Quintessential apocalypse. George Miller's Mad Max series is brilliantly mad-cap, practical effects-heavy, and deliciously ugly. It's also one of the few series out there not to take a misstep with four films to its name.
The original Mad Max is a bleak, thoroughly '70s affair that lacks the fun-factor of its successors, but it's no less compelling; Mad Max 2 is essentially Wacky Races but if Peter Perfect wielded a coach gun and Dick Dastardly was machine gunning Professor Pat Pending, while the third entry, Beyond Thunderdome, cemented the overall vibe and aesthetic of Miller's Australian wasteland.
The Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron-fronted Mad Max: Fury Road took the lessons imparted by all three to deliver one of the greatest action films of all time, and with Miller currently developing a prequel that will expand the origins of Furiosa, the good money is on the series continuing its winning streak.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
