What Caused Earth to Become a Wasteland?
The voiceovers in the trailers for
Fury Road actually give a more explicit description of what happened to Earth than any of the previous Max movies ever did. Max says his world is "fire and blood" and a newscaster's voice mentions "the water wars."
In the original
Mad Max, the setting doesn't look like our elaborate dystopias of today with everyone wearing tattered yet fashionable knits and dictators living in luxury amidst the general squalor. It's mostly like the Wild West reborn in Australia. Lawmen play judge, jury, and executioner, and small-town folk keep to themselves, trying to get by while defending against invading gangs (just replace men on horseback with men on motor bikes). Infrastructure is crumbling and some sort of energy crisis has forced everyone into a competition for resources, hence all the raiding parties. But people still wear proper clothes and can go home and wash their hands, so it hasn't all gone to hell just yet.
By
Road Warrior, five years after the events of the first movie, everything has gotten considerably worse. Towns have disappeared and society consists of isolated collectives scrounging for fuel and water. Humanity has divided into three types of people: marauders, people living in small groups just trying to get by, and solo wanderers like Max. There are no more bars or ice cream shops like in Mad Max, and the clothing, cars, and homes all look like they've been salvaged from some sort of wreckage. If humanity is to carry on, we seem to have lost all hope of looking like the first world ever again.
Bookmarks