Film

Mad Max 2

The sequel that invented the modern chase movie: Max as reluctant knight-errant, drifting through a scorched Outback where petrol is currency and death wears leather. Miller strips the story to its skeleton and lets vehicular carnage do the talking — gyrocopters, war rigs, feral gangs, one unbroken forty-minute pursuit. Lean, mean, gloriously silly and deadly serious at once. Essential for anyone who likes action with the fat cut off.

TMDb rating3.7

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love lean, muscular action built on pure momentum, where the chases do the talking and a wasteland feels lived-in rather than decorated, much like the sand-scoured grit of a Western turned up to full throttle.

Skip it if you want psychological depth or sustained dialogue scenes, since the film spends most of its running time in motion and speaks mostly through engines, stunts and grim, sparse exchanges.

What it asks of you: Under ninety-seven minutes, it moves fast and rarely stops to explain itself, so you need to keep up with visual storytelling and accept a bleak, sun-bleached world without much relief.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Mad Max: Fury Road2015

Miller returns three decades later and somehow builds something even more feral — a nearly wordless two-hour chase that reinvents action cinema's vocabulary and gives Max a genuine equal in Furiosa.

But If the original's plotlessness maddened you, this doubles down — even less dialogue, even more relentless velocity.

Mad Max: Fury Road poster

Escape from New York1981

Carpenter's grimy dystopian thriller shares the same DNA: a scarred loner threading through a lawless wasteland of scavengers and warlords, all synth score and squinting cool.

But Snake Plissken's prison-island premise is more contained and talkier than Max's open-road carnage.

Escape from New York poster

Waterworld1995

Take the exact structure — drifter, tribe, precious fuel, masked warlord — and drown it. Kevin Costner's much-mocked flop is genuinely fun trashy spectacle with real stunts and real scale.

But The reputation for bloated excess is earned; it's slower and far less disciplined than anything Miller made.

Waterworld poster

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Mad Max 2

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Yojimbo1961

Both films run on the identical skeleton: a drifter with nothing at stake wanders into a place torn between two warring factions, and his choice of side decides who lives. Kurosawa's influence on Miller is a matter of record, not coincidence.

Toshiro Mifune's scratching, scarred, morally ambiguous samurai is Max's spiritual grandfather — the same lone-wanderer-arrives-in-a-turf-war structure, playing out with swords instead of superchargers, and just as cool.

But Black and white, subtitled, and paced like a stage play compared to the highway chases you're craving.

Yojimbo poster
More like this (8)

Doomsday2008

Neil Marshall's shameless, gore-soaked tribute practically remakes Mad Max 2 scene for scene, quarantined Scotland standing in for the Outback, punk warlords and all.

But It knows exactly what it's ripping off and doesn't try to hide it — homage over originality.

Doomsday poster

The Book of Eli2010

A lone wanderer, a scorched America, a thing worth killing for — this one swaps petrol for something more sacred and slows the pace for atmosphere and menace.

But More meditative and religious than Max's engine-revving fury; patience required.

The Book of Eli poster

A Boy and His Dog1975

An earlier, stranger post-apocalypse — a scavenger and his telepathic dog wander a wasteland riddled with dark satire. Weirder and nastier than anything mainstream made today.

But Deeply dated effects and a tone so cynical it can curdle into outright misanthropy.

A Boy and His Dog poster

Tank Girl1995

A punk, comic-book-bright riff on the same drought-stricken wasteland — water is currency, gangs run wild, but the tone is anarchic comedy rather than dread.

But Deliberately garish and silly; if you want Max's grim menace, this cheerful chaos will grate.

Tank Girl poster

The Postman1997

Kevin Costner again, wandering another American wasteland, this time restoring civilization one letter at a time — earnest where Max is nihilistic.

But Famously maligned for its length and self-seriousness; the mail-carrier premise strains belief.

The Postman poster

Death Race 20001975

Corman's cheap, gleeful satire imagines cross-country racing where running over pedestrians scores points — the vehicular mayhem Miller would later perfect, played entirely for camp.

But Threadbare budget and blunt satire; more grindhouse curiosity than polished thriller.

Death Race 2000 poster

Fist of the North Star1986

This gonzo anime openly cannibalized Mad Max's post-apocalyptic biker-gang look and pushed it into ultraviolent, hyperbolic spectacle — the same wasteland iconography filtered through manga excess.

Watch the exact silhouette of Mad Max's world — leather, spikes, marauding bike gangs — reborn as unhinged Japanese anime where a single punch makes a man's head explode. It's the wasteland aesthetic on steroids.

But Rough animation by modern standards and gore that's cartoonishly extreme — a big tonal leap from Miller's grounded stunt work.

Fist of the North Star poster

Threads1984

Same premise, opposite register: where Miller turns civilizational collapse into a playground for heroics and spectacle, Threads insists on showing you the actual, agonizing texture of that collapse — no leather, no engines, just consequences.

If Mad Max 2 makes the apocalypse look like a rollicking adventure, this unbearably grim BBC docudrama shows what a nuclear war and its aftermath would actually look like — bureaucratic, slow, and without a single hero.

But This isn't entertainment in any conventional sense — it's one of the bleakest, most upsetting things ever broadcast on television.

Threads poster

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Mad Max: Fury Road, Escape from New York, Knightriders, Commando, The Book of Eli, The Warriors, Mad Max, Vanishing Point, Turkey Shoot, Fist of the North Star, Doomsday, A Boy and His Dog, Tank Girl, The Postman, Landspeed presents: CKY, Panic in Year Zero!, Hobo with a Shotgun, Initial D, Six-String Samurai, The Doom Generation, Damnation Alley, האושפיזין, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, Master of the Flying Guillotine, Fast & Furious 6, Twilight of the Dogs, Motorway, Hell's Belles, The Expendables 2, Eastern Condors, DEFCON-4, El Mariachi, Resident Evil: Extinction, Forced Vengeance, Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn, Bulletproof, The Defiler, The Last Battle, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Drone, The Masked Marvel, In the Aftermath, The New Barbarians, The Blood of Heroes, White Fire, Cyber Ninja, The Roller Blade Seven, Captive Women, Solarbabies, The Chase, Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone, The Super Inframan, Powell Peralta: The Search for Animal Chin, Future Primitive, Steel Dawn, 2019: After the Fall of New York, Ravagers, Stryker, Exterminators of the Year 3000, Battletruck, Circuitry Man, Radioactive Dreams, 1990: The Bronx Warriors, Escape from the Bronx