I didn’t think of this until I saw Mad Max: Fury Road a second time, but the pale white War Boys serving Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) bear a strong resemblance to Rod Zuanic‘s character, Scrooloose, from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. While it has been rumored the film takes place between the events of Mad Max (1979) and The Road Warrior (1981), writer/director Goerge Miller said in a recent interview regarding the chronology of the franchise, “All the films have no strict chronology. It’s like an episode in Mad Max’s life. Never ever wrote any of the scripts with a chronological order.”
Of course, this isn’t entirely true as Max clearly has lost his wife and son in The Road Warrior and it only stands to assume Beyond Thunderdome takes place after the first two films, and now I’m beginning to think Fury Road has to, at the very least, take place prior to Thunderdome.
If I were to theorize, following the events of Fury Road and the death of Immortan Joe, the War Boys were allowed to go free from the Citadel. I would presume most remained, but it stands to reason others might leave or some were likely left stranded in the desert, assumed to have died during one of the many chase sequences in the film. Were that the case, perhaps one of these War Boys may end up in the open arms of the “Waiting Ones” (the children in Thunderdome) and there you have Scrooloose.
He’s a loner in the bunch, mute and seemingly harmless until he eventually takes part in the final chase sequence, wielding a frying pan and ultimately driving Max’s vehicle… upside down and backwards. Sounds like a very “War Boy” thing to do… doesn’t it?
I don’t know, it’s not important, and if I were to be specific, Scrooloose more closely resembles the younger “War Pups” in the film than he does Nicholas Hoult‘s Nux. Nevertheless, I like to think it’s a subtle little nod and connection to the previous Mad Max films and would actually give Thunderdome, which is easily the worst film in the franchise, a little added something.
