Mad Max: Fury Road

Essential, and the best entry point to this franchise for anyone who has seen none of it. Nothing in it requires the earlier films. Miller has been deliberate about refusing to place it in a timeline, and the series has always treated Max as a story people tell rather than a continuous person, so arriving here first costs you nothing at all.

The structure is the joke everyone repeats and it is true: they drive out, then they turn around and drive back. What that description misses is that the film is almost entirely without exposition. The world is explained through objects, scars, chants and brands, never through a character sitting somebody down. You work out what a War Boy is, what Immortan Joe controls and why water matters by watching, and the film trusts you completely.

Max is the passenger. It is Furiosa's film, he is luggage for the first half hour, muzzled and used as a blood supply, and he does not become useful until she lets him. Hardy says very little. Charlize Theron carries it.

It was made in Namibia over a very long shoot with a storyboard written before the screenplay, and the overwhelming majority of what you see is real vehicles, real performers and real desert, with digital work used mostly to remove rigs and extend backgrounds. That is why it has not aged in the way its contemporaries have. Seek out the Black and Chrome edition if you can; Miller has said the monochrome version is his preferred one.