Taipan wrote:
Depends on how you define the 'apocalypse'. To me the first 2 movies took place during a major energy crisis and we're there to witness the disintegration of society. The actual event you might call 'the apocalypse' were the nukes that dropped shortly after the Road Warrior. I'm not entirely sure how Fury Road and Water Wars fit into this though.
I absolutely agree with you that Miller purposefully wants those movies to be mythological and vague, but ironically he's got extensive backstories for everything, including weapons and cars. It's a brilliant way of creating a fully formed universe within a film and keep people invested, those who try to figure it all out.
I think I'm looking at it more or less like this:
Pre-Apocalyptic: Everything's more or less normal. There's war/drought/famine and other horrible things, but nothing that actually threatens the entire world.
Apocalyptic: The span of time directly leading up to and including the collapse of society/civilization. In the case of Mad Max I think you could look at that span of time as (approximately) starting with "the two mighty warrior tribes" going to war. I think that could be considered the beginning of the end, and the opening narration of MM2/The Road Warrior seems to set that conflict as occurring before (or possibly during?) the first movie.
Post-Apocalyptic: Simply put, events that occur after the fall of society/civilization. Thunderdome and Fury Road certainly fit that description. I think there's an argument that RW could fall into that category as well. Just how far HAS society fallen by that point? How much of what we're seeing is just the craziness of The Wasteland? There's a chance the comics could shed some light on that, if the Max related issues actually go into his background at all.
As psuedo-exhausting and debate-inciting as it seems to be these days, trying to "figure it all out" is still pretty fun. I simply can't believe that Max has been given new life like this.
