Mad Max prequel Furiosa can fully lean into the franchise's weird timeline, continuing the series' trend and improving the movie as a result. Mad Max has always played fast and loose with canon. The character's original appearances all take place in wildly different settings and incorporate a range of different characters and story elements. While 2015's Mad Max: Fury Road was perhaps more tonally similar to some of its forebears than other sequels had been, a consistent thread throughout the saga is its continually shifting lore. Thanks to its setup, this is something Furiosa can effectively continue.
Each Mad Max movie fills in more information about the franchise's universe – albeit in an occasionally contradictory fashion. The original Mad Max, for example, was far less explicitly dystopian than its sequels, taking place in a near-future Australia that many viewers would recognize. Things changed dramatically in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, with the collapse of society evident. While this chronology was fairly simple to follow, things were complicated further with the Fury Road sequel/reboot, which raised questions over whether Tom Hardy's Max was even the same character as Gibson's. Consequently, the Fury Road timeline has already rewritten the franchise's lore – something that Furiosa can embrace to its benefit.
Mad Max's Timeline Is Already A Mess
Although Mel Gibson was a constant presence in the original Mad Max trilogy, the apparent changes to his character made for some major inconsistencies in the series' timeline. Much like Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name in the iconic Dollars trilogy, Max Rockatansky could just as easily be three different people as he could the same character changed and shaped by the events of previous movies. Things become even more complicated by Fury Road, with the movie not only featuring a recast protagonist, but also using a previous villain actor to play the movie's big bad Immortan Joe. While it's tempting to view Fury Road as a total reset, the crossovers and shared story beats are too numerous to be mere coincidence.
In producing a sequel to this slightly convoluted offshoot of the original timeline, Furiosa can truly embrace Mad Max's nonsensical story. Given how fast and loose the previous films have been in ensuring that characters continue a clear developmental journey from one film to the next, the movie doesn't even have to clearly lead into Fury Road. Perhaps aptly for a franchise with "Mad" in the title, the series' greatest strength is the liberty each individual entry has to tell its own story. In confirming that the Mad Max timeline doesn't really make sense, Furiosa actually has total creative freedom – perhaps becoming a stronger story as a result.
How Furiosa Can Benefit From Mad Max's Canon
While Mad Max's lax attitude to canon is liberating, there are ways that Furiosa can also benefit from the wider universe that George Miller has created. For instance, while every Mad Max movie has done a great job of revealing the world post-"fall", the actual events of the apocalypse are yet to be fully realized. Furiosa could be the first movie to explain how the world of Fury Road really came to be, properly exploring the madness that defines the series.
The film can also explain more about the characters and society seen in Fury Road. While the 2015 movie did an admirable job of world-building, questions remain about the rise of Immortan Joe and the nature of his post-apocalyptic society. In much the same way that Fury Road used subtle exposition to flesh out its desert world, Furiosa can add greater detail to the franchise without becoming bogged down in lore. While Furiosa shouldn't feel compelled to tell a story that perfectly overlaps with Fury Road, it can still add greater depth to the wider Mad Max canon.
