during a press conference. He spoke about how he approached these movies without any chronological connections and just wanted them to be about a day in Max's life.

"All the films have no strict chronology. It’s probably after Thunderdome, but it’s an episode in the life of Max and this world. It’s basically an episode, and it’s us revisiting that world. I never wrote the story, any of the stories, with a chronological connection."

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George Miller views Mad Max as a mythology

When talking about timelines and chronological discrepancies, an argument can be made that it's only the first Mad Max film that actually did take place in the series. Following that, every sequel like The Road Warrior, Beyond Thunderdome, and Fury Road are mythological stories that are told over a campfire.

This is a popular fan theory that was adopted by fans in the years leading up to the release of Fury Road. With Furiosa taking place 45 years after the collapse of humanity (and also 45 years after the first film), Max should be nearing being a senior citizen, but every movie portrays him as a youthful warrior. There is no specific time period for any of these tales to take place, and it further fuels the mythological aspect of the franchise.

Even series creator George Miller played into this notion, where he himself considers Max to carry a mythological status. Speaking to Australian Screen in 2006, Miller reflected on the success of the first film. He spoke about how different countries viewed Max from their own mythological point of view and how that thinking directly affected his approach to the character in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior.

"So Mad Max 2 (1981) was very influenced by that. Suddenly you saw that he was much more than just a character. That he was indeed a mythological figure, you know, a mini-version of one. He’s not – he’s not a great hero but he has that, something like that is nascent in him. And it was … so it was a little bit more self-conscious in Mad Max 2 (1981). Not following it, you know, religiously – the hero myth. But it was an understanding that that was what was at foot."

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How does Furiosa further the mythological aspect of the franchise?

Furiosa further develops the mythological aspect of the Mad Max franchise as a whole. The film itself is divided into chapters, with George Shevtsov's History Man narrating the events that take place. He narrates it in the sense that this is a story being told after he hears second-hand retellings of it, and the climax of Furiosa further develops that idea.

The end of the film sees Furiosa finally get revenge on Dementus for killing her mother, but it's unclear whether she kills the warlord or spares his life. The narrator tells us how there are different versions of the events that took place, but Furiosa herself told him that she imprisoned him within the Citadel, where his body became fertilizer for a peach tree. The tree was grown from a seed that was given to her by her mother, who was murdered by Dementus.

However, it's up to the viewer to decide whether the events that took place in the climax are the objective truth or not, and that helps establish Furiosa as a mythological tale. It's the first time that a Mad Max film has directly addressed this aspect of the franchise, and it was certainly a treat to see George Miller bring it to life in this way. You can check out Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, which is playing in theaters right now.