After a huge box office flop, the Mad Max franchise faces an uncertain future, with legitimate concerns about whether Mad Max: The Wasteland is a movie that should be made. Despite being the follow-up to the massive critical hit of Mad Max: Fury Road, featuring strong lead stars, and simply being a good movie, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga saw shocking losses at the box office. While there have been plans for an additional Mad Max sequel for some time, people are now questioning it.
Furiosa underperformed for numerous reasons that had little to do with the actual quality of the movie, including marketability and competition, as well as the changing movie landscape where many expect that they will soon be available to stream. However, Furiosa‘s failure highlights several logistics and story challenges to the proposed Mad Max 5, making it a risk Warner Bros. and George Miller might not want to take. While predictions for the next Mad Max movie still come up, it is looking less likely as time passes.
8 Furiosa Didn’t Perform Well At The Box Office
Furiosa’s Commercial Failure Is Mad Max 5’s Biggest Obstacle
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When many promising movie franchises have been ended by box office flops, this now seems to be a likely fate for Mad Max.
Furiosa maintained the high ratings the Mad Max franchise has seen for several decades, since the days of Mel Gibson playing the title character. Die-hard fans who want the series to continue or even impartial observers who didn’t even see the movie might therefore be confused by the box office numbers. Despite its strong reviews, Furiosa grossed only $173 million against a budget of $168 million, resulting in a substantial loss.
|
Movie |
Release date |
Rotten Tomatoes score |
Metacritic score |
Audience score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Mad Max |
1979 |
90% |
73% |
70% |
|
Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior |
1981 |
94% |
77% |
86% |
|
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome |
1985 |
79% |
71% |
49% |
|
Mad Max: Fury Road |
2015 |
97% |
90% |
86% |
|
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga |
2024 |
90% |
79% |
89% |
Mad Max was once produced with a minimal budget and a skeleton crew, but executives felt confident in pouring resources into Furiosa after Fury Road‘s success. However, even Fury Road wasn’t a huge box office success, establishing its legacy through an amazing critical response. When many promising movie franchises have been ended by box office flops, this now seems to be a likely fate for Mad Max. Few Hollywood executives are going to invest that kind of money again when they fear they could repeat Furiosa‘s box office bomb.
7 Mad Max 5 Would Likely Need To Recast Max
A New Actor May Now Need To Replace Tom Hardy As Max
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Speaking of The Wasteland, the most recent “Mad Max” actor Tom Hardy told Forbes: “I don’t think that’s happening.” Even if the movie somehow did get off the ground, Hardy probably isn’t returning to Mad Max. It has been far too long since Hardy starred in Fury Road, and he has moved on to other projects. Additionally, Hardy infamously clashed with both director Miller and co-star Charlize Theron while filming Fury Road, which isn’t encouraging when it comes to getting these people to work together again. Furiosa‘s flop also isn’t likely to attract back old stars.
Related After Furiosa, I No Longer Think Mad Max 5 Should Happen
Mad Max 5 is all but guaranteed to be an excellent film, but after Furiosa, I no longer think it should happen for a variety of reasons.
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Max could be recast for The Wasteland, when Hollywood has a lot of new talent to offer, but recasting him again only a decade later would set a strange tone. Fury Road notably ignored any kind of timeline the franchise had before, with Hardy’s casting disregarding the continuity of Max being roughly the same age decades earlier. This worked because it had been so long since Beyond Thunderdome. However, The Wasteland would either have to reset the story again or alter assumptions about Max by recasting him and clarifying that it is the same iteration of the character.
6 Mad Max Has A Villain Problem
What Standard Do Immortan Joe & Dr. Dementus Set For Potential Future Villains?
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In contrast to Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Burne/Lachy Hulme), Dr. Dementus (Chris Hemsworth) is at least implied to have some backstory in Furiosa, rather than being evil simply for personal comfort. Dementus is also very theatrical in execution, coming closer to matching Aunty Entity’s (Tina Turner) dramatics than any other villain in the franchise. Dementus’ history and abuse of Furiosa are deeply personal, while Immortan Joe is a warlord characteristic of this setting who has exploited many. Yet while other tyrants like Joe exist in the Wasteland, none are going to have the same terrifying design or performance as him.
As far as the modern Mad Max villains go, future movies are going to have a hard time living up to either. Furiosa features Immortan Joe but doesn’t overuse him, and while this works in the sense of him being an unexplained evil, continuing to show him too much in prequels will result in his character being less effective. Meanwhile, creating a new villain with as many gimmicks as Dementus and having it work again is impossible. Both Dementus and Immortan Joe can’t be brought back without their characters being worn out, and their effects can’t be replicated.
5 The Mad Max Setting Doesn’t Have Much More To Offer
Exploring More Of Mad Max’s World Actually Wouldn’t Work
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The franchise’s setting has always been given little explanation, dancing around the question of who killed the world in Mad Max. A vague, distant war led to a nuclear fallout that resulted in the desolate desert seen in most of the movies. The remaining people supposedly scavenged and adapted cars, vehicles they could utilize with their given skills and resources. Additionally, Mad Max‘s geographic setting is always supposed Australia. Because the world is so simply explained, first instinct would be that there is still plenty more to explore there that could be the foundation for more movies.
However, if Mad Max started to delve into what caused the war or what people could do to help the environment bounce back, or showed Max somehow getting off the Australian continent, it would likely lose its characteristic tone. A Mad Max narrative is one that keeps the world-building to a minimum, conveying cautionary messages through visuals and feeling rather overly detailed explanations. Five movies have already done just this, and they may have gotten all that they can from this setting.
4 Mad Max 5 Will Have To Repeat Past Movies
Max Finds A Group In The Wasteland, Doesn’t Want To Help Them, & Does Anyway
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It has been argued that Fury Road and Furiosa bring the franchise to its natural conclusion (via Screen Rant), while another Mad Max movie would more than likely repeat previous installments. Since his family died in the first movie, and he became an unattached traveler, Max’s routine has been to wander the Wasteland looking for supplies, come across a threatened group, and be roped into helping them. How this is depicted in The Road Warrior and Fury Road worked, while it is generally more critiqued in Beyond Thunderdome.
Related Mad Max’s Best Movie Is The Exact Opposite Of The Movie Immediately Before It
Mad Max: Fury Road is often considered the best movie in the franchise, which makes it surprising that it’s so different from Beyond Thunderdome.
Fury Road also elevated the formula because Max wasn’t really the star of the story, with the focus being on the women trying to escape enslavement and the woman leading them. However, doing this all over again in another movie would probably highlight that it is overdone, while Max’s initial resistance to helping will get old. Fury Road showed a kind of happy ending with the moral characters seizing control of the Citadel, promising a better future in the Wasteland — it’s already hard to continue, let alone with a repetitive plot.
3 Characters Other Than Mad Max Stand A Better Chance Of Reviving The Franchise
Supporting Characters From Mad Max Offer Better Ideas For Standalone Movies
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Maybe the franchise will continue, but the next installment won’t necessarily be a “Mad Max” movie.
Maybe the franchise will continue, but the next installment won’t necessarily be a “Mad Max” movie. His story ends in Fury Road, while Theron and Anya Taylor-Joy give Furiosa everything she needs as a character. However, there are some characters who deserve a Mad Max spinoff after Furiosa and are potentially more promising starts for Miller to continue his work. These would probably be prequels or distantly connected spinoffs, which wouldn’t drastically change the world or disrupt Fury Road‘s ending. Most of the potential leads are either living out their lives at the Citadel or are dead.
Additionally, Mad Max spinoffs could avoid the pitfalls of continuing the main franchise by being character-focused. Characters like Zoë Kravitz’s Toast the Knowing or Furiosa’s mother Mary Jabassa (Charlee Fraser) are interesting because they could showcase more of how a person survives in this world, dependent upon their personalities and skills. In these two cases and several others, flashes of how they operate are seen in Fury Road and Furiosa, but could still be expanded into an individual narrative in which they are the lead.
2 Furiosa Established The Wrong Expectations For Mad Max
Mad Max Isn’t Supposed To Be A Linear Story
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Furiosa‘s ending goes straight into Fury Road, the most linear sequence of events that has been seen between any two Mad Max movies. This contributes to the argument that the two 21st-century movies are a two-part story, which can be viewed as the overall conclusion. However, it also sets different expectations for a hypothetical Mad Max 5, with an assumption that the previous movie will at least be acknowledged. This is new territory when the Mad Max timeline has historically been muddled.
Audiences can assume that the second and third movies happen after the first because Max no longer has his family, but not much else. There is a confusion of expectations and what works best for a Mad Max movie, of Max walking in with no acknowledgment that his adventure with Furiosa happened, and whether audiences want this or not. Because the role would likely be recast, there would be even more disruption in the continuity. No one knows what to expect or what will work when all of Max’s past adventures are effective standalones.
1 Will Mad Max Ever Be Able To Top Fury Road?
Surpassing Fury Road Is Literally Impossible
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Mad Max: Fury Road is widely considered one of the best action movies of all time, arguably the best overall, meaning that there is nowhere left for Mad Max to go. Like other franchises in this situation, all sequels, prequels, and spinoffs of Mad Max are forever going to be chasing the perfection of the series’ best movie. Praised for its uninterrupted action, unique visuals, and powerful symbolism, Fury Road has everything an action movie could hope for, both technically and thematically.
Related What’s the best Mad Max movie?
As much as I loved Furiosa, Fury Road still holds the crown as the best Mad Max movie. I’m not even a huge fan of the action genre, but it’s just so aesthetically unique, and the world-building is so compelling that it’s hard not to love it. My second choice would be the original Mad Max. I know it’s not as popular as Road Warrior, but I found it to be so profoundly disturbing and different from the rest of the franchise in a terrific way.
Fury Road will always have an amazing legacy and trying to outdo that won’t get the cast and crew anywhere. Even with some of the personal conflicts happening on set, they managed to achieve something great that will never truly be replicated. Making another Mad Max movie will be an uphill battle for everyone involved, but they can all move on to new projects knowing they participated in something to be proud of.
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Mad Max is an Australian post-apocalyptic franchise created by George Miller and Byron Kennedy. The first three films star Mel Gibson as Max Rockatansky, a former police officer who seeks revenge after his family is murdered. Tom Hardy took over the role for 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road, which was followed by Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga starring Anya Taylor-Joy as Furiosa.
Movie(s) Mad Max , Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior , Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome , Mad Max: Fury Road , Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga , Mad Max: The Wasteland First Film Mad Max Cast Mel Gibson , Joanne Samuel , Hugh Keays-Byrne , Steve Bisley , Tim Burns , Roger Ward , Tom Hardy , Charlize Theron , Nicholas Hoult , Rosie Huntington-Whiteley , Riley Keough , Zoe Kravitz , Abbey Lee , Courtney Eaton , Anya Taylor-Joy , Chris Hemsworth , Tom Burke , Alyla Browne Character(s) Max Rockatansky , Immortan Joe , Furiosa , Rictus Erectus , Angharad , The People Eater , Corpus Colossus , Toecutter , Nux , Dr. Dementus Expand
Source: Forbes