In an Australian dystopian world, a police chase driver is murdered for the murder of its former leader by a motorcycle gang. Once his wife and child are brutally killed by them, this patrolman sets out in search of vengeance through the desolate wastelands. “Mad Max” is a classic Australian film with a grim, violent ambiance. In this article we have tried to discover some movies like mad max.
Director George Miller has done a brilliant job, especially given the film has a very small budget. Nonetheless the costumes and setting are outstanding and the cast is amazing. Should you want to watch post-apocalyptic films, here’s the list of twelve Mad Max-inspired films that are our suggestions. You will stream any of these films on Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime, such as Mad Max.
Here are the Best Movies like Mad Max:
The Cars That Ate Paris
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Director- Peter Weir
The first full-length film by Peter Weir is a horror movie about a small country town named Paris that survives by purposely triggering traffic crashes and salvaging the mechanical and human remains. Survivors are being checked at a hospital in the city.
The film is especially notable because of the bizarrely souped-up ransacked cars driven by the young male population of Paris. The most popular of these is the spiked Volkswagen which adorned the original promotional poster of the film, a version of which can be seen in Mad Max ‘s vehicles: Fury Road.
First conceived as a sitcom by Weir, the film combines gallows humor moments with its grim storyline, elements of which are similar in theme to The Wicker Man (1973). The Cars That Eat Paris have failed to attract an Australian market, but have performed well globally. It is recognized as the first Australian road movie and was a significant milestone in Australian cinema’s 70s revival despite its relatively poor local performance.
Stone
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Director- Sandy Harbutt
Stone is the entrant to Australia in the substantial low-budget biker movie canon, common in the 60s and early 70s. It’s hard to categorize: an exploitation film but one with pseudo-documentary and political conspiracy thriller components. A leader of a satanic illegal biker gang called the Gravediggers inadvertently witnesses an anti-pollution campaigner’s murder.
The Gravediggers reluctantly allow a detective, Stone, to go undercover with them in an effort to figure out who is behind the murders after members of the gang are executed to cover up the murder. Stone, the only feature film directed by Sandy Harbutt, contains some impressive stunts, and real-life bikers were cast as a rival biker club for added authenticity. It was released eight years after its Australian debut, in the UK, to cash in on Mad Max ‘s popularity.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
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Director– J.J. Abrams
The first Star Wars movie made beyond the aegis of producer George Lucas, TFA set out to replicate the magic of the original trilogy – and damned if it tried to mimic the universe we first saw a good while ago to a large degree.
This continuation of the seminal cultural tale in contemporary pop culture – in which a new generation in grim kings, derring-do warriors and dedicated survivors step up to the plate – was fueled by the strength and appeal of its incredibly talented cast, from relative newcomers Daisy Ridley and John Boyega to the A-list stars Adam Driver and Oscar Isaac.
So you didn’t have to own New Hope bedsheets back in the day to feel nostalgic seeing returning stars like Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, and Mark Hamill, although briefly. Warm, funny, and courageous to become genuinely compassionate, it made the world feel far, far away, closer to home than it had in years.
“Star Wars: Episode VII-The Awakens Force” is the movie J.J. Abrams was put on Earth to make, as exemplified by the echoes of “Star Wars” in his hit series “Lost,” and how he continued to try to turn “Star Trek” into “Star Wars.”
The Chain Reaction
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Director– Ian Barry
The Chain Reaction, billed as ‘Mad Max meets China Syndrome,’ starts with an earthquake in a small rural location that contains a nuclear waste disposal facility. The quake triggers a radiation leak which contaminates the groundwater surrounding it.
A scientist from the factory, seriously polluted in the crash, flees into the bush and stumbles on a holiday couple, Vietnamese veteran and mechanic Larry (Steve Bisley, who got the part off the back of his success as one of Mad Max ‘s patrol cops) and his friend, Carmel (Arna-Maria Winchester).
The shadowy American waste disposal site owners send a pair of hired assassins to find and destroy the scientist and anyone with whom he has had contact.
The Chain Reaction blends some excellent stunt work with an inventive score that involves the use of barely audible radio announcements in the background to create a disturbing feeling of control and spiraling things going out of control. The remote bush area, which included an eerie, supposedly haunted, disused shale mine, adds to the sense of danger.
Riddick
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Director– David Twohy
Vin Diesel, like Riddick, uses his “Iron Giant” voice and a pair of sparkling contact lenses that allow him to see in the darkness. The story begins “Riddick.” “I was here before,” he tells us, pointing to the rugged landscape in which he was betrayed and left to die.
The opening credits are not half-over until Riddick executes his first piece of badassery: he strangles one of the planet’s flesh-eating monsters. We’ll be privy to more monsters before the closing credits than Riddick can choke.
Twohy bucks away from the sequel tradition, operating on the original’s smaller scale. “Riddick” also hews “Pitch Black” so nearly, that it sounds like a reboot. Once again, people are stranded on a hostile world and do not know if the greater threat is the inhabitants of the earth, or Riddick himself.
Riddick is surrounded this time by two teams of bounty hunters, one of whom wants him to be taken alive. The other wants him dead, as he can double the payout. There’s no match for our titular antihero either way.
Dead-end Drive-in
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Director– Brian Trenchard Smith
Dead-end Drive-In, directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith, foresees a future Australia where law and order have broken down, prompting the government to invoke emergency measures, including transforming drive-in theaters into illegal detention centers.
In one of these, Crabs (Ned Manning) and his mother are jailed, along with a group of goths, punks, and other various youth subcultures common in Australia in the 80s. There they are served a diet of fast food, new wave songs, drugs, and videos (mainly made up of the director’s own actions, snippets of which can be seen in the background).
In one of the homages to Mad Max, the leather-clothed police continue to supervise the criminals. Another inspiration, described by Trenchard-Smith himself, is The Exterminating Angel by Luis Bunuel (1962), about a group of upper-class guests who suddenly find themselves unable to leave a dinner party. Now called a classic Ozploitation, Dead-end Drive-In bombed at publication.
The ultra-sleazy prostitution feeling of the film is all the more fascinating considering that it was based on a short story by Peter Carey, the two-time Booker award-winning author.
28 Days Later
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Director– Danny Boyle
Some science fiction films do more than depict scary innovations of a fictional kind-they themselves unleash such advances. This is the case with the film that sets the “hot zombie” idea lose on an unsuspecting planet. The ravening hordes in Danny Boyle ‘s groundbreaking film are technically not undead but “infected”: living humans contaminated by a viral rage-inducing epidemic
Naturally, they are now attacking the uninfected on sight … which does not bode well for Cillian Murphy’s hospital patient when he wakes up to discover that London has been overwhelmed with senseless, feral people. (The parallels between the opening of this film and pilot The Walking Dead are uncanny.)
A subgenre has been revitalized and one look at today ‘s angry world is all you need to see how prophetic the director and writer of Trainspotting, Alex Garland (Ex Machina), really was.
Kiss or Kill
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Director– Bill Bennett
Kiss or Kill is a noir film grafted onto an Australian road picture. Femme fatale Nikki (Frances O’Connor) and her partner Al (Matt Day) are two small-time scammers who flee from them after their new victim accidentally disappears, leaving a picture of a strong sports to figure having sex with a young boy in their hands.
Nearly anyone they encounter walking the Nullarbor Plain from Adelaide to Perth ends up tragically murdered and everyone begins to believe that the other is responsible.
This is one of a handful of Bill Bennett directed feature films (he also helmed the critically well-received In a Savage Country, 1999). .Much of the film is improvised which gives it a scrappy, gritty atmosphere that fits the matter of the theme well.
Bennett also does a decent job of comparing the stunning settings with Nikki and Al’s tight, anxious feeling of mistrust, a quality further highlighted by the utter lack of any soundtrack.
Blade Runner
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Director– Dennis Villeneuve
With this direct sequel to the 1984’s Blade Runner, Denis Villeneuve accomplished the unthinkable. The original film redefined the genre and seemed untouchable to many. Yet somehow Villeneuve produced a stunning, faithful, and exceptional sequel.
The film stands visually alone but, at the same time, feels in line with the original. All sounds broader in scale, dour and dreary, and optimistic in the end. The film beautifully demonstrates Villeneuve’s ability to project scale and emotion into this genre.”Blade Runner 2049″ wrestles for 163 stylish minutes with nothing less than what it means to be alive, acting as a beautiful thematic companion to Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner,” a film that redefined a genre.
“Blade Runner 2049” wrests over 163 stylish minutes with nothing less than what it means to be human, able to serve as a beautiful thematic companion to Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner,” a film that has redefined a genre.
Unlike a lot of reboots or long-delayed sequels that merely replay the themes and characters of the iconic original to give audiences the empty comfort of nostalgia, Denis Villeneuve and his team are surprisingly creative, using the issues posed by “Blade Runner” to continue the dialogue instead of just repeating it to make a buck
The Rover
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Director– David Michod
The follow-up to his first feature, crime thriller Animal Kingdom (2010), by Australian director David Michôd, The Rover is set in the outback ten years after an unspecified global financial crisis.
A single, unidentified traveler (Guy Pearce) stolen his car from the scene of a gruesome heist by three men. The traveler discovers the fourth crew member (Robert Pattinson) left injured at the heist scene and asks him to help hunt down men who robbed his car.
Beautifully captured and with Pearce’s outstanding results, The Rover chills precisely because elements of its bleak future are now evident. Although other nations struggled through the global crisis, Australia flourished by digging up rocks, largely to fuel the economic prosperity of China.
Michôd takes this on board, attaches the existing financial distemper hanging over Australia, and fashions a world in which the only systems that have not been torn down apply to mine. Heavily guarded lumber freight trains across the minerally filled mountains. Everyone is armed and life is cheap.
300
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Director– Zack Snyder
300 might have a very different plot and be set practically in a completely different world, but that doesn’t mean that there are no similarities. Like the Mad Max franchise, this film takes on huge risks — from the slow-motion to the intense and long battle sequences with lots of gruesome gore on view.
Once the action gets rolling there isn’t much time to chat and it’s back to business, something that any Mad Max fan would appreciate. This film is also full of strong, well-established characters, and will fancy another facet of Mad Max fans.
Kill Bill
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Director– Quentin Tarantino
One film not lacking in a genius screenplay is Kill Bill, which is considered by many to be one of the greatest action movies of all time. Much like Mad Max: Fury Lane, as we follow the Bride’s revenge plot, this film is all about female empowerment.
There is still lots of suspense in this film and as the series moves along, the backstory gradually gets pieced together. Although there might be no car chases, this is a cinematic marvel and there is no lack of action.
Cyborg
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Director– Albert Pyun
We just needed to include a video on Jean Claude Van Damme in here. In this galore of post-apocalyptic cyberpunk action, he portrays Gibson Rickenbacker (less or similarly cool to “Rockatansky?” It’s not cooler), a slinger (a type of mercenary) who is provided with the defense of Pearl Prophet (a woman turned cyborg by surgery) who volunteered to acquire crucial information about a cure for the plague haunting humanity.
They face Fender who needs to procure and market the antidote, but Gibson still has to follow through with his personal vengeance. Don’t expect this one to indulge in much dialogue, but if action and martial arts are your things, you won’t be disappointed.
Conclusion
Since the release of the first installment, George Miller’s Mad Max series has become a major influence on films released in the 36 years. Now that he has returned to the property with Mad Max: Fury Road, it is possible that some of the legacies have returned and influenced aspects of this latest fourth season. The loop makes sense for Fury Road, whose structure entails characters returning to where they come from
What our Movies to See lists are all about is that idea of returning to the beginning, or at least to what happened before. I have again selected a dozen titles to advise you that I find relevant in some way or another. There are perception effects on Miller and his post-apocalyptic franchise, there are accidental parallels-features I was actually aware of during Fury Road.