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scfc68 wrote:Ha ha, yeah, imagine a spin off movie set in England!! M6 motorway, car crahes galore!

Yeah, but there's no guarantee somewhere in England would have evolved around the use of a car as much as an enormous open land like Australia. Europe's so much more built-up with less open roads. For all we know, everyone in Europe died in the nuclear war. Surely the reason Max and everyone else we saw in the movies survived was because they could escape into the wasteland. Sydney didn't look like it had done so well by the end of Thunderdome which always led me to believe nobody was travelling around in the wasteland by choice. It was just a better option to survive than staying in one of the cities, where if you managed to survive the war, you'd have had to compete with other survivors.

I still to this day, don't know if the nuclear war happened before MM2 or after. I know it hadn't happened at all around MM1 and definitely had happened after MM3 but there is such a difference of opinion around MM2. I think I mentioned once before that it didn't help with when Warner Bros released MM2 on VHS back in 1983 in England, the back cover specifically used the word "mutants" so I always assumed post nuclear, although the stock footage used in the montage didn't show any mushroom clouds either. At the risk of reopening old arguments, can anyone categorically confirm the nuclear question re MM2?? Personally for me, I can't quite buy the total breakdown in that film without some sort of catastrophic scenario way bigger than conventional warfare or economic collapse. Also has Fury Road actually been stated as post nuclear, I have heard stuff about climate change and water wars but it looks way beyond that to me. I'm sure there was some talk once about actual mutants in the film, even something about a character with two penises or something?

It's just movies mate, it's not like if it was a real thing, like if we could find clues in the movies that can bring us to reality.
In Mad Max 2, there's no question about any nuclear stuff. Nothing. The world is like in Mad Max 2, but it's in the outback. Roads and signs are still there. The marauders are a little bit extremes than the Toecutter's band, because there was more money in the production. If they had more money for the first one, it would not be the same movie at all.
Anyway, the first time we hear about nuclear issues, it's in the third movie.
After, something is sure, for a lot of people, Mad Max 2 is set in a post apocalyptic world. Why ? Because most of people, in the world, cannot see a difference between the australian outback and a post nuke landscape... Maybe also because in 1982, nuke was an issue in the air. People were talking about it, feared it. So it was like logic to imagine that Mad Max 2 was set in a post nuke world. But if you look at the movie, there's nothing to say so.

scfc68 wrote:I still to this day, don't know if the nuclear war happened before MM2 or after. I know it hadn't happened at all around MM1 and definitely had happened after MM3 but there is such a difference of opinion around MM2. I think I mentioned once before that it didn't help with when Warner Bros released MM2 on VHS back in 1983 in England, the back cover specifically used the word "mutants" so I always assumed post nuclear, although the stock footage used in the montage didn't show any mushroom clouds either. At the risk of reopening old arguments, can anyone categorically confirm the nuclear question re MM2?? Personally for me, I can't quite buy the total breakdown in that film without some sort of catastrophic scenario way bigger than conventional warfare or economic collapse. Also has Fury Road actually been stated as post nuclear, I have heard stuff about climate change and water wars but it looks way beyond that to me. I'm sure there was some talk once about actual mutants in the film, even something about a character with two penises or something?

After MM2. I've posted it here before, but here's concrete evidence from an interview with Miller circa 1984:

That's good enough for me, mate! Straight from the director's mouth!! So basically, the cities like Sydney would have still been intact around MM2 although maybe damaged from conventional bombing. Of course, it's not explicitly stated Australia's role in the global conflict pre MM2, were they actually involved in the fighting? Was the collapse purely a result of economic factors created by conflict abroad involving other nations? Was Australia itself hit in a military sense before MM2? It's all fun to debate! Does Australia have a nuclear capability nowadays and if so, did it have this back when Miller made the movies - if not, it would make you wonder just why Sydney would have been targeted in a nuclear strike pre MM3 as it would have no justification.

It's strange to envisage mad max 1 with a bigger budget, I'm glad he didn't have that or else we would have gone straight into MM2 mode with little backstory. MM2 is the film it is because of MM1 in a fashion and vice versa.

scfc68 wrote:That's good enough for me, mate! Straight from the director's mouth!! So basically, the cities like Sydney would have still been intact around MM2 although maybe damaged from conventional bombing.

It's not working like this... It's not a nuclear world in Mad Max 2. But it's a nuclear world in the third. There's no point to imagine there's a real story behind the Mad Max trilogy... After you can imagine fan stories to fill the gaps, the holes, but it's just for fun... Because the authors of the movies didn't think about this in that way.

seriz wrote: There's no point to imagine there's a real story behind the Mad Max trilogy... After you can imagine fan stories to fill the gaps, the holes, but it's just for fun... Because the authors of the movies didn't think about this in that way.

There is some rhyme and reason to the timeline of the original trilogy but but the movies themselves are very vague when it comes to this, you gotta dig deep to find out and it's best to avoid fanfiction, I don't even care for novelizations. It's best to go straight to the source, early script drafts, production notes, interviews with the director etc to piece it all together, but like you said - even Miller admits it's all kind of vague and rudimentary and a lot of things change depending on wether it's Monday or Thursday for Miller (like when he was saying MM2 takes place 2-3 years after MM and just lately it turned into 15 so ... who knows). Ultimately it is a campfire story which is cool, lets Miller play around as he wishes, but at the same time I hate it for that because I'd really love to find out to the exact detail what went on in that universe he created:)

In all fairness Miller's saying he didn't even realise a lot of the absolutely obvious parallels in FR until they shot it. That's years of storyboarding, shopping around, casting, funding, pre-production, stunt choreography, shooting scripts, and much more before he recognised familiarities in his own freaking movies.

That gives some scope into the amount of f**ks Miller gives about timeline integrity.

And let's not forget that there are teams of people who have contributed to the production, just dozens and dozens in each department. It's entirely possible for a costume designer or art department member to slip in all sorts of homages with no firm basis in the movie's universe.

It all goes to show, just how precious it is to us as fans, possibly more so than even George!

It's a bit like Disney have basically eradicated all the previous Star Wars Expanded Universe novels as non canonical now they have control. That's a lot of investment from the fans basically gone up in smoke , although just like us, some will never relinquish their attachment to those stories.

MWFV8 wrote: That gives some scope into the amount of f**ks Miller gives about timeline integrity.

Ain't that the truth.