10 Utterly Bleak Post Apocalyptic Movie Worlds

10. Mad Max

George Miller's gas-guzzling Ozploitation dystopian series remains for many the template for a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Its vision of civilisation collapsed into a survival-of-the-fittest scrap between savage gangs fighting over scant resources has been relocated to a flooded globe (Waterworld) or to just north of the border (Doomsday). But Max's wasteland remains the one to beat.

Really, though, the original Mad Max was less of a post-apocalyptic movie than one about a world teetering on the brink. It wasn't until sequel The Road Warrior that the full apocalyptic badlands were introduced.

In fact, if you take the four-movie series as being a single ongoing narrative then society descends absurdly rapidly within a generation from a place with some semblance of traditional law and order into a barren desert where engine worshipping cultists and mutants hoard the last of all the water.

Perhaps, then, it's better to view the Mad Max series as a set of different riffs on post-apocalypse petrol heads than a coherent extended mythology. Whether it's The Road Warrior or Fury Road, though, Miller's post-apocalyptic nightmare imagination is one that has connected with film fans across the generations.