10 Movie Sequels That Were Way Better Than They Had Any Right To Be

After decades spent directing children's films about talking animals, director Geroge Miller was set to return to his Mad Max universe in a most unconventional way.

First off, rather than keeping Mel Gibson in the role, he was completely recasting it. Then, instead of writing a script for the film, Miller prepped for the shoot by collaborating with storyboard artists to fully storyboard the film. And as if this didn't already sound worrisome enough, reports from the set began to leak out suggesting that the shoot was going off the rails.

It sounded like a surefire recipe for disaster. And then Fury Road was released on the world.

Somehow, Miller had managed to not only top himself in terms of action, delivering some of the most death-defying stuntwork ever committed to film. He had also crafted a film that was substantially stronger than even the series' previous high-water mark, The Road Warrior.

Tom Hardy delivered a stellar performance as Max, but the real star of the show was Charlize Theron as the eternally bad-ass Furiosa.

Mad Max: Fury Road was widely considered a pre-ordained disaster before it ever premiered. So to find out that, in actuality, it was one of the greatest action films ever made, it felt too good to be true.