Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is in cinemas now, so it’s a great time to look back and rank the five films in the Mad Max series, from humble and small-budget beginnings on the live roads of regional Australia through to the high-budget spectacles of the most recent entries. George Miller is one of Australia’s most influential directors. Though he has a few family-friendly hits under his resume with Babe and Happy Feet, he’ll always be known for this series of films that introduced Max Rockatansky: Mad Max.

Here’s our ranking for the five Mad Max films. Let us know your rankings of the films in the comments section below.

5.) Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome

It’s the only film in the Max Max anthology that feels like it lost its way. Beyond Thunderdome picks up in all the most uninteresting ways where The Road Warrior left off. Max is basically car-less at the start of the film and soon loses the camels and pseudo-caravan he had to a guy in a plane, being played by the Gyro Captain from The Road Warrior, but he isn’t playing the same character. A decision that has and will always confuse the hell out of me.

The first hour is pretty decent, with the introduction of Tina Turner’s ultra-hammy ‘Autinie’ and everything into the fight in the Thunderdome itself feeling like it’s part of the Max-universe. It’s when the film goes ‘beyond Thunderdome,’ and Max meets up with a group of kids who think he’s a promised saviour that things slow down to a dull beat. And not even the car chase at the end of the film, which feels tame compared to the previous films, can pick back up the pace.

4.) Mad Max

If you’re introduced to the Mad Max films thanks to Fury Roads’ success, the original will be the hardest to watch. It’s an Ozplotation on a cheap budget, and unlike the rest of the films, it’s set before the apocalypse. However, if you’re like me and were shown this film at a young age or were lucky to see it in cinemas, it’s a bonafide classic.

The plot here is thin, but it introduces Max as both a weapon behind the wheel and the last line of defence that the Police call in when in need. With a dwindling Police Force and gangs beginning to roam the roads in greater numbers, it’s quickly becoming a profession that even Max isn’t too interested in pursuing, especially with his wife and young child to think about. 

Things go in the direction you think they do as we see how Max takes on his first animal of the road in the “Toe Cutter,” played by Hugh Keays-Byrne, who years later would return to the franchise as Immortan Joe in Fury Road. 

3.) Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

The latest entry in the Mad Max series of films doesn’t have him in it; instead, it focuses on Furiosa, who was introduced in Fury Road, as played by Charlize Theron. As a follow-up to that film, the action and pacing here may be disappointing for some, but Furiosa is, as the title implies, a saga, and is treated as such as we follow Furiosa from childhood when she’s stolen from her home in ‘The Green Place,’ through to a defining moment for her as a character, and one that would eventually lead into Fury Road. 

Although this film features Immortan Joe and some other characters that are also seen in Fury Road, the addition of Chris Hemsworth’s Dementus as the lead villain adds an extra layer of evil to Furiosas’ origin story. He’s a man who sees himself as some Roman-like leader, leading his horde of bikers through the wasteland, literally by way of a motorcycle chariot himself. It’s off-character casting for Hemsworth, but he does a lot here and joins the pantheon of great villains in the series.

With only thirty lines in the film, Anya Taylor Joy does so much with so little. She is telling her story through rich emotion on her face and through her eyes. And she’s able to add rich backstory to Furiosa in a way that only improves her story in Fury Road.

2.) Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior

Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior launched this series of films to stardom. Following the first film, it gained more fans in Australia but dropped the number and gained American audiences by simply released as The Road Warrior. Taking place an unknown number of years after Mad Max, the film starts as it ends with a massive car chase that sets the tone for not only what you’re about to be in for but also what the world of Mad Max is now like.

Max is now just a wanderer with a dog who fights to survive on the roads of The Wasteland. However, gasoline has become a vast rarity, and when Max spots a drill site and a tanker with an unknown quantity to be gained, he looks to find his way inside and get his hands on some. He’s not the only one, however, as Lord Humungus (Kjell Nilsson in his iconic role) and his party of marauders, alongside one of, if not the greatest, villain sidekick in Wez (Vernon Wells), are camping out and attempting to gain entry to the encampment to get the fuel as well. 

The Road Warrior has some of the most incredible carnage ever captured on film—at least until the next film on the list—and shows what Max Rockatansky is in this new world. He’s just a man trying to survive; the films aren’t about him. He’s a fable; he was just there.

1.) Mad Max Fury Road

There is a massive thirty-year gap between the release of Beyond Thunderdome and Mad Max Fury Road. Even with George Miller attempting to get a new one off the ground in the early 2000s, it seemed like it wasn’t going to happen for so long. And then along came Fury Road, a film that re-invited not only ‘Mad Max’ as a film genre but also the action genre. 

There are multiple stories of people like Tom Hardy who were so confused as to what they were even filming during the making of Mad Max Fury Road. He’d taken the role as Max, replacing Mel Gibson, and assumed there would be a script, but instead, much of the film ended up being storyboards, as it plays out as nearly one continuous chase sequence across The Wasteland. A true sign of Miller’s genius is that he was able to place all this together and knew it would work, in some fashion, during the production of the film.

It’s Charlize Theron’s Furiosa that emerges as the film star, as Max is rightfully pushed to being a guy in the wrong place at the wrong/right time again. Her heroic efforts to save a group of women from Immortan Joe, who uses them simply for breeding, a narrative backing that inserted a strong feminism arc for the film and its characters. 

Fury Road is a film you can never get sick of watching. It’s balls-to-the-wall top action, with more cars and stunts than we’ll likely see in anything else. The soundtrack is stellar, and the pacing of this one chase just somehow works. It’s a perfect action film and one that if you miss in cinemas when you have the chance, you should be mad at yourself.

That’s our official rankings of the Mad Max films as of 2024 following the release of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. Have you watched the new film? What’s your ranking of the five films? Let us know in the comment section below.