Watch The ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ Trailer: Does Tom Hardy Live Up To Mel Gibson’s Legacy?

Mad Max: Fury Road, the much delayed reboot of the classic 1980s Mad Max trilogy that featured Mel Gibson in the title role and launched Gibson’s career as a global superstar, debuted its first trailer Saturday at San Diego Comic Con. Now, you can watch the trailer here on The Inquisitr (above), and decide for yourself…

Does the new Mad Max film starring British actor Tom Hardy, live up the standard set by Gibson and director George Miller in the first three Mad Max movies, a trilogy which began 35 years ago with the original Australian production Mad Max?

Miller also directed the original three Mad Max movies. Otherwise, he is perhaps best known for writing the 1995 film Babe, about a farmer and his pig, as well as writing and directing the 1998 sequel, Babe: Pig In The City — two films about as far from the Mad Max trilogy as could be imagined.

Perhaps it’s a sign of the growing sophistication of American audiences that while in that very first Mad Max movie, Gibson spoke in an Australian accent — which came naturally to him because though he was born in the United States, he moved with his family to Australia at age 12 — his dialogue was dubbed by another actor because many American movie theater owners refused to book the film with the original accents.

But in the trailer, Hardy, who is British, appears to put on an Australian accent, or some other kind of non-American accent.

It’s also worth noting that when Gibson first took the role in 1979, he was a virtual unknown at age 23, and was only three years older when the sequel, Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, became an international hit and turned Gibson into an instant worldwide movie star.

In fact, The Road Warrior was made on a budget of just $350,000. Even converted to 2014 dollars, that budget would still come in well under $1 million — impossibly tiny by today’s Hollywood standards and small even by the standards of foreign and independent films.

But the movie went on to gross more than $100 million worldwide, making it at the time the most profitable movie ever made.

Mad Max: Fury Road had a reported budget of between $100 million and $125 million, and has the backing of the major U.S. film studio, Warner Bros. And Hardy, when the movie was shot in 2012, was already 34 and a veteran of such major Hollywood blockbusters as The Dark Knight Rises, and Inception, as well as more than 30 other films.

So how does Hardy and the new Mad Max movie measure up to Gibson and the originals? From the trailer alone, it’s difficult to make a definitive judgment. But when Hollywood attempts to pour big dollars and star power (the new movie also stars Charlize Theron) into what was originally an almost spontaneous phenomenon like the first Mad Max movies, the results usually leave plenty to be desired.