MovieChat Forums > Mad Max 2 (1982) Discussion > Doesn't look like the same world with or...

Doesn't look like the same world with original anymore


I remember in the first film, things were still semi civilized. Max even began as a cop, there are vacation spots, men earning their living in an honest way.

But in this sequel there's nothing anymore, a desolate completely devoid of any reason. Did they explain why the change of scenery? Did Max come to scavenge on a different place?

For the record, though, I prefer the second setting.

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Society is unraveling in the first movie. Law and order are eroding and, by the end, nowhere is safe, including the vacation spots. And as for men earning an honest living, take how Max ends up. His story is sort of a microcosm of what's happening to the whole world.

By the time of the second movie, society has completely unraveled. As the prologue explains, the "world crumbled...the gangs took over the highways... and in this maelstrom of decay, ordinary men were battered and smashed. Men like Max."

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Basically, it's like the United States right now. :(

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Basically, it's like the United States five years from now. :(

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Except I doubt many of the cops would stick around to try and protect people like Max did, or tried to do.

And if that happens large amounts of the police and military will likely become the most dominant gangs having the experience and more than enough equipment at this point.

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[deleted]

Basically you are both drama queens.

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Basically, orbit991 is f'ing right.

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That's right, in the prologue it's explained by the narrator that the world has changed since the first movie... things have gotten worse.

Road Warrior is my favorite Mad Max movie!

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It's a retcon, which George Miller did with all three movies.

Take the first movie on it's own terms and it is just set in a near lawless, near future.

In this movie, Miller uses narration to explain that World War 3 broke out before the first movie and that's why there is anarchy. It's just a retcon. But by the look of Max it's obviously a while after the first movie's events so things are even worse.


My life fades... the vision dims... all that remains are memories

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[deleted]

It's a retcon, which George Miller did with all three movies.

Take the first movie on it's own terms and it is just set in a near lawless, near future.

In this movie, Miller uses narration to explain that World War 3 broke out before the first movie and that's why there is anarchy. It's just a retcon. But by the look of Max it's obviously a while after the first movie's events so things are even worse.

This, for sure, although the Mad Max 2 story-documents written by Miller, Terry Hayes, and Brian Hannant during that film's pre-production place the outbreak of World War III just a few months after Max kills Toecutter's gang and heads into the Outback. But society was definitely breaking down prior that event, as you point out. Each subsequent film basically retconned the one before it, in various storyline-respects.

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The differences reflect the fears of the different decades in which they were made. During the 70s Australia saw a fuel shortage (part of the world-crisis), with people queuing at fuel pumps trying to get petrol, and a general rise in anarchy of the time. In the 80s, there was a LOT of scaremongering of a nuclear holocaust (which thankfully hasn't happened) that seemed almost inevitable.

It’s ridiculous to critique a movie with the argument 'it's not real, so it doesn't matter'

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[deleted]

That slimy lawyer in the first movie was a joke, what incentive did the cops have to enforce any of that *beep* It's not like there was internal affairs anymore, they should have shot the young bloke AND the lawyer.

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What incentive..? They're cops! They're paid to uphold the law! If they aren't doing that, what are they doing..?


"A little nonsense now and then
Is relished by the wisest men."

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I never really considered things to have changed that much societally or culturally between the two movies, more location.

I thought that because Max had gone rogue, rather than face prosecution for his 'crimes', he had simply gone to the lawless zones of the country where marauding gangs held sway and there were still isolated groups of civilised people who may have been earning a living extracting the meagre remaining resources and had become isolated by said gangs.

I imagined that there were still (basically) civilised areas all over the country, like where Max had come from (although always slowly being eroded as in the first movie), and where the oil workers and their families were intending to go when they escaped the 'wasteland'.

As for a nuclear war, always pictured that as having happened between 2 and the disappointing 3, when the superpowers got really mental over whatever resources remained.

...then whoa, differences...

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[deleted]

They kinda touch on it in the beginning. Max went into the wasteland, and at the same time, the world blew itself apart.
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It's not the same world. In the first movie, it was per-apocalypse. Resources were running out and society was on the verge of collapsing, but it hadn't yet. In the second movie, the government is gone. Society was we know it is gone.

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[deleted]