It’s been forty-two years since Max Rockatansky burst onto screens in the first Mad Max film. Since then, director George Miller’s postapocalyptic vision, explored over the course of four enduringly popular films, has generated a common language to describe a ravaged future.

Miller cobbled together the wasteland setting, post-punk costumes, weapons, and machines from discarded parts of our own world. The phrase “Mad Max” itself has become shorthand for violent social breakdown. There have been innumerable homages and rip-offs, from Tank Girl to The Book of Eli and more highbrow fare like The Road.

In 2015, Miller updated and sealed his saga’s legacy with his masterpiece, Mad Max: Fury Road, which added a weighty and welcome feminist aspect to his postapocalyptic tableau. Critics named it the best Australian film of the century so far.