It seems to me that George Miller agrees with the fan belief that the Mad Max films are a series of tales rather than a chronology or anything like that, because there are some huge discontinuities, and I am fairly sure that is intentional. You may dispute this, but you will have to come up with some convoluted explanations for at least some of these points:
Some of the big ones:
- “Shiny” and “chrome” are never said once in Furiosa.
- One of Immortan Joe’s sons is different in each film, although Rictus is in both. There is no mention of a third brother in either film.
- There is a history woman in Fury Road and not a history man
- In Fury Road, the false-nosed man is the head of Gastown and not very interested in helping Immortan Joe even though he does it out of fealty.
- In Fury Road, the titular road is implied to be the road to The Green Place. In Furiosa, it’s the road from The Citadel to Gastown.
- In Fury Road, Max had clearly never seen The Citadel before until he ran out of the cave and saw where he was. In Furiosa, he is within view of it in his Interceptor.
- There’s no suggestion that Gastown and The Bullet Farm had their own horde of drivers in Fury Road.
- Furiosa is told by her mother in Furiosa to use the stars to get back to The Green Place, but in Fury Road, she just goes east. And during the day.
- In Furiosa, the Warboys worship at the pile of steering wheels. In Fury Road, they take the wheels for their cars one by one and choosing which wheel is a ritual thing.
The biggest one, though, is that Furiosa ends where Fury Road begins, at least that’s what the film seems to show, but Gastown and The Bullet Farm are rebuilt and restaffed enough that runs are possible again, and Immortan Joe’s army is much bigger and more powerful.
I’m not complaining at all, I think it’s fascinating. The idea of a film universe as folklore rather than “fact.”
Incidentally, neither film ever explains why Furiosa has an American accent.
I am so onboard with them being folklore, especially as “further out” from events we get. I mean, even Fury Road was basically apocalyptic Fantastic Mr. Fox.
OG Mad Max - pretty “accurate” in its telling, pretty directly based in “fact” (in-universe fact), but sets the stage of legend with Max as the one who actively seeks to exact “justice” in a world where justice is fading.
Road Warrior, definitely a little more “legendary,” Max comes out of the wasteland to rescue a settlement in a blaze of glory, and returns to the wasteland from which he emerged.
Beyond Thunderdome, more fantastic with the pig shit factory and the Thunderdome and the gulag and the train and the kids.
Furiosa was also retold by the History Man, but he was pretty old, so he must have retold it not that long after it happened, and he was with Furiosa starting at the point that she was taken by Dementus.
I guess that would make Furiosa possibly more accurate than either Road Warrior or Fury Road. Especially since the History Man isn’t even in Fury Road, which implies it was retold after he died.
Didn’t Plato ascribe some of his own “parables” to Socrates? The story we are told is that “this story was told by the History Man”; perhaps that detail is part of the story?
IIRC, Plato puts almost everything of substance into Socrates’ voice. Similarly, there are multiple versions of Homer, multiple versions of Gilgamesh, even multiple extant texts of Shakespeare, to say nothing of the sources he lifted from shamelessly. Hell, the Christian Bible collects four variations on the life of Jesus, not completely consistent with each other and super different from quite a few narratives that didn’t make the cut when they decided on a single library to collect as “The Bible.”
This is also a very clever meta way for Miller to tell the nerds to calm down. I actually find it really interesting how the people who can create compelling stories are often among the least fixated on telling consistent ones.