All 5 'Mad Max' movies, ranked

• There have been five "Mad Max" movies made.

• The latest is the prequel "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga."

• Here we rank them all, from worst to best.

Director George Miller's post-apocalyptic "Mad Max" franchise made then-unknown actor Mel Gibson into a superstar, and gave pop culture phrases like "Thunderdome" and "Witness Me!!"

It also has delivered some of the most thrilling car chases and action sequences in movie history.

Miller's latest, "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga," continues this thrilling franchise by telling the origin story of the popular "Mad Max: Fury Road" character Imperator Furiosa, who was played by Charlize Theron in the 2015 film and Anya Taylor-Joy in the 2024 prequel.

Here we rank all of the "Mad Max" movies in the franchise from worst to best.

"Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" (1985)

Released four years after "Mad Max 2" became a box-office sensation, this was the third movie in the franchise and the final time Gibson would play the character.

In the movie, we follow Max as he goes up against the ruthless controller of a trading post, played by Tina Turner. Max befriends a group of children and teens, and they team up to destroy the trading post.

Though the movie clearly has the highest production value of the "Max" movies released by that point, flashy sets and Gibson's star power can't help a film with a bloated B-movie vibe (even by 1980s standards).

The biggest thing we got out of the movie was two hit songs from Turner: "One of the Living," which would go on to score her a Grammy for best female rock vocal performance, and the chart-topper "We Don't Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)."

"Mad Max" (1979)

The movie that started it all saw Miller cast a then-unknown actor named Mel Gibson in the title role of Max, a cop who sets out for vigilante justice when he loses his family at the hands of a gang of thugs.

Set in the near future, Max is part of the Main Force Patrol, which is trying to keep order in a society on the brink of collapse. A gang led by a psycho named Toecutter (played by Hugh Keays-Byrne, who would go on to play Immortan Joe in "Fury Road") has made that impossible. As Max sees his fellow MFP officers die at the hands of Toecutter's gang, followed by his family, Max takes matters into his own hands.

The movie was a sensation in Australia, where the franchise is set, and went on to become one of the country's most profitable films.

"Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga" (2024)

Following the success of "Fury Road," Miller shifted gears and decided to make a movie focused not on Max but on the character Charlize Theron plays in the hit movie, Imperator Furiosa.

Though not as daring as "Fury Road," Miller still gives us some solid action in this origin story. In it, we see how a villain known as Dementus (Chris Hemsworth) snatches Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy) from her childhood home, "The Green Place," and pulls her deep into the Wasteland.

"Mad Max: Fury Road" (2015)

Thirty years after making "Beyond Thunderdome," Miller takes all the ideas that had been building inside him for decades and offers them to the world in one of the greatest action movies ever made.

Tom Hardy plays Max, who finds an unlikely ally in Furiosa (Theron) when the two try to escape the powerful Immortan Joe (Keays-Byrne) and his army of War Boys.

For audiences who didn't grow up watching the Gibson "Mad Max" movies, this was a revelation, while for those who have been around for the entire ride, it was a pleasant sight to see Miller back to form and getting the auteur treatment.

"Mad Max 2" (1981)

Also known as "The Road Warrior," this is the movie where Miller gives the audience all of the Wasteland elements that would become staples in the franchise going forward. There's Gibson's tattered leather look, an outlandish villain with post-apocalyptic minions, and a high-speed tanker truck battle.

In the movie, we find Max (Gibson) still recovering from the loss of his family and trying to survive on the small amount of gasoline that's still available in the world. He comes across a group living in a compound with a working oil refinery. However, they are constantly attacked by the muscular villain Lord Humungus and his gang, who want their fuel.

Max becomes the group's only hope for survival as he volunteers to drive a tanker full of fuel that inevitably will be attacked by Humungus and his gang during their escape from the compound (in a fantastic plot twist, it turns out the tanker was full of sand, not fuel).

The movie made Gibson a global superstar and is regarded as one of the greatest sequels of all time.

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