10) Mad Max: Fury Road
Sequel to: Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
Time between movies: 30 years
30 years, it turns out, is exactly what George Miller needed to develop not just one of the greatest sequels of all time, but one of the great action movies, period.
After the stale Beyond Thunderdome, Miller temporarily put his Mad Max saga into hibernation. Then the delay for Mad Max 4 would extend, and extend, until original Max Mel Gibson dropped out and Miller found himself with literally decades-worth of ideas building up.
When Fury Road finally arrived last year, audiences could see the result of the long period of development: a hyper-stylized, hallucinatory and eccentric blockbuster unlike any other. It’s the high point for both Miller and the Mad Max series, proof that a franchise long thought stagnant can still have legs.