How do the Mel Gibson and Tom Hardy chapters in the Mad Max franchise connect? Hardy's portrayal of the title character in 2015's Mad Max: Fury Road is a world removed from the Gibson's in the original Mad Max trilogy, while even Gibson's films each carry their own unique feel. However, this is only to be expected from the semi-serialized style that director and co-writer George Miller adopted for the series.
The Mad Max movie franchise helped set the template for the modern post-apocalyptic genre, yet 1979's Mad Max notably stands out from the rest with its presentation of a world descending into anarchy, but not fully over the edge yet. Miller's follow-up The Road Warrior shows the world after a complete societal collapse has already taken place and gasoline has become a commodity to kill for. By Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, the world has moved into a loose tribalism, with Tina Turner's Aunty Entity being one of the leaders to rise from the ashes of the old world.
Mad Max: Why The Original Movie Is So Different To Fury Road
Looking at the first three films together, the original Mad Max is probably best viewed as a snapshot of the civilized world on its last legs before its collapse. Meanwhile, The Road Warrior, Beyond Thunderdome, and Fury Road are all set in the world after society's downfall has happened. Of course, this still leaves the question of the continuity of Hardy's version of Mad Max with Gibson's - or, depending on how one looks at it, lack thereof.
George Miller never definitively positioned Fury Road as a either a direct sequel to or reboot of the first three movies, and even among the original trilogy, continuity is more of an afterthought aside from black & white flashbacks to events in Mad Max seen in the opening of The Road Warrior. As the series progressed beyond the first installment, Miller's attention would move towards Mad Max as a legendary figure in a world that's fallen apart. With Miller's approach to the Mad Max series being more in the realm of a myth, it was simply inevitable that Hardy's portrayal of Max would stand apart from Gibson's, as well as Gibson's own Max feeling unique from movie to movie.
Following the release of Fury Road, a fan theory would also emerge that Hardy was actually playing an adult version of the Feral Kid from The Road Warrior, having taken on the identity of his childhood hero. Miller has said that this idea wasn't in his own train of thought. However, regardless of there being any veracity to it, the fact that such a fan theory could arise just solidifies the point that the series has always been about the idea of Mad Max more so than the man himself.
The portrayals of Max by Gibson and Hardy are only tangentially the same character because George Miller sees him as more of a concept. From one Mad Max film to the next, Max is a stoic wanderer who sees an injustice being wrought, lends a hand to those in harm's way, and then heads off on his own once more. With that kind of storytelling style, there may not even be that much of a direct relationship between Fury Road and Hardy's own future in the role, because that's not ultimately what the franchise is about. The Mad Max series is not profoundly concerned with carrying over the DNA of each movie because, in the mind of George Miller, the franchise has always been post-apocalyptic folkore.
