4 Signs 'Mad Max 4' Is Probably the Craziest Movie Ever Made
The trailer for the upcoming Mad Max reboot, Mad Max: Fury Road, recently exploded onto the Internet like the angry specter of Mel Gibson's pre-'90s career. Fans of the series have expressed worry that this new film could go the way of Red Dawn and Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit by simultaneously being hideously awful and making us all mournfully aware of our age.
But it seems like those fears may be unwarranted -- according to all the information we've gathered about the production, Mad Max: Fury Road may likely be the biggest dose of jackfuck lunacy ever captured on film, which is exactly what Mad Max fans would want.
The Writer/Director Is Clearly a Maniac
When making a remake or reboot it is always a good idea to have a writer or director who knows the series well and actually cares about things like characters and story structure. For example, when they rebooted the James Bond series back in 2006, the task was given to Martin Campbell, the man who directed the fan-favorite GoldenEye 11 years before. On the other hand, under no circumstances should you call George Lucas for any reason during your reboot, as he has damaged every series he has touched since the O.J. Simpson trial.
His cameo in Beverly Hills Cop 3 is very aptly named.
George Miller is handling the Mad Max reboot. Let's check out his filmography:
Not Photoshopped.
According to his resume, Miller is capable of making exactly two kinds of movies: anthropomorphic animal adventures and Mad Max (he also directed the best segment of the Twilight Zone movie, which involved John Lithgow screaming about a gremlin on the wing of a jumbo jet). Yes, the same man who invented Thunderdome and the idea of futuristic armored rape cannibals on dune buggies also made both Happy Feet films and the Babe sequel. We assume this means that Mad Max will eventually have a talking pig sidekick and a cousin who is also a gremlin.
The Cast: Bane, a Bunch of X-Men, and the Villain from the FirstA quick glance at the cast of Mad Max: Fury Road shows us the three main roles will be played by Tom Hardy (legendary creator of the Bane voice), Charlize Theron (legendary trainer of Mighty Joe Young), and Hugh Keays-Byrne (legendary eye-bulging truck magnet from the first Mad Max).
It took half a Rick James worth of cocaine to produce the effect.
That's right -- that last guy, whom you've never heard of, was already in a Mad Max. He played the villainous Toecutter back in 1979, when Gibson was still Australian. Miller is taking absolutely no chances with this reboot -- he wants a man he can trust to be snarling and murderous (which would explain why he stuck with Gibson for an entire decade). Keays-Byrne isn't playing the squashed zombie of his previous character, though -- he plays the primary antagonist, a brand-new villain named Immortan Joe.
He politely declined Hardy's suggestions for making the masked vocals work.
The cast is rounded out by a bunch of X-Men and that British lady from Transformers 3 who was somehow worse than Megan Fox. Tossing the lot of them into a sea of vehicular violence in the middle of the desert seems like the perfect recipe to chase the summer blues of 2015 away.
The Story: Screw the Story, CAR CHAAAAASE
So what is Mad Max: Fury Road? Is it a remake? A prequel? A sequel?
Nobody has any idea, really, because all Miller has told us is that it's going to be a 110-minute-long car chase. He said in an interview: "I wanted to tell a linear story -- a chase that starts as the movie begins and continues for 110 minutes. ... In this crucible of very intense action, the characters are revealed." So, basically, it's just going to be one giant clusterfuck parade of cars tearing across the Australian outback, characters exploding in and out of existence, and flaming motorcycles pinwheeling off into the sky while a Tina Turner power ballad blasts our eardrums (hopefully).
Who needs dialog when there are stunt cars to smash?
Miller claims that the movie has tested well, and if that plot description is true, we can see why -- he's taken the best parts of The Road Warrior and just made that the entire goddamned movie.
Well, almost all.
The Production: So Awesome It Got More Money
After filming for Fury Road had already finished, the crew was reassembled for reshoots, which is normally a worse omen than finding out the film has been recast with Adam Sandler in a fat suit. But that is not the case with Fury Road. In point of fact, the studio thought the movie was too awesome, so they threw more money at Miller and told him to find a way to make two of the bigger action sequences even more awesome. The itinerary for the reshoots included something called a vehicle launcher, and while we have no idea what that is ...
... we assume the studio's exact words were, "We want the audience to shit themselves so hard that they can't even walk when the movie ends."
If that sounds crazy, check this out -- Miller went back to the bygone era of strapping stuntmen inside cars and flinging them through the air, performing 80 percent of the film's stunts without any CGI whatsoever. Instead of parking actors in front of green screens, he hiked everyone out into the Namibian desert and just filmed that shit.
"How attached are you to your arm, Charlize? I'd like this as real as possible."
Also interesting to note, the movie was filmed in order, which is incredibly rare. Normally shooting schedules are broken up according to the actors' availability and the availability of certain locations, and the movie is filmed in random bits and pieces that are put in the proper order during the editing phase. But, when your movie is one long car chase with almost no dialogue, it's easier to film it in sequence, even if that means some of the longest rehearsals of any of the actors' careers. Miller likened Fury Road to a ballet (if ballets involved shotguns, skull masks, and explosions), and we are not ashamed to say that we are super on-board for this particular ballet. We always felt Swan Lake could've used more car chases.
