Where does Furiosa fit into the Mad Max timeline? George Miller says it doesn’t matter

Continuity in the Mad Max film series 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. Furiosathe latest film in the series at full speed, clarifies nothing, although it does have a specific timeline connection to its predecessor, Mad Max: Fury Road. 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 kind of been rebooted. Furieweg, the fourth installment in the series, was originally planned for production in the ’90s or early 2000s, with Mel Gibson returning to his central role as wandering loner Max. However, after countless delays and countless samples from Mel Gibson being a terrible person in publicthe film got an updated script and a new Max – the much younger Tom Hardy.

With the change in actors and in Max’s apparent age, the series also had to be changed slightly. So Furieweg essentially takes place in an alternate timeline from the original films, with major events taking place at slightly different times. In Furieweg‘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.

This feels especially confusing considering that FuriosaAccording to the film’s first trailer, the film is set 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 to Furieweg, let me give some helpful advice: don’t. It probably doesn’t make sense. In fact the comic books that have been published since then Furieweg tried to fit the timeline back into the original trilogy, but never came close to success.

And you know what? That’s no problem.

Crazy Max director, writer and creator george miller in his infinite wisdom has rightly decided with the release of 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 said, everything that happens to him is just “an episode” in a tumultuous life, with no need for any specific connection. As he said during a press conference Furieweg:

All films do not have a strict chronology. It probably comes after Thunderdome, but it’s an episode from Max’s life and this world. It’s actually an episode, and it’s us revisiting that world. I never wrote the story each of the stories, with a chronological connection.

Furiosa is no different, and that first trailer said 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 how exactly the details fit together. We know this is a prequel because it’s about her childhood and young adulthood; we know it covers 15 years of her life because in the film itself she tells us that 15 years have passed since we first saw her on screen. But in terms of exactly how much time passes between the end of Furiosa and the beginning of Furieweg… Miller isn’t concerned about that, and neither should we be.