ABSTRACT
In Mad Max (1979), set a “few years in the future” on the outskirts of a decaying city, the policeman Max (Mel Gibson) battles biker gangs on Anarchie Road. In Mad Max 2 (1982), which takes place after a devastating oil war, these asphalt roads have been replaced by dirt tracks as Max, now an embittered wanderer, comes unwillingly to the aid of a commune of desert dwellers. In the third film of the trilogy, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985), in which Max helps a group of feral children find their way home, even these dirt roads have disappeared into a trackless landscape of desert dunes, fertile gorges, and post-nuclear dust.
