It doesn’t matter when Furiosa takes place in the Mad Max timeline

Mad Max's continuity is quite confusing. It may be hard to believe, but the 40-year-old franchise, spawned from a small-budget Australian film about robbers in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, doesn't actually have the most coherent timeline. And with the release of the first trailer for Furiosa, the latest film in the series, things got even more complicated. But we will do our best to help you understand it.

The first important thing to remember The Mad Max timeline is that it's been a bit of a reboot. To see, Mad Max: Fury Road, the fourth installment in the series, was originally set to be released in the '90s or early 2000s with Mel Gibson returning as Max. However, after numerous delays and countless instances of Mel Gibson being a terrible person in public, the film got an updated script and a new Max – the much younger Tom Hardy.

With the change of actors and Max's age, the series also had to be changed slightly. As such, Furieweg essentially takes place in an alternate timeline from the original films. Important events occur at slightly different times. In FuriewegAccording to humanity's timeline, the nuclear annihilation of large portions of humanity occurred between the events of Crazy Max And The road warriorinstead of after The road warrior, as they do in the original trilogy.

All of this makes it especially confusing as the trailer before Furiosa tells us that the events of the film take place 45 years after the 'collapse'. Technically, this means the film is probably set a little less than 45 years after the events of… The road warrior. This doesn't make much sense when you compare it to the events of Furiewegespecially if it's the same Max character.

Image: Warner Bros.

But if you try to compare that math to the events of the original Mad Max trilogy or… Furieweg, let me give some helpful advice: don't do that. It probably doesn't make any sense. In fact, the comic books released since Fury Road have been trying to fit their timeline back into the original trilogy for years, and have never come close to success.

And you know what? That's no problem.

Mad Max director, writer and creator George Miller, in his infinite wisdom, has rightly decided to release Furieweg that maybe Max is an idea bigger than minor grievances like canon and continuity. Max is a myth and a legend, and as Miller himself would have said, he functions best as a campfire legend. And Furiosa is no different. The trailer says so much in the first few seconds. This is her Odyssey. She is destined to become a myth, and myths are too important to worry about whether or not the details are correct.