George Miller on how ‘Furiosa’ provides a template for surviving the apocalypse
They also followed the same ecological path that informed the first film. Miller recalls that the oil crisis of the 1970s severely affected the Australian city of Melbourne. Finally, only one gas station in the city remained open for business. As the lines grew longer and tensions continued to rise, “it took 10 days for the first shot to be fired,” Miller said.
“It wasn’t shot at anyone,” he hastened to add, “We don’t have a gun culture in Australia.” Still, the seemingly nonviolent incident stuck with him. If it only took 10 days for a gas-related shooting to occur, then “what will happen in a hundred days?” he said he thought. “What will happen in a thousand days?” The Crazy Max The movie tries to answer that question.
Man’s eternal struggle to secure and protect resources provided the seed for the original 1979 film, with the roving hordes of Hannibal and Genghis Khan inspiring some of the unlikely visuals. its most indelible form—mobile groups have “consumed everything before them.” But because Miller’s army was supplied with fossil fuels instead of elephants or horses, we’re back to the problem of scarcity. (Electric cars do not operate in Crazy Max universe, because “you can’t charge them anymore.”)
While Miller’s most recent Crazy Max film shares the DNA of the first film, 1981 Street Fighter, and Tina Turner–starring Mad Max outside Thunderdome, The director admits a major development happened between the release of the third film in 1985 and 2015, when Road rage debut globally acclaimed. “The biggest change in cinema after sound was the rise of digital,” Miller said, quote Jurassic Park is the film that opened the era of digital effects.
Miller dips his toe into those waters with the pig fairy tale Honeywhich he composed and produced, then started working on it happy feet, The 2006 penguin story captivated Miller his first Oscar, for the best cartoons. “Almost at the same time, I thought, Oh, these tools…we can apply [them] to action movies or stories like crazy max,”Miller said. “We can do things we could never dream of before.”
An indelible image from Buster Keaton’s 1926 action comedy, General, announced a memorable scene in Outside Thunderdome. Advances in technology have allowed Miller to take advantage of the moment to draw logical conclusions in Angry Road, something that could not be filmed safely before the advent of digital. “Cinema, like every art or every human endeavor—has a kind of cultural evolution. One thing is built on another,” he said.
