was fury road would’ve changed a bit from Max and Furiosa being equals to more like a daughter/father relationship; if Mel was still Max.

Agreed, this is the only way it works now. He's a folk hero being added to other stories as a hook. There's no way you could get from a civilization not far from ours (and with law enforcement still) to the society we see in Fury Road with Max still being relatively young. You'd have to be into at least the second generation of living in a post-apocalyptic world required to believably get to the setup we see being run by Joe there. Including the language used by, and the very existence of the warboys (some are at least 30). Also the *unseen* things - for example the society Furiosa comes from has to be created, and then lost years ago seemingly, all in that time frame. 10-20 years is just not enough.