‘Mad Max: Fury Road' turns 10 — it's still the best action movie of the 21st century
When thinking about 'Mad Max: Fury Road,' two quotes perfectly describe George Miller's 2015 masterpiece.
The first comes from an interview with Steven Soderbergh conducted by The Hollywood Reporter, where he can't explain how Miller pulled it off. 'I don't understand how they're not still shooting that film, and I don't understand how hundreds of people aren't dead,' said Soderbergh.
The second comes from Charlize Theron, who starred as Imperator Furiosa and has complicated feelings about the movie. 'I feel a mixture of extreme joy that we achieved what we did, and I also get a little bit of a hole in my stomach,' Theron told the New York Times. 'There's a level of 'the body remembers' trauma related to the shooting of this film that's still there for me.'
'Mad Max: Fury Road' is a stunning tour de force from a true visionary. The post-apocalyptic tale is also mired in controversy for the nightmarish shoot that resulted in fights, altercations, and utter chaos. The mayhem you see on screen reflects the madness occurring between takes.
'Fury Road' reintroduces audiences to Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy), the antihero and outlaw who spends his days navigating the dangers of the Wasteland. Max eventually forms an uneasy alliance with Imperator Furiosa, the top lieutenant of cult leader Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne).
Furiosa escapes the Citadel with Joe's five wives in a War Rig. After aligning with Max, Furiosa and Co. must fend off Joe and his War Boys in an action-packed chase across the desert.
After completing "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome' in 1985, Miller took a much-needed hiatus from the franchise. In 1998, Miller finally got an idea while crossing the street in Los Angeles. Per the New York Times, Miller said, 'What if there was a 'Mad Max' movie that was one long chase, and the MacGuffin was human?'
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Miller stuck to that vision when filming began in 2012. 'Fury Road' is one long chase movie — an action spectacle with breakneck pacing, sensational actions, grandiose explosions, and jaw-dropping practical effects.
This is a movie where dialogue takes a back seat to visual filmmaking. Max has less than 55 lines of dialogue (not counting Hardy's constant grunts), and yet everything you need to know about him is conveyed through his emotions and facial reactions.
Miller has refuted the rumor that 'Fury Road' didn't have a script. Miller relied on storyboards — about 3,500 — to execute his vision. Zoe Kravitz perfectly described the script in that New York Times piece as a 'really long comic book.'
When it came to shooting the action, practical effects were king. About 90% of the effects in 'Fury Road' were practical, an unfathomable feat considering how many action movies now shoot on studio lots in front of green screens. There is a myth that 'Fury Road' didn't use CG. Clearly, the film incorporated thousands of VFX shots to enhance, not weaken, the movie as a whole.
Speaking of those sequences, Miller likely wanted to give the audience a heart attack because once Furiosa and the Wives escape the Citadel, 'Fury Road' doesn't take its foot off the gas. The cars get faster, the music turns up, and the 'Wait, how did they do that?' moments appear every few seconds. Watching the pole cats swing through the air from vehicle to vehicle is as anxiety-inducing as it comes.
The race through the canyon makes 'The Fast and Furious' look like a children's video game. The entire third act is nearly a carbon copy of the first — Max, Furiosa, and Co. driving back to the Citadel. Yet it remains fresh and visually spectacular.
'Fury Road' winning six below-the-line Oscars felt like a surprise in the moment. 10 years later, it should have won every technical award.
'Mad Max: Fury Road' is chaotic, complicated, and confounding. I'm not talking about anything filmed during the two-hour runtime. The behind-the-scenes drama should be the basis of an HBO series. Thankfully, New York Times reporter Kyle Buchannon chronicled the entire making of 'Fury Road' in his excellent book, 'Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road."
The oral history chronicles the unbelievable miracle Miller pulled off to make this movie. I encourage everyone to read the book, even if 'Fury Road' as a movie doesn't fit your interests. From heated arguments and dangerous living quarters to brutal weather to unsafe filming conditions, the 'Fury Road' shoot had more explosions behind the set than in front of the camera.
Again, Buchanan's book covers most of 'Fury Road's' issues, but here are some standout moments. Hardy and Miller clashed many times, with the actor constantly pushing back at the director's notes. Miller got so frustrated with his star that crewman Mark Goellnicht overheard the director saying he couldn't stop thinking about Heath Ledger and if he got to play Max.
The elements played a huge factor, with many of the actors and crew constantly washing their eyes with saline due to the sand. Riley Keough, who played Capable, experienced hypothermia due to the harsh weather conditions of the Numbia.
Despite all that, the biggest issue on 'Mad Max: Fury Road' involved the feud between Hardy and Theron. The two stars did not get along, and that's the PG version. Hardy was reportedly very difficult to work with, and he would argue with Theron in the War Rig as the other actors sat and watched in the back seat. Theron compared that 'horrible' experience in the War Rig to 'two parents in the front of the car' arguing.
It all reached a heated climax when Hardy showed up three hours late to set, leading Theron to scream, 'Fine the f---ing c--- a hundred thousand dollars for every minute that he's held up this crew.' Even members of The Eagles would look at the fight between Hardy and Theron and think it's excessive.
Hardy, Theron, and Miller have all since expressed regrets about their actions. However, the contentious relationship did work in the movie's favor. The distrust between Max and Furiosa in the first half of the movie mirrors the real-life relationship between Hardy and Theron.
'Mad Max: Fury Road' was not the first great movie to experience a troubled production, and it most certainly won't be the last. The dysfunction only adds to the film's legacy.
The best compliment I can give 'Fury Road' is that it feels like a one-of-a-kind. It's a unique entry in the dystopian genre with a strong case for the best action movie of the 21st century. 'Fury Road' might be a 'Mad Max' movie, but watching the other three movies beforehand is optional, not a requirement.
Those first three movies are a proper trilogy about why Max went mad, what led to the disintegration of civilization, and how gas became the ultimate currency. 'Fury Road' is more concerned about the aftermath of humanity's decisions in the first three movies. How can humanity rebuild post-apocalypse?
Furiosa's inclusion gave 'Fury Road' a female protagonist, a first for the franchise. Theron's powerful performance as a woman fighting for freedom and rebelling against the patriarchy is right up there with Sigourney Weaver's Ellen Ripley for iconic action heroines. The females in 'Fury Road' also represent hope for the future, a foreign concept in a dystopian world.
It's no hyperbole to say that 'Mad Max: Fury Road' was one of the most difficult blockbusters to make this century. I don't envy any of the actors or crew members who had to experience this grueling shoot. Luckily for fans, the pressure of making 'Fury Road' made a diamond of a movie, one that continues to shine brightly 10 years later. What a lovely day, indeed.
Rent/buy 'Mad Max: Fury Road' on Amazon or Apple.
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However, it did come out to the public in 2013, and it is anachronistic in that it should not exist in our timeline. Initially, when we were making this episode, there would have been a different song. As we were exploring it, just felt like we were prioritizing the wrong thing, this timeline of events and when things would be available. Clearly, we're not in the same timeline as our universe, so we have some leeway. And that song felt so important. Because it was in the game, because it has so much association, not only for fans, but even for myself, we changed course. The thing that we thought we cared about, we ultimately didn't care about, and the emotional truth of the song was more important than the timeline truth of the world that we live in. No. When we were making the game, I knew that scene should exist. I didn't know where it goes. That was true for all the flashbacks. Even pretty late in production of the game, we were moving those flashbacks around. In talking about it with Craig, it's the first time I really thought about the time between seasons. So much of writing is set ups and payoffs, and we would have set certain things up that get paid off years later. That felt too long, especially because this season focuses so much on Ellie's journey and this emotional truth of what did she know? What didn't she know? To wait additional years until Season 3 will come out — or maybe even Season 4, it depends where all the events land and how many seasons we have — I was easily convinced by Craig that that would be too long. It was a day's worth of conversation of us wrestling with it. The way I work is, when a suggestion like that is made, I say, 'Let's play it through.' I just assume that it's correct, and then we play it through and not only talk about this season, but talk about the future seasons, and then say, does it make sense? If the answer is yes, we go with it. If the answer is no, we either keep wrestling with it until we find another solution, or we just go back to how it was in the game. [Long pause] That's right. We knew we had this Eugene mystery, and we had so many iterations on it of just what that sequence should be about. There were versions that had all this action and fighting and shooting infected, and much smaller versions. It went from me to Hallie to Craig, from me to Hallie to Craig. It just didn't feel right for a long time, until we landed on him lying to her about killing Eugene. and then everything just fell into place, as far as, like, Oh, this is how she'll know. It felt like such a dramatic way for her to figure things out. As far as shooting that scene, if no one knew the lie, what I like about that scene is he's being very considerate. Would you want to tell Gail that he wanted to see her, almost in this pitiful way, and I still had to put him down, because those are the rules, and that's the way to keep you safe? Sometimes you could buy the argument that the lie is better than the truth, right? But for Ellie, it wasn't, because of everything else that has come before, because she saw that he betrayed her trust. That meant more than just this moment, it meant that everything that Ellie was worried about, the survival guilt that she's felt all the way back to Season 1 of needing to justify Riley's death and Tessa's death and Henry and Sam and all these people who died along the way so that something good can come of it at the end. It's almost in that moment she realizes nothing good came out of it. That's not entirely true, but that's how she feels about it. So it was just important that all the actors knew the truth they're going into it, and for it to be genuinely shocking. If I may, I just want to sing Catherine O'Hara's praises. It was one of my favorite directing moments. In the scene, she slaps Joel, and then in his shame, he's supposed to take a few steps back. We were struggling with it. It just felt artificial. It felt rehearsed. Initially, there were no lines of dialogue for that little moment. I went to Catherine, and said, 'I think we need to do something else here. I don't know what. What if, like, his proximity to this body is somehow desecrating it now that you know the truth, and if you want, you could yell at him to get away?' And she's like, 'Oh, I'm not so sure. I like the beauty of there being no dialogue.' And I'm like, 'Please, just try it. If it doesn't work, we'll go back to the other version. But I always like experimenting, just shaking it up in some way.' So I asked her to yell to get away. I thought that would motivate Pedro [to step back]. Instead, she almost did the opposite. It was so beautiful. She goes inside [herself] and starts sobbing, and begs him to please get away in this very soft spoken voice. I'm like, Oh, my God, that's so much better than what I asked for. 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The first time I walked on set, I was in Joel's house with Hallie, my co-writer on the game and was the other co-writer on the show on this episode as well. We're like, look at this dining room! This is where in the game, Maria talks to Ellie and Dina, and it looks exactly the same. Every set felt like that. This [museum] set in particular, the day we're shooting this, I had two visitors from Naughty Dog, Arne Meyer, who is our heads of communication, and Alison Mori, who is my partner in running the studio. They got to see a part that we end up cutting from the episode, more in the dinosaur museum. I'm like, come with me, and we walk through this dark hallway with stars, and we got to the space capsule, and I'm like, 'Look at this.' I'm emotional, but I've been seeing it as it's been built. I look at them, and they both have tears in their eyes. This thing that we worked so hard to perfect in digital forms with pixels on a flat screen, now you could stand in it, you could go into it, you could touch it. All the buttons are working. The seats are real. They creak when you sit in them. It felt like we went into the game. It's this really wonderful feeling to know that this incredible crew that I worked with treated the source material with such reverence. It literally moved us to tears. This interview has been edited and condensed. Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Emmy Predictions: Talk/Scripted Variety Series - The Variety Categories Are Still a Mess; Netflix, Dropout, and 'Hot Ones' Stir Up Buzz Oscars Predictions 2026: 'Sinners' Becomes Early Contender Ahead of Cannes Film Festival
