Max Rockatansky

Lore & Background

In Mad Max, Max Rockatansky is a Main Force Patrol (MFP) highway patrolman maintaining law and order on the roads of a dystopian Victoria, Australia. He is quiet, rarely speaking to any great extent, and never paying much attention to his steadily increasing reputation. He and his wife Jessie have an infant son referred to only as 'Sprog.' Though the best officer on the force, he is secretly afraid he is becoming as cold and heartless as the criminals he pursues.

He reaches a breaking point when a gang of criminally insane bikers led by the 'Toecutter' burn his partner Goose alive inside a borrowed ute. The sight of Goose's charred body prompts Max to resign from the MFP, though his commanding officer convinces him to take a vacation first. After Toecutter's gang kills Sprog and leaves Jessie in a coma, Max takes the MFP's Pursuit Special ('the last of the V8 Interceptors') and systematically pursues and kills each gang member responsible.

Despite being shot in the left knee and having his right arm run over, he fatally shoots gang lieutenant Bubba Zanetti and pursues the Toecutter to his death. After leaving final gang member Johnny the Boy in a death trap, Max drives out into the wasteland, leaving the fading remnants of civilization behind him.

Reader's Guide

In Mad Max: Fury Road, set sometime after Beyond Thunderdome, Max—played by Tom Hardy—is haggard and alone with his car. After his Interceptor is wrecked and he is captured by a gang known as the 'War Boys,' he is imprisoned and used as a live blood donor. Strapped to the bonnet of a car in pursuit of the War Boys' renegade general Imperator Furiosa, Max escapes and reluctantly helps Furiosa in her quest to help five women escape from the War Boys' despotic leader, Immortan Joe.

After the group defeat their pursuers, Max parts ways with the survivors and disappears. In the prequel film Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Max makes a cameo appearance, watching from a distance as an injured Praetorian Furiosa struggles to walk back to the Citadel. He is played by Tom Hardy's Fury Road stuntman, Jacob Tomuri. In the 2015 video game Mad Max, Max—voiced by Bren Foster—is robbed by war boys loyal to Scabrous Scrotus, the lord of Gastown, and abandoned in the wasteland.

He meets a zealous hunchbacked mechanic called Chumbucket, who has plans to build an ultimate war vehicle called the Magnum Opus. They form an alliance to gather parts and build out the vehicle so that Max can reach Gastown, get back his V8 Interceptor and continue to the Plains of Silence. As he allies with different strongholds and battles the raider gangs, he encounters a mysterious figure called Griffa who reminds him of his humanity. Max defeats Scrotus and recovers his vehicle, then continues his journey and leaves behind a transformed wasteland.

Did You Know?

• According to film critic Justin Chang, Miller (a doctor by training) picked Max's last name as an homage to the pathologist Carl von Rokitansky.
• In Mad Max, Max's infant son is referred to only as 'Sprog,' which is slang for 'child.'
• Max's left knee is blown out by a gunshot towards the end of the first film, and in the second film he walks with a slight limp with the help of a leg brace.
• In Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, Max surrenders all his weapons in Bartertown, which The Scotsman called a moment of self-parody.