In an age when climate change threatens to destroy entire nations, nightmarish depictions of a future characterized by violence, disease, scarcity, and environmental and social collapse have become increasingly common in popular culture. George Miller’s new film Mad Max: Fury Road and his earlier Mad Max films all invoke such apocalypse, but Fury Road is unique in how it speaks to the present moment.

The first two Mad Max films, released in 1979 and 1981, use visions of a collapsing society to express middle-class fears about the spread of urban criminality into suburban spaces, and the superficiality and emptiness of modern life. In Fury Road, the disintegration of society and the regression of humanity into barbarism goes hand in hand with widespread ecological destruction and resource scarcity — a depiction that connects with audience anxieties about the destructive effects of climate change.

But far from serving as a cautionary tale about the ecological and spiritual devastation wrought by industrial capitalism, Fury Road is in fact a celebration of the triumph of modernity over “traditional,” “primitive” society in apocalyptic times.