Collider has put Mad Max: Fury Road at No. 1 on its list of the 100 Greatest Movies of the 21st Century, handing George Miller's 2015 desert chase film the top spot in a ranking released in December 2025. The site said the movie won because it is action-packed, has incredible imagery and tells an important story.
The choice gives Miller's film a new burst of attention a decade after it arrived as the fourth Mad Max movie and one that replaced Mel Gibson with Tom Hardy as Max Rockatansky. Miller said in a 2015 Vice interview that the production was built on practical effects, with real vehicles, real people and a real desert, and that it was not a green screen movie. He said everything seen on screen happened, a claim that still helps explain why the film feels so immediate.
That realism was central to Miller's thinking when he cast Hardy. He said Hardy was chosen because, like Gibson, he had charisma and carried elements of danger and mystery, and that Hardy was the first actor who walked through the door who reminded him of the earlier Max. Gibson played the character in Mad Max in 1979, Mad Max 2 in 1981 and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome in 1985, giving Hardy a franchise built on a very specific legacy.
Collider's top 10 also included In the Mood for Love, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Social Network, The Dark Knight, Inglourious Basterds, No Country for Old Men, Mulholland Drive, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and Parasite. But putting Mad Max: Fury Road first is a clear verdict on how action, design and momentum can still outmuscle more traditional prestige markers when the movie hits with enough force.
The result is less a surprise than a reminder of what Miller built: a film that looked dangerous because, by his own account, much of it was. Ten years on, the ranking answers its own argument plainly — Mad Max: Fury Road is not just remembered as a great action movie; it is being treated as one of the defining films of the century.
