Mad Max continues his journey through the post-apocalyptic world. He joins forces with a woman named Furiosa, who is trying to save five girls from an evil war lord and take them somewhere nicer.
Blaine: George Miller didn’t want to make another “Mad Max” movie after the third one, “Beyond Thunderdome”, until the idea for “Fury Road” came to mind years later in 2001. George tried to ignore it, but the idea kept growing and it was hard to resist. So George finally decided to go with making another “Mad Max”. He never thought it would take him fourteen years to make it. The story for “Fury Road” was written like a graphic novel because a ton of storyboards were done to show what the movie would look like. There was 3,500 storyboards all over the room. George felt a script wasn’t needed because it was more about the look and the characters don’t say much. One of the challenges for George Miller was finding a new actor to play Mad Max. Mel Gibson was all in favor of returning as the character because “Mad Max” was basically the start of his career. George always knew that no one else could play Max than Mel, but because George wanted the character to stay at a young age he had no choice but to replace him. Tom Hardy is a very talented actor and I’ve respected him as an actor since his performance as Bane in “The Dark Knight Rises”. He puts so much into each performance he does. When George met Tom, he had the same feeling inside him from when he met Mel Gibson for the first time. For the role of Mad Max, Tom spent a lot of time with Mel Gibson and Mel would discuss the character with Tom. George Miller also helped because he created the character and he was Tom’s guide through the making of “Fury Road”. Tom was able to make his take on the character his own. What was hard for Tom was understanding George on what he wanted while he was directing.
While George Miller was developing the story for “Fury Road”, he had a female character, Furiosa, in mind who would be Max’s partner in fighting bad guys. George Miller wanted this movie to be an extended chase. Mutants would be chasing these five wives and they needed a warrior, but it couldn’t be a male because it sounded weird to George that a man would take wives from another man. George was excited in creating a female warrior who is very strong, but who is going through emotional issues. She wants the women she is saving to have a better life for themselves after being prisoned by a man who has hurt them. George met with Charlize Theron and told her about Furiosa. Charlize saw a great potential right away and she knew it was a role any actress would want to play. For the past eight months, Charlize had the time of her life playing Furiosa. Furiosa having one arm shows that she has been through a lot and it was expensive to do that effect on Charlize’s arm because she didn’t want to cut it off. The relationship between Max and Furiosa is not a romantic thing, nor is it like a brother sister thing. It’s more like a good partnership. They try to kill each other when they first meet, but then they realize they are both doing everything they can to survive and they become a great team. However they do show strong feelings for each other. Like there’s one scene where the truck gets stuck in mud and the characters try to move it. Meanwhile bad guys are shooting at them and coming towards them, so Max takes care of them. Then an explosion happens and Furiosa is very concerned about Max. And then towards the end, Furiosa looks like she is dying because during the last fight she took a lot of damage to the body. But Max gives her some of his blood because she has lost a lot of it. Max tells Furiosa to hang in there and he tells her his name for the first time. It shows he cares about her and he fully trusts her. George was happy to have actors that were very physical. Tom Hardy used to be a rugby player and Charlize was a accomplished ballet dancer.
“Fury Road” was shot at Namibia, Africa. It was the middle of nowhere, there was plenty of open space and no restrictions. However it wasn’t easy to shoot the movie or for the actors to act in a desert because of the heat, of course some of them were half naked, and the dust was blowing everywhere. There were days it got dusty and they couldn’t shoot the movie. They had to stop shooting because the drivers had trouble seeing through the dust. George Miller was able to wear a leather jacket without getting overheated in it while directing the movie. George wanted everything in “Fury Road” to be as real as possible with the stunts and the location. CGI was only used for things that would be impossible to shoot in real life. The whole idea of “Fury Road” was to have an extended chase. A lot of people made it through making “Fury Road” without getting broken bones or bruises. “Fury Road” has a lot of interesting vehicles in it. They built these vehicles by hand, tested them out to see if they would drive and see how they would move. They built 140 vehicles. George thought they would never shoot people swinging around on poles while a vehicle was moving because he thought it would be difficult. But one day he saw these guys swinging on poles and that made him think that it was safe enough to shoot it for real. However it was still a challenge for Tom Hardy to do it because he’s afraid of heights. Each shot of the poles swinging was done once because it would be hard to shoot a second take.
2015 was a great year for women and “Fury Road” was one of the movies that was an inspiration to women because it showed Mad Max fighting alongside a lot of female warriors. Furiosa helps the five wives escape because they are sick and tired of being treated like objects, even though they are fed and stay healthy, but still they want to be free. George wanted the wives to wear something Muslin only more revealing and made out of cotton and sheets. Wearing those costumes was challenging at times because there was some brutal weather conditions they had to endure. It would get cold while they were shooting the scene where Max first encounters them and Furiosa. They had to be wet and they were miserable in the cold air. Of course being miserable was a good thing because that’s what their characters are supposed to feel. They also felt uncomfortable shooting in the desert for six months, but that helped them understand that they were in a post-apocalyptic world George Miller created. Making “Fury Road” was a new experience for these girls.
The camera work is unbelievable. There are a few shots where the camera moves over the vehicle while it is running and then focusses on it’s main target. And then other times the camera had to focus on the vehicles as they were moving at a fast speed from different angles. There’s also shots that start off from a distance and they go in for a close up on the vehicles. George also had a lot of bright color added into this Mad Max adventure. Like during day time the colors are orange and yellow. And night time is always a blue tint, except for when there is a candlelight.
When “Fury Road” wrapped it was very hard for everyone to say goodbye because they all bonded and it was a really good experience to make this movie. George asked his wife, Margaret Sixel, if she would be the editor for “Fury Road” and she was very curious to know why her husband wanted her to cut together an action movie. George wanted the action to be really exciting and one of the ways to make an action scene look good is through the editing. Margaret has a lot of experience in editing and that’s why George wanted her. After they were done shooting the movie, Margaret had 450 hours of footage to work with. It was a lot of hard work. She would work 10 hours a day and 6 days a week. George and Margaret would look at the scenes she edited together in a screening room to see if it looked good.
In the previous “Mad Max” movies Max was always leaving and going on a new journey looking for something new and he does the same thing in “Fury Road”. He’s the type of guy who likes to travel and doesn’t belong in one place. There’s the question if Max and Furiosa will meet each other again because Furiosa became an iconic character after “Fury Road” was released and she is just as important as Max. That has to be why George didn’t have her die at the end. “Mad Max: Fury Road” also became the best reviewed movie of 2015.
My rating on “Mad Max: Fury Road” is five out of five stars
