It seems to me that George Miller agrees with the fan belief that the Mad Max films are a series of tales rather than a chronology or anything like that, because there are some huge discontinuities, and I am fairly sure that is intentional. You may dispute this, but you will have to come up with some convoluted explanations for at least some of these points:
Some of the big ones:
- “Shiny” and “chrome” are never said once in Furiosa.
- One of Immortan Joe’s sons is different in each film, although Rictus is in both. There is no mention of a third brother in either film.
- There is a history woman in Fury Road and not a history man
- In Fury Road, the false-nosed man is the head of Gastown and not very interested in helping Immortan Joe even though he does it out of fealty.
- In Fury Road, the titular road is implied to be the road to The Green Place. In Furiosa, it’s the road from The Citadel to Gastown.
- In Fury Road, Max had clearly never seen The Citadel before until he ran out of the cave and saw where he was. In Furiosa, he is within view of it in his Interceptor.
- There’s no suggestion that Gastown and The Bullet Farm had their own horde of drivers in Fury Road.
- Furiosa is told by her mother in Furiosa to use the stars to get back to The Green Place, but in Fury Road, she just goes east. And during the day.
- In Furiosa, the Warboys worship at the pile of steering wheels. In Fury Road, they take the wheels for their cars one by one and choosing which wheel is a ritual thing.
The biggest one, though, is that Furiosa ends where Fury Road begins, at least that’s what the film seems to show, but Gastown and The Bullet Farm are rebuilt and restaffed enough that runs are possible again, and Immortan Joe’s army is much bigger and more powerful.
I’m not complaining at all, I think it’s fascinating. The idea of a film universe as folklore rather than “fact.”
Incidentally, neither film ever explains why Furiosa has an American accent.
Furiosa is told by her mother in Furiosa to use the stars to get back to The Green Place, but in Fury Road, she just goes east. And during the day.
The Sun is a star. Checkmate.
The end scene of Furiosa definitely has a large time jump. There was enough time for a tree to grow over Dementus. Which at a minimum is a few years. I would consider that to be enough time to rebuild gas town and bullet farm. Not to mention the implied time jump based on the her age difference. I think all the other minor discrepancies play into the idea that tales passed down by oral recollection will result in changes. The movie even implied that with the narrator talking about the different version of how people recall Furiosa killing Dementus.
I take all of it to mean that the major plot points are events that happened but the details, actions scenes, etc can be embellishments of each story teller.
She didn’t have to be there for the tree to grow. And we don’t even know if that happened because even the history man said it was just one story.
True she didn’t have to be there but we were shown her picking the first fruit from the tree and then it cuts to the escape with the wives. Regardless of the tree though, the age difference explains the necessary time jump from Furiosa killing/catching Dementus to Furiosa making the Fury Road run.
I mean, going back to Beyond Thunderdome, the whole notion of storytelling and oral tradition was huge.
“CAPTAIN WALKER!!!
MRS. WALKER!!!”Road Warrior was all a retelling by the feral child many years later.
Damn, I never picked that up. Is that in the movie or just the novels?
It’s in the movie. At the very end:
Narrator: And so began the journey north to safety, to our place in the sun. Among us we found a new leader - the man who came from the sky… the Gyro-Captain. And just as Pappagallo had planned, we traveled far beyond the reach of men on machines. The juice, the precious juice, was hidden in the vehicles.
[camera on Feral Kid]
Narrator: As for me, I grew to manhood, and in the fullness of time, I became the leader… the Chief of the Great Northern Tribe.
[camera on Max, pulling away from him]
Narrator: And the Road Warrior? That was the last we ever saw of him. He lives now… only in my memories.
It’s hard to say when my mom bought the VHS. It was in our house since I was too young to remember. I’m sure I watched it 20-30 times. I must have just siloed my brain from seeing anything other than what my kid brain absorbed.
I remember the narration perfectly.
The discontinuity is good, although the major close ties between the movies mean that I hope we never see another movie where the Citadel plays a major role. For as much discontinuity as there was, there was also so much close connection that I don’t want more material to flesh it out, especially if it starts getting out of George Miller’s hands because I don’t trust other writers not to make things more literally and cinematic universe style.
For the folk tale aspect, the ending of Furisoa heavily leans into it with a sort of chose your own adventure ending, and the “true” ending being so absolutely insane that it has to be a folk tale.
I do wish the beginning of Furisoa had played up unreliability of the details regarding the green place, only because what we saw on screen was a bit preposterous if taken totally literally, and would have gone down easier with some vasoline on the storytelling lens.
I am so onboard with them being folklore, especially as “further out” from events we get. I mean, even Fury Road was basically apocalyptic Fantastic Mr. Fox.
OG Mad Max - pretty “accurate” in its telling, pretty directly based in “fact” (in-universe fact), but sets the stage of legend with Max as the one who actively seeks to exact “justice” in a world where justice is fading.
Road Warrior, definitely a little more “legendary,” Max comes out of the wasteland to rescue a settlement in a blaze of glory, and returns to the wasteland from which he emerged.
Beyond Thunderdome, more fantastic with the pig shit factory and the Thunderdome and the gulag and the train and the kids.
Furiosa was also retold by the History Man, but he was pretty old, so he must have retold it not that long after it happened, and he was with Furiosa starting at the point that she was taken by Dementus.
I guess that would make Furiosa possibly more accurate than either Road Warrior or Fury Road. Especially since the History Man isn’t even in Fury Road, which implies it was retold after he died.
Didn’t Plato ascribe some of his own “parables” to Socrates? The story we are told is that “this story was told by the History Man”; perhaps that detail is part of the story?
IIRC, Plato puts almost everything of substance into Socrates’ voice. Similarly, there are multiple versions of Homer, multiple versions of Gilgamesh, even multiple extant texts of Shakespeare, to say nothing of the sources he lifted from shamelessly. Hell, the Christian Bible collects four variations on the life of Jesus, not completely consistent with each other and super different from quite a few narratives that didn’t make the cut when they decided on a single library to collect as “The Bible.”
This is also a very clever meta way for Miller to tell the nerds to calm down. I actually find it really interesting how the people who can create compelling stories are often among the least fixated on telling consistent ones.
