“Mad Max: Fury Road” was released to an unsuspecting public last summer and has never let up. It is the fourth film in a series that started in 1979 and took almost fifteen years to make. Here are ten amazing facts about the film.
George Miller with actor Tom Hardy on the set of “Mad Max: Fury Road.” Photo credit Jasin Boland/Warner Bros. Pictures
1. Director George Miller is an M.D.
Imagine it’s sometime during the mid-1970s: a young doctor working in Sydney, Australia is confronted by an over abundance of car accident related injuries coming through his emergency ward. This inspired him to develop the storyline that would become the first “Mad Max” film. George Miller also took inspiration from his country’s fetishtic obsession with the automobile and fashioned it into one of the more enduring movie franchises ever made.
Photo credit Jasin Boland/Warner Bros. Pictures
2. Mad Max is not the lead character of the film called “Mad Max: Fury Road”
That honor would go to Charlize Theron’s character Imperator Furiosa. Although Tom Hardy’s Max is a major presence in the film, he almost takes a back seat to the real hero of the story. It’s Furiosa who makes the courageous decision to free the villain’s concubine as the whole film is predicated on her escape plan. It was a bold step indeed to have a female character take the lead in the latest entry of a popular action series.
3. It took over fifteen years to make “Mad Max: Fury Road”
Developed as early as 1998, “Fury Road” was set to shoot in 2001. But production was put on hold due to the September 11 terrorist attacks. Whether or not that particular film would resemble the version that was eventually released is unclear, but a new script was completed in 2003. Even though production was to resume the following year, concerns arose with regard to filming in Namibia thanks to the travel restrictions imposed by the United States and other countries. Thus “Fury Road” was put on hold again. And so it goes: it was set up again in 2006, at one point it was rumored to be a feature-length cartoon and finally, in 2009, George Miller began scouting for new locations. This time production settled on Broken Hill, New South Wales. Unfortunately, heavy rains caused all sorts of fauna to grow thus ruining the look Miller wanted to convey on film. So…
Principal photography finally began in 2012. And this returned the production to the Namib Desert of Namibia. The rest is history.
4. Heath Ledger was originally considered for Max
When the project seemed to be getting underway around 2006-2007, George Miller had publically stated he was interested in having Heath Ledger take on the franchise character. Unfortunately Ledger’s unexpected death in 2008 preempted that opportunity. As a side note, there was never any intention to have original “Mad Max” Mel Gibson return to the role.
Photo credit: Warner Bros.
5. Max’s full name is Max Rockatansky. And he was a cop.
In 1979’s “Mad Max” Mel Gibson played a highway patrol officer frustrated with the breakdown of law and order in the Australian outback. The first film did not depict the out there, heavily costumed post-apocalyptic dystopia we’ve grown accustomed to since 1981’s “The Road Warrior.” The world as presented in “Mad Max” is just at the tipping point of descending into chaos. Eventually turning into a revenge thriller, the first film in the franchise is still considered a classic of its kind. More akin to the AIP produced biker movies that were popular during the 70s, it’s amazing to think back on and realize that almost everyone who worked on “Mad Max” had never made a film before. And that included “Mad Max” director George Miller.
6. “Mad Max: Fury Road” is the first film of the series to receive a Best Picture Oscar nomination.
This is actually impressive considering how the Academy Award voters do not usually take too kindly to big budget action flicks. You’d have to delve deep into the data banks and find something like Stephen Spielberg’s “Raiders of the Lost Ark” getting similar recognition. Yet, it is a well-deserved acknowledgment for a series that truly influenced the action genre. “The Road Warrior” is considered the jewel of the franchise and for some one of the greatest movies ever made (an opinion I am humbly on page with, although “Fury Road” has given it a serious run for its money). Making this all the more remarkable is the age of director George Miller. In an industry where fuel injected cinema is the playground of young filmmakers, it took a 70-year-old veteran to show them how it’s done.
7. A Cirque du Soleil performer was hired to train the stunt crew.
Some of the more spectacular sequences in “Fury Road” involve characters strapped to poles swinging from speeding vehicles. Deemed “polecats” by the film’s action unit director Guy Norris, he mentions in an interview with RollingStone, “George always imagined that we would have to use CGI for safety’s sake… A lot of effort went into training guys in Chinese pole work. Then a friend of mine who had worked for Cirque du Soleil to it a step further, heading up an eight-week training program.” I can only hope that during my next visit to Las Vegas, I’ll be able to take in a “Cirque Du Fury Road” floor show.
8. Barely any CGI was used in the stunt sequences.
Probably the most hyped up aspect of “Fury Road” was the lack of computer-generated effects. Although they are most certainly there (to composite in backgrounds for example), when it came to the car chases and stunt work, barely any CGI was used. The exception to this pertained to wire work and the elimination of unsightly cables (rigged for the safety of the crew and actors involved) in post.
9. They used Canon 5Ds to shoot some of the footage.
This is for all of you gear heads out there. While cinematographer John Seale utilized many camera types including 3D rigs, the Arri Alexa Plus, the Arri Alexa M and the Blackmagic Cinema camera, it apparently wasn’t beneath him to employ the use of the popular – and considerably more affordable – DSLR. Canon’s revolutionary photography camera was a godsend to budget minded filmmakers thanks to its ability to record stunning 2K footage. “So we would be all over the vehicles with handheld Canons,” explains Seale. “We’d have wide angle lenses close to actors, and we were bumping around and trying to hang on while the thing was belting in across the desert.”
Warner Bros. Pictures
10. Hugh Keays-Byrne, the actor who plays the villain in “Fury Road,” also played the lead villain in the first “Mad Max” film.
It should come as no surprise how effective actor Hugh Keays-Byrne is as the main antagonist Immortan Joe, not least of all because he is a seriously great actor. However, he’s been down this (ahem) “Fury Road” before. He played the villain Toecutter in the first film of the franchise “Mad Max.” Why fix what wasn’t broke in the first place, right?
