Mad Max (franchise) Mad Max (franchise) Mad Max is an Australian dystopian action media franchise created by George Miller and Byron Kennedy. It began in 1979 with "Mad Max", and was followed by three films: "Mad Max 2" (1981), "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" (1985) and "" (2015). Mel Gibson starred in the first three films and Tom Hardy took over as Max in the fourth film. The series follows the adventures of Max Rockatansky, a police officer in a future Australia which is experiencing societal collapse due to war and critical resource shortages. When his wife and child are murdered by a vicious
Mad Max 2 Max sequel should be: bigger, faster, louder, but definitely not dumber." Film critic Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four, praised its "skillful filmmaking," and called it "a film of pure action, of kinetic energy", which is "one of the most relentlessly aggressive movies ever made". While Ebert pointed out that the film does not develop its "vision of a violent future world ... with characters and dialogue", and uses only the "barest possible bones of a plot", he praised its action sequences. Ebert called the climactic chase sequence "unbelievably well-sustained" and states