“One of the things I’ve always been interested in exploring is that people are revealed by extreme situations,” says writer-director George Miller of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, the much-anticipated return to the iconic dystopian world he created more than 40 years ago with the seminal “Mad Max” films. An all-new original, standalone action adventure that will reveal the origins of the powerhouse character from Mad Max: Fury Road.
“Furiosa” is an epic story,” says producer Doug Mitchell. “When George—and with help of Guy Norris and 200 stunt people—steps out to do an action sequence… it’s the biggest one is a sequence of like 15 minutes, but it’s known in our world as a story sequence. What you get is a hugely orchestrated action symphony, a rock-and-roll disaster, which goes from the start of the first attack and it just keeps rolling. And it has the best of George’s skills of delivering action in a really, really interesting way.”
The franchise began in 1979 with Mad Max, and was followed by three sequels: Mad Max 2 (1981; released in the United States as The Road Warrior), Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985) and Mad Max: Fury Road (2015); Miller directed or co-directed all four films.
“Furiosa” stands on its own, but it’s also linked to the Mad Max saga, not only in its title, but because of the type of action and the way that it’s captured. We have vehicles that are new and unique. The War Rig is a stunning improvement, even though it’s historically before “Fury Road.” It’s a silver beast, a real monster. And we have an aerial attack going on, with a zeppelin-styled biker descending from the skies, throwing bombs on the War Boys who are defending this rig—the back end has a Bommy Knocker that spins, knocking bikers coming in attempting to mount it. It’s like a fortress, a ship carrying precious cargo, rolling through the desert, armed to the teeth with War Boys. Typical Mad Max with the stunt teams that were onboard—I’d say, we had like 52 characters, 200 stunties. It went on for about 78 days, we were shooting this thing, three to four setups a day. The temperament in shooting this thing, the endurance and skill of the stunt teams and how they managed it all… it was tremendous.”
As the world fell, young Furiosa is snatched from the Green Place of Many Mothers and falls into the hands of a great Biker Horde led by the Warlord Dementus. Sweeping through the Wasteland, they come across the Citadel presided over by The Immortan Joe. While the two Tyrants war for dominance, Furiosa must survive many trials as she puts together the means to find her way home.
In Conversation With George Miller (Director / Writer / Producer)
Genesis:
GEORGE MILLER: “Fury Road” is a story that happens over three days and two nights. And part of the task was to tell a story in which all the exposition was picked up on the run. In order to do that, we had to know so much about that world. So for instance, if we took the character Furiosa, we had to know where she came from, under what circumstances, what forged her as a person. Where did she learn her skills? How did she come to be in this position of conflict with the world, and how and what are her aspirations? So, we had to write the story of Furiosa before we even attempted to make “Fury Road.” We had the script of “Fury Road,” but we had to sort of deconstruct it and go back. We wrote “Furiosa” as a screenplay, and when we came to make “Fury Road,” we were able to share “Furiosa” with the cast and crew. “Furiosa” was not only about the character, it’s about the world from which she came. And everybody was able to benefit from that script. And we thought, “Hey, if ‘Fury Road’ can get some traction, eventually we’ll make this story.” It’s been nine years since “Fury Road,” and here we are. We’ve got the film.
The odyssey:
GEORGE MILLER: This is a story that follows somebody from the age of 10 to the age of 26. It’s this 15-year saga, an odyssey. And it basically runs right up into the events of “Fury Road,” almost literally. They could almost be joined together as two films. That film is a story that happened over three days and two nights. So, it’s a much more compressed time in which that story plays out. For those who haven’t seen “Fury Road,” it doesn’t make any difference. And for those who have seen “Fury Road,” it doesn’t make too much difference, except that you will understand all the antecedent forces and vectors that went into creating the events of “Fury Road.” They’re basically one long saga.
On the simplest level, it’s about someone who’s taken from home as a child and makes a promise to return home, whatever it takes. And she spends her whole life trying to get home. It’s an odyssey. Now, the purpose of an “odyssey” is not the actual events that happen so much as what’s happening to the soul of the protagonist. So, it’s about what happens to her in that attempt to get home and who she becomes—Furiosa.
Repetition of human behavior:
GEORGE MILLER: As human beings, wherever we are in time and space, we have the same patterns of behavior. And one of the most interesting things about working in the world of the Wasteland is that the films themselves allow you to do that. Even though the stories are set in some degraded future, basically we go back to behaviors that are at least medieval, or pre-medieval or neo-medieval, those at play in the dynamics of power structures, the dynamics between peoples, collectives of peoples and individuals. So, in a way, it’s forward to the past. And as we’re watching it in the present, we measure it against the current zeitgeist and the things that we’re experiencing in our time, because those patterns are basically the same. There’s a notion in technology that the future is here—it’s just unevenly distributed. And I think you could say that about how we are in the world even today. There are some pockets of human behavior which are very clearly futuristic. We’re anticipating where we may perhaps be even a century from now. But there are pockets of human behavior—as I’m talking now—which are very elemental and basically not very much different at all from the way people behaved in their cultures centuries or even millennia ago. That’s the spectrum of behavior that’s available to you in the Wasteland world.
The allegory of Mad Max:
GEORGE MILLER: It was very hard making “Mad Max,” because Byron Kennedy and I had no real experience—we’d never been on a film set before. At the time I’d thought, “I’m not cut out to make films and I don’t think we made the film we wanted to.” And then, to my surprise, it seemed to resonate around the world, particularly in countries like Japan, where they said things like, “Well, Mad Max is like a samurai.” In Scandinavia, “a lone Viking.” And the French, “a Western on wheels.” And that’s when I began to realize that these are allegorical stories in the same way that the staple of American cinema was the Western from the silent era certainly up into the ‘60s and ‘70s, arguably, even today. “Mad Max” was a Western on wheels, meaning that it was allegorical. By the time we got to “Mad Max 2,” I understood all these underlying dynamics and it certainly informed that film as much more of a mythological story. Max fell into that category of the heroic archetype. Having said all that, that’s one of the big attractions to these stories. That’s why they won’t let me go, because the world is so rich and fertile. It’s able to tick the boxes of so many of the requirements of what I believe is a good story.
So coming to “Furiosa.” One of the things I’ve always been interested in exploring is that people are revealed by extreme situations—whoever you are, whatever circumstance you’re in in the world, it’s those situations which tend to reveal who you are. And whoever we are as children, we have to find our own way of navigating the world. We have guides, we have our culture, we have our parents, we have our siblings, we have all the things that influence our behavior. But each individual is revealed by the way they come up against that. And I guess you could say that’s the essence of drama. And what better than to tell the story in this dystopian, post-apocalyptic world. That’s what really got me into this story, “Furiosa.” Furiosa is one of those children—and I’ve certainly known them—who, at a very young age, have tremendous resources, tremendous skills, and learn very quickly from their mistakes. They manage to find their way in the world without being overcome and destroyed. And I’ve always admired that. There are people I know who have gone through things and seem to overcome them and develop strengths that are incredibly impressive. And I find that very fascinating. And that’s why we told the story of Furiosa.
Action sequences and character:
GEORGE MILLER: Well, of course there are action sequences—I’m addicted to that. Film language, which is pretty much only 150-years-old, is a brand new language. It’s learned very quickly. And it’s a universal language—even little kids, wherever they are in the world, understand the syntax of cinema. And for me, action is pure cinema. Hence, I can’t help myself. That’s what’s really interesting to me, providing it serves the characters in the story. So of course, there’s action in “Furiosa,” there’s a lot of it and it’s different. I think if it just repeated what we did in “Fury Road,” then it would be seen as a cynical exercise—every time you see something basically repeating what was successful in the past, people become anesthetized to it. It has to have something very fresh about it. It has to be uniquely familiar. I think I can say that the action in “Furiosa” is uniquely familiar to “Fury Road.”
Miller penned the script with Mad Max: Fury Road co-writer Nico Lathouris. SEE biographies below
In Conversation With The Cast
The power of circumstance:
ANYA TAYLOR-JOY: In all of my initial conversations with George, there were a couple of key phrases that kept coming up. One was “Survival in extremis reveals the true essence of the person,” and that was kind of our guiding light. What is the true essence of each of these characters… because survival in extreme situations will reveal it. The other thing that he kept impressing on me was “Furiosa only needs to learn something once.” She learns her lesson, because in the Wasteland, unless you do, it’s not very forgiving—you don’t really get another shot at it. She is highly skilled, incredibly observant, and finds ways of making herself useful, and that gives her her own opportunity later down the line when she quickly realizes the hierarchy in the Citadel. She understands the best place for her to go to be near these incredible machines, like the War Rig. Geroge wanted me to learn about the mechanics and how these machines work—and I still say, every time I see the War Rig, knowing the things I learned, it takes my breath away.
The evolution of Furiosa:
ANYA TAYLOR-JOY: When I pick up Furiosa, in earnest, she has disguised herself as a boy, helping to build this War Rig, because she wants to hide herself within and stowaway. Her game plan is to collect supplies, and try to attract as little attention as possible. Stay quiet, because your voice would give away your gender; keep surviving long enough so that you have a shot once you’re out of here. And I think what you see in the sequence Stowaway to Nowhere, as George titled it, is epic in every sense of the word—I mean, we shot it over nine months, and that’s kind of epic. You get to see her acquired skills and you get to know her as this new incarnation through the course of an action sequence; that’s really how you get to know her again, because this is really the first time that she’s been allowed to be herself. It’s the first time she’s not hiding while surviving. There is no time to hide from that moment on. From the meeting of Praetorian Jack—who utterly disarms her, because he’s nice to her and gives her an opportunity, which is counter to everything in the Wasteland—she then rises up the ranks. You see her become a Praetorian, and I think in that moment of her life, she’s the most comfortable she’s been in a really long time. She has the deep love and respect of someone who she can actually trust to get the job done. I think Praetorian Jack is the only person that she trusts as much as herself. She knows that he has her back and will take care of her and that they as a team are better than she is by herself. That moment is interesting, because there’s a part of you that wants her to stay with him in the Citadel. But how could she ever forget her one reason for living, which is to return to the Green Place and fulfill her mother’s wish—what was a promise, an oath? I think it’s an interesting time to get to discover her as a young woman, aware of her skills and feeling comfortable and protected.
Dementus is…:
CHRIS HEMSWORTH: Dementus is a complicated individual. He’s a product of this world—the violent, harsh reality that is the Wasteland. He’s been manipulated and sculpted through his experience, and I think that experience was one of immense tragedy, fear, pain and loss. This is what this place is, and everything is so desperate and raw. It’s day-to-day survival. You’re not thinking about six months from now, two weeks from now… you’re thinking about how do I get through this one day, through the night, because everything and everybody around you has the potential to kill you. And so, he’s a violent individual. I believe, like a lot with that sort of dictator mentality, he has a tendency to public displays of violence to instill fear and exercise control within the ranks of the people. He operates that way with the people that he leads, but also with the warring tribes around. He’s a showman, and he thinks of himself as being some sort of sage, a wise spokesman for the Wasteland. Among his gang, there is a cult-like loyalty, and he certainly rules with an iron fist. But I hope people will sense a depth to him that—I don’t want to say that justifies his actions—but gives a little bit of an understanding as to why he’s the way he is and why he does such seemingly harsh, violent acts. I think in his mind it’s about survival. His attitude towards Furiosa, he’s toughening her up. He says that he’s doing it for her. Sure, it might be harsh and tragic, but she’s going to survive anything she faces going forward.
And then the relationship between them becomes very complicated. He begins on some level to see an innocence and a purity to this individual that is a representation of what he’s lost. There is something he thinks otherworldly about her, because she is from the Green Place, and I think deep down inside him a little bit of humanity is awakened. Maybe he thinks that she reminds him of some other time in his life, his childhood, his younger years, before he was brutalized himself. He becomes very intrigued who this individual is, fascinated, infatuated, and then it becomes an almost paternal relationship in his eyes. I can’t speak to how Furioso feels about him, but I think he sees it as his duty as a father figure to take care of her and prepare her for what’s to come. In his mind, he’s doing the right thing. The slippery slope of playing a villain is just to think of them as villainous. There’s a flamboyant sort of nature to this guy certainly, which was fun. George and I had many, many discussions—months of discussions prior to shooting—about who this guy once was, who he is deep down in the quiet places. In the end, each violent or brutal thing that he did, in his interpretation, would come from the right place.
Finding the voice:
CHRIS HEMSWORTH: Things come to you at different times with characters. I find some of them instantly leap off the page at you, and then others kind of take time to begin to grow. Little things land in your lap that you think, “This could be interesting or different, or fresh and truthful to the character.” I had a lot of time with this script prior to shooting, a lot more than I had with a lot of the films I’ve made. And for a long time I had no idea who he was. I got quite nervous in the lead up to it. I still hadn’t found the voice. Every time I tried to read the lines I thought, “It just sounds like me,” reminding me of Thor or another character. I wanted there to be something abrasive about him, something that was piercing, belligerent and obnoxious. And I was sitting in a park one day with my kids and watching seagulls fight over chips and the stuff the kids threw at them. And they just [sounding like a gull] Eer, eer, err at each other, and something about that kind of sat in my head. I’m not saying I based the whole character on a seagull, but that was one day.
And then another day, I was listening to the horse races, [as an announcer] “Coming down the track, going on the outside!…” And there was something that struck me about the nasality of the announcer’s voice ringing in my ear, which started to feed into the character. And I remember my grandfather had this out there kind of voice quality—but from an Australia 40 years ago. And so I looked at old Australian films, and listened to old interviews and just stole bits and pieces from a lot of places. And then about two weeks before we started shooting, I found the pitch for the voice and had to really work hard to keep it there. It just felt like someone wound up tight and tense. Everything was taut and sharp. I wanted to be as far as possible from the voice I developed for Thor with Kenneth Branagh, which was about being quieter and calming. I wanted it to be unnerving and unsettling. A few decibels above everybody else, almost like he’s short of hearing at times. There’s an obnoxious, aggressive quality to it. Like a seagull.
Furiosa and Praetorian Jack:
TOM BURKE (Praetorian Jack): At some point, and I can’t remember how this came up, but we were talking about a quote: the definition of an intellectual is somebody who knows there’s something more important than sex. We were riffing on it and said that the definition of an intellectual in the Wasteland is somebody who knows there’s something more important than survival, which I suppose is humanity, really. I think Jack has a sense of that. When he meets Furiosa, he immediately recognizes the embodiment of that, and she has this whole idea about somewhere she’s gonna go. He initially refers to that as a mirage when they’re making their pact. He says, “In a few years time, we’re free to chase mirages.” In the arc of their relationship, he comes to have a kind of faith in this place that she’s heading to, and he wishes to help her find it. At one point, it is very much about him wanting to be there with her. By the time we started filming, we were talking about it more like a guy wanting to walk a girl home, almost in some very simple way, however old-fashioned that sounds. So, I think he’s existing in this world—and it’s not an easy world to exist in—but he’s figured out what’s feasible. And I think she gives him a sense of a whole other life, which is huge.
The message:
TOM BURKE (Praetorian Jack): I think it’s as much about humanity as it is about brutality, but it’s about hope and taking a leap of faith with things. I had a line in one draft, something about two people can save the world—I think it was quite good that it went. Because they’re not trying to save the world, they’re trying to find a different one. I just thought there was something interesting and honest about the way they have to exist within the system they’re in. I guess that’s the sort of banality of evil that people talk about. I think that really grounds it. It’s kind of a fable—it has this heightened feel to it, but it feels very real.
In Conversation With Simon Duggan (Director Of Photography)
The film’s look:
SIMON DUGGAN: I knew “Furiosa” was going to be a much more diverse looking film. We still maintain the character of “Fury Road,” but because we are exposed to many other locations, environments and new characters, we had a much more varied looking story to tell. In “Fury Road,” the most common feel that we had to stick with was the look of the deserts and the Citadel—we saw a lot of the Citadel, but we only heard about the other locations in the story. We never visited them. All these other fortified locations are all connected, and they create a satellite around the Citadel.
Shooting “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” required an unprecedented level of collaboration between Panavision, ARRI and RED, the three biggest camera facilitating companies of the filmmaking world, as well as cooperation from many other companies from Australia and around the world. The camera package was built around the ARRI Alexa 65 system, but also included ARRI Alexa LF, RED V-Raptor, RED Komodo and GoPro cameras. 32 Cameras were utilized across both Units (with six different types requiring special support rigs for each)
In Conversation With Colin Gibson (Production Designer)
Worth in the Wasteland:
COLIN GIBSON: It’s one of George’s main tenets that if something is to survive, it has to have an innate worth. And that worth can be beauty. It can be mechanical wonder; it can be structure; it can be pragmatic, as this is the best way to kill the bastard who wants to kill you. But that beauty, that ornamentalism, that finding something and treasuring it, that basically gave rise to the salvage artist team that we used on the last film—and it’s almost the same team that we put back together again, with a few additions, this time around, because we are taking salvage. It’s got to be something worth saving… and then, we are finding the art in it. We are trying to make something worth saving, because we need to give ourselves a reason for why we ought or why we deserve to be saved. And of late, that’s become harder and harder to discover, or to make us feel like we deserve it. Sometimes, it seems our greatest attribute is self-delusion, and we need to try something else. We utilized the same theory as before and a lot of the same systems, and built ourselves stockpiles of things that we thought we could use, and then tried our best to use them.
Nearly 200 extras were used in a riot sequence that takes place at Gas Town, as well as a sequence set at the Citadel once it comes under Dementus’ rule. A Bullet Farm sequence with Furiosa and Praetorian Jack trading resources employed 149 extras; 100 extras populated another Citadel sequence, when Furiosa returns; and 92 were utilized in the Citadel Garage, when Furiosa sees Praetorian Jack for the first time. 41 stunt doubles were used on the film. The stunt department employed nearly 200 performers to execute the minutely-orchestrated onscreen mayhem. Stowaway to Nowhere took 78 days over nine months to capture the 197 shots in the set piece. There are 52 unique stunt characters in Stowaway.There were 13 major stunt sequences overseen by action designer Guy Norris, stunt coordinator Tim Wong and five sequence coordinators. The logistics and day-to-day running of the stunt department were managed by 11 people (seven in Action Unit, four in Main Unit).
In Conversation With Andrew Jackson (Visual Effects Supervisor)
Verisimilitude:
ANDREW JACKSON: All visual effects is about finding really good reference from the real world. If that’s the style of the work that we’re doing, which is grounded in reality, then it’s all about reference. And you’ve got to find really good reference. You’ve got to match that—you’ve got to look at the real world and make sure that the work that we do feels real. That was the same on “Fury Road” and on this film… and on all the other films that I do, because that is really essentially the style of work that I do. I’m not a person who works on fantasy films, or films with monsters. I’m very much based in the real world. That’s the style of the work that I tend to do.
Then versus now:
ANDREW JACKSON: Obviously, the tools have progressed a lot and everything is just that little bit more real. I think probably one of the biggest areas for me that has changed is the effects of fire, water, dust and smoke, which used to be quite a challenge to get them to look entirely convincing. Nowadays, it’s just something we don’t even think about, matching existing objects and capturing an existing vehicle or a person. The way that we capture the images and turn them into a 3D asset is very straightforward. They look completely real. There’s no questioning that. That’s certainly come a long way. It feels like everywhere there are areas that have improved incrementally—the tools have all improved over time. And it’s been ten years, so there have been considerable improvements. There are quite a lot of scenes where we’re either replacing or augmenting vehicles. And quite a few scenes where we’ve just got the CG vehicle, because it’s just more straightforward—it does what we want it to do. The technology is so good for matching, especially if there’s a real vehicle that exists and it’s been photographed and scanned correctly, then we can make an exact replica of that. And the effects with dust, sand and particles, they’re so good. The combination of those two things is completely convincing.
A native of Australia, GEORGE MILLER (Director, Writer, Producer) began his professional life as a doctor and detoured into filmmaking as a writer, director and producer. Miller made his feature film directorial debut with the international success “Mad Max,” which he also co-wrote. The film spawned three successful sequels: “Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior,” “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome” and “Mad Max: Fury Road,” which brought his iconic post-apocalyptic title character back to the big screen and introduced the world to Furiosa. The film grossed more than $380 million worldwide and garnered six Academy Awards.
Miller also won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film, among numerous other accolades, for the smash hit “Happy Feet”. A five-time Oscar nominee, Miller garnered nominations for Best Picture and Best Directing for “Mad Max: Fury Road”; Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay for his work as a producer and writer on the breakout hit “Babe”; and received his first nomination for Best Original Screenplay for the moving drama “Lorenzo’s Oil.” Additional film credits include “Happy Feet Two,” “Babe: Pig in the City,” “The Witches of Eastwick” and most recently, “Three Thousand Years of Longing,” starring Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba, among many others.
Miller serves as a Patron of the Sydney Film Festival and the Australian Film Institute. He served as President of the 69th Cannes Film Festival in 2016. In 1996 he was awarded the Order of Australia for distinguished service to Australian cinema and, in 2009, he was honored with the French Order of Arts and Letters.
On the small screen, Miller directed and executive produced the television miniseries “The Dismissal,” which broke all rating records in Australia, and he also produced the television projects “Bodyline,” “The Cowra Breakout,” “Vietnam,” “The Dirtwater Dynasty” and “Bangkok Hilton.”
NICO LATHOURIS (Writer) has enjoyed a long and successful career as an actor, director, and dramaturg, contributing to literally hundreds of screen hours of popular, award-winning Australian film and television.
He first worked with George Miller early in both their careers when Lathouris played the role of Grease Rat in 1979’s “Mad Max.” Beginning with six-time Oscar winner “Mad Max: Fury Road,” his collaboration with Miller as both writer and dramaturg on the Mad Max Saga continues to explore its world across an array of media, including the “Mad Max” videogame and a New York Times bestselling graphic novel, “Mad Max: Fury Road.” Additionally, he collaborated with Miller to tell the story of Geoffrey Bardon and the Papunya Art Movement in the novella The Hidden.
Lathouris is one of the only contemporary artists to be credited with the role of dramaturg, whose task is to interpret and communicate the fundamentals of action across the entire creative process in collaboration with both onscreen and behind-the-scenes talent. Though his career in the arts spans 50 years—encompassing directing and producing for theater, film and television, cinematography, film editing and acting—his most recent focus has been on script editing, screenwriting and dramaturgy. His film credits as a screenwriter and creative producer include the Turkish-produced war drama “The Last Post” (“The Haunted House”) and the improvised dramatic short “Lost in the Woods.” More recently, he served as dramaturg on Miller’s “Three Thousand Years of Longing.”
As an actor, Lathouris was nominated for two Australian Film Institute Awards, including Best Supporting Actor for his role in Michael Jenkins’s “The Heartbreak Kid,” on which he also served as the dramaturg. His numerous credits as a dramaturg also include “Heartbreak High,” “Wildside,” “Blue Murder,” “Looking for Alibrandi,” “Yolgnu Boy,” “Head Start” and “Young Lions.”
A graduate of Australia’s National Institute of Dramatic Art, with a post-graduate diploma in experimental theater, as well as a post-graduate diploma from Swinburne Film and Television school, Lathouris studied civil engineering at the University of New South Wales before moving into the arts.
