Hope and Glory: A Mad Max Fan Film

• Written and Directed by Adrian Martin and Erik van Schoor
• May 3, 2024 (Germany)
• Loosely based on the 2015 action-adventure videogame Mad Max developed by Avalanche Studios and published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment

A man travels the deserted roads of The Wasteland in search of fuel leading him to take on a dangerous mission to get just that.

After watching the trailer for Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga this popped up as a suggestion YouTube. As viewing, Hope and Glory: A Mad Max Fan Film seemed like a risky proposition. In my opinion it is much harder to do an adequate Mad Max film than, say, a Star Wars or any superhero fan film. When good, the world of Mad Max is a very different animal than anything else out there.

Hope and Glory: A Mad Max Fan Film details how Max Rockatansky (here Daniel Grave) came to be in his situation at the start of Fury Road. This movie often gets more right than it gets wrong. While it can look a bit too clean for the world of Mad Max in some moments in tone and execution it gets most everything else right. Those behind this knew the material and appreciated it.

Mad Max films are two things: a post-apocalyptic folktale using the character of Max to tell the stories of others and a story of one man trying to keep/maintain some humanity in a mad world. There is no reinvention of the wheel here with the film focusing on the latter aspect.

Max is a broken man wandering The Wasteland and this is one more step of him becoming human again. This time he needs to take out some villains which he does just for fuel but the humanity part comes when he rescues a young girl. As with everything in the world of Mad Max it rarely goes smoothly and without high cost by the end. For every two steps forward, Max is forced to take a step back.

Max despite being the main character doesn’t say too much which like in Fury Road is a good thing. The character works best when he speaks only as necessary. Max has never been a particularly verbose individual in the films. And he borders on being a supporting character much like he was in Fury Road. But like I have said before Max is a post is a bit of a post apocalyptic folk character who shows up to tell the story of other people and how they were saved or an event in their lives. 

While short a short film, it does match the pack a great deal in. It has maybe two breaks but beyond that the story is always moving. And it’s always telling a story in a way that feels like it was guided by the hand of George Miller. And much like the first four films it squeezes every ounce of story of a plot that should not have much to it.

Hope and Glory: A Mad Max Fan Film is a good fan film. Not great but very good. It illuminates but does not force its way into events just before Fury Road. Not necessary viewing but not necessarily something to turn your nose up at either if you enjoyed the canonical films.