Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is a very different film to Mad Max: Fury Road. The latter was told over a matter of hours, maybe days, 85% of it an ultra-violent and explosive car chase. Furiosa is a film told over decades – detailing Furiosa’s life from when she was captured as a child to moments before Fury Road starts. The use of the word “saga” in the title is very telling as that is what the film is, whereas Fury Road is a frantic glimpse at that world. So where does the world of Mad Max go from here?

Looking at the original Mad Max trilogy we have three very different films. In Mad Max, some semblance of order remains with Max trying to maintain that, in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior roving bands of psychotic raiders control the world and Max is trying to survive and help a community threatened by these raiders. And in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome the weirdness is turned up to 11 and we have Tina Turner and Max becoming embroiled in the politics of survivor communities. Fury Road switched things up with Max hardly being the protagonist at all and a new feel to this world. Furiosa explored more of the locations of this world, in Fury Road we saw the Citadel, in Furiosa we The Green Place, Bullet Farm and Gas Town. There are all major locations that we get to explore. Going forward it’s likely we’ll see more places, a more fleshed-out world, assuming the original trilogy is canon we know there are more locations. And with more places will come more conflict. Perhaps the Mad Max saga will turn into films about the wars between these different places in the struggle for control of diminishing resources.

The obvious choice for the next film would be to carry on Furiosa’s story. Fury Road ends with Furiosa back at the Citadel seemingly poised to become its leader with Max purposefully leaving. This might be as close to a happily-ever-after as you’re going to get in this world and to have another film follow Furiosa will mean that something goes wrong. The Citadel was built on an odd quasi-religion built around Immortan Joe and what will those people who worshipped him do now? Will they be angry with Furiosa? Will Immortan Joe’s death prove he was a fraud but they simply turn their blind devotion to Furiosa? What of Immortan Joe’s “wives” and the women from the Green Place Furiosa brought back? All will have opinions on what should happen next.

As already stated, Fury Road and Furiosa are very different movies and it is certainly possible to take on different kinds of stories. Could there be a Suicide Squad ensemble cast of wasteland survivors (although the bizarre and dire-looking Borderlands may have gotten there first)? The Max Max saga is constantly pushing the line between dark and ridiculous, in Beyond Thunderdome clearly the needle had been pushed towards ridiculous but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

It wouldn’t be unusual for George Miller to simply forget about all of these characters and places and simply follow wherever Max goes next. The original trilogy dotted about the wasteland, never explaining what had happened since the end of the last film to bring Max to his new location. If the next film would put the focus back on Max it will be interesting to see what new locations Miller comes up with in this post-apocalyptic world.

Of course, the terrifying answer to what George Miller might do next might be what he has done before after Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome…namely, co-write Babe and then direct Babe 2: Pig In The City. Surely this is a horror far greater than any post-apocalyptic wasteland?

Also Read: The Enduring Appeal of Post-Apocalyptic Movies

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It’s Not The End Of The World Is It?

In the same way, sci-fi uses the future to talk about the present post-apocalyptic films can show us what our societal anxieties and fears are, and not just in terms of the end of the world. Night of the Living Dead demonstrates the societal problems in America in terms of race, Dawn of the Dead is about consumerism as the ultimate hideout is the mall – which the zombies are drawn back to, and Day of the Dead deals with power and authority. The pre-apocalypse film Dr. Strangelove focuses in on perhaps the major fear of the time – nuclear annihilation – and that through a mixture of incompetence and mistrust, those in power would destroy the world. Dr Strangelove also gave us one of the key lines of post-apocalyptic movies, that those who survive the end of the world would “envy the dead.” The recent asteroid apocalypse movie Don’t Look Up I found genuinely unsettling despite it ostensibly being a comedy, the parallel to climate change was intentionally obvious and chilling.

Reduced To One Instinct: Survive

Some post-apocalyptic movies have been cultural touchstones about how we see the potential end of the world. The Mad Max films show a brutal world, with many people reverting to outright savagery, as fights over basic resources become all-consuming. The post-apocalyptic eccentrically dressed road barbarian has become a staple of the genre and gives a clear idea that the future will be a constant struggle. Classic British horror films 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later show perhaps not a post-apocalyptic world then certainly a post-apocalyptic UK. The handful of survivors struggle against the infected “zombies”, with creepily empty London streets serving as a backdrop for the start of the film. A feature of both films is that it’s perhaps not best to put all your faith in the military; who might have different priorities than your survival. Perhaps the bleakest film ever made is The Road, a post-apocalyptic film where you know there is zero chance of surviving. In the world of The Road it seems that every plant and animal (except humans) has died, those who are still alive survive by scavenging or resorting to truly desperate means. While the film follows a father and son it is hard to escape the conclusion that without animals or plants, there is no future. In The Road the father has a gun with two bullets, specifically held back in case they need to shoot themselves, which is about as bleak as it gets.

It’s In Your Nature To Destroy Yourselves

The Matrix was a post-apocalyptic movie where humans were kept in a simulated reality by machines, the machines putting them at the supposed height of human civilisation, in the late 1990s. Certainly, the 90s felt like a time of progress, opportunity and relative peace (at least for those in the richest countries), the Cold War was over and the threat of nuclear Armageddon receded. Since then there have been decades-long wars, pandemics, increasing evidence of a coming climate catastrophe, the AI singularity grows ever nearer and even nuclear war seems to be back on the table. So how do you make these sorts of films when people are worried about the genuine end of the world? Well, at least since the 1950s that’s the reality people have lived with, there have been genuine moments when the world was on the brink of nuclear war and somehow pulled back and people still made post-apocalyptic thrillers and comedies about this very idea. Dr Strangelove was released in 1964, two years after the Cuban Missile Crisis when everyone was terrifyingly aware of just how close to the end we had come. Evidently, there is some enjoyment to be had in watching the end of the world.

Also Read: What Does Black Mirror Still Have to Say In Season 6?

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