This meme is kind of funny, despite being devoid of any pop culture accuracy. “Mad Max” is a fun piece of cinematic history, but it’s not set in 2021.
A lot of similar memes have been popping up recently, because of how crazy this election year has been. We’ve had a pandemic, economic shutdowns, the government has admitted that UFOs are real, murder hornets from Asia showed up, monkeys armed with sticks and a chainsaw chased residents out of a town, and radioactive cannibal ants escaped from a defunct nuclear plant in Russia.
Yes, these are all true stories.
So, yeah, it does seem like we’re headed toward a dystopian Mad Max-style future in America, if you watch too much CNN.
But Mad Max was not set in 2021. The original film was shot in 1979 and it was supposed to be set “ten years after” the 1973 oil crisis. Everyone thought the world was going to hell in a handbasket in the 1970s, so the first film in the long-running series was actually supposed to take place in 1983.
It’s still a funny meme, but we’re a long ways past Mad Max in the timeline right now.