Accelerate. Decelerate.
The atmosphere on the set of George Miller’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga can be defined in near entirety by these two kinetic states. Here on the barren flats of Broken Hill, New South Wales, engines rev against the ancient silence, starting and stopping as Miller’s crew runs through vehicle prep. Every time an engine is pushed to its limit, the set feels flushed with a dose of organized chaos. It energizes, invigorates. But, as the pistons slow and the land returns to its natural state of quiet, a certain tension remains. Anticipation builds, imbuing cast and crew with a heightened connection to the movie being made, to the story being told.
Whether the circumstances are calculated or organic (or both) is beside the point. What matters is the creative buzz that this approach produces. Its effect shows in the work of Miller’s artists and artisans. A massive War Rig looms above the desert sands, meticulously retrofitted with all the gloriously grease-stained bravado of the infamous “Wasteland” aesthetic. Up ahead, mechanics work on a similarly souped-up muscle car. A team of skilled hair and makeup artists toil tirelessly on the film’s two leads, while the stunt team rehearses for another day of crashing, rolling and revving. And at the center of it all, the mastermind stands calm, seemingly at home in the midst of such structured madness.
“I think all films, one way or another, are allegorical,” says Miller, the beginning of an answer to a question I’ve posed about the origins of his Furiosa story. “As human beings, wherever we are in time and space, we have the same patterns of behavior. Even though the Mad Max stories are set in some degraded future, we still go back to behaviors that are medieval or pre-medieval. In a way it’s forward to the past, and as we watch it in the present, we measure it against the current zeitgeist and the things we experience in our time.”
Miller’s previous film, the brilliant Mad Max: Fury Road, is littered with moments capturing the fateful balance between acceleration and deceleration. Consider the film’s opening: Max Rockatansky scurries into his vehicle after relieving himself and drives off into the desert. Silence. And then, a hoard of War Boys rips onto the screen, hot on his tail. The effect is gripping and visceral—gasoline-fueled mayhem made all the more effective by the heavy quiet that precedes it. It seems Miller has unearthed a certain magic in the cinematic commingling of these two principles, both onscreen and behind the scenes.
“On the simplest level,” Miller continues, “Furiosa is about someone who’s taken from
home as a child, makes a promise to return, and she spends her whole life trying to get home. It’s an odyssey. Now, the purpose of odyssey is not the actual events that happen, so much as what’s happening to the soul of the protagonist. It’s about who she becomes.”
With Furiosa—an origin story for the heroine on equal footing with Mad Max in Fury Road—Miller needed to find an actor who could embody the heroine in her teenage and developmental years without sacrificing any of the character’s inherent grit. Enter, Anya Taylor-Joy.
“It was mid-lockdown and I got a text from a filmmaker that I’ve worked with, Edgar Wright, who said George Miller wanted to talk,” Taylor-Joy recounts, as she finishes up in wardrobe. “My whole body felt electrified. George and I had a FaceTime, and he was asking all of these slightly cryptic questions: ‘How good are you on a motorcycle? Are you willing to do your own stunts?’ Eventually, he explained that he was doing a prequel to Fury Road, the story
of Furiosa, and asked if I’d mind auditioning for it. He wanted me to do a speech from the movie
Network, the ‘Mad as Hell’ speech. It’s essentially an angry plea from a news broadcaster demanding that people stand up and fight for what’s right, because the world that they live in is so diabolical.”
I ask Taylor-Joy how it felt to learn she’d landed the part. “I was alone in my apartment in Belfast,” she recalls with a smile. “I ran around the whole apartment screaming.”
Shouldering the reputation of such a revered character would be no small task. With a bevy of stunts and epic spectacle ahead, Joy plunged into preparation for the role. Producer Doug Mitchell had a front-row seat to the transformation stage of her process.
“She jumped in long before pre-production,” says Mitchell. “She’s not a big muscular person, so she had to go through very strict and heavy training. She had five trainers – personal trainers, action trainers, fight trainers, motorbikes, cars and so on. She worked with all these different professionals and seemed to really enjoy it. She made a huge commitment, and I think she gives a tremendous performance in the role.”
Miller seconds Mitchell’s sentiment: “The world of Furiosa is very laconic. Words are used as a form of pageantry. They’re not recreational, they’re simply there to communicate essential information. These characters don’t say much, so they have to say a lot simply by being present in front of the camera. Anya has that in spades.”
Furiosa’s nemesis—a twisted demagogue of the Wasteland known as Dementus—is the charismatic foil in her quest for homecoming. As Miller describes him, “Dementus is a warlord who falls into the same pattern as many historical characters: Genghis Khan, Hannibal, the people who marauded across a great vast land, absorbing all its resources in order to conquer. That pattern has repeated itself over and over throughout history.”
To portray the mercurial yet smooth-talking antagonist, Miller turned to fellow Australian and international superstar Chris Hemsworth. “Chris is incredibly considerate about the world,” says Miller. “Very observant, very self-aware. I asked him to read the screenplay, and he understood the character straight away. He not only knew what he had to do to achieve the character, but he understood very much how it fit into the context of the whole story.”
“Complicated individual,” says Hemsworth, describing his character in the film. Today is the actor’s first on set. We speak in the makeup trailer as Hemsworth’s makeup designer, Matteo Silvi, fits a beak-like prosthetic over his nose.
He continues: “Dementus is a product of this world, this violent reality of the Wasteland. He’s been manipulated and sculpted by this experience, an experience of immense pain and loss. But that’s what this place is, you know? Everything is so desperate, and it’s all about day-to-day survival. There’s a depth to him that I hope people see. Not that it justifies his actions, but it does give you an understanding as to why he commits such harsh, violent acts. I think in his mind, it’s about survival.”
Watching the transformative process of the prosthetics work is something to behold. The nose itself is not oversized or exaggerated in any way, but on Hemsworth’s face, the subtle variation goes a long way. It’s this kind of skilled, experienced craftsmanship that has helped separate the franchise from its action counterparts. The devil is—and always has been—in the details.
“One of George’s main tenets is that if something is to survive, it has to have an innate worth,” says Production Designer Colin Gibson. “That worth can be beauty. It can be mechanical worth, it can be structural. It can simply provide the best means of killing the bastard who wants to kill you, but it has to be something worth saving.”
This philosophical approach to detail and design is perhaps what makes Miller’s Wasteland so viscerally engaging. Knowing that no effort has been spared in its creation, everything onscreen becomes imbued with great meaning (both obvious and abstract). I can’t help but notice that, when asked a question, most of Miller’s crew has responded in this way. I jot down notes that later read like sage proverbs (“The future is here, it’s just unevenly distributed”). The philosophical seems to be top of mind, paired with an absence of any and all superficiality. It would seem that Miller’s thoughtful approach is as equally effective as it is infectious.
As production wraps for the day and the crew begins breaking down the set, I meet with Miller for what I assume will be a quick farewell. Instead, he seems keen to revisit my question from earlier: what inspired the Furiosa story? His interest doesn’t appear to stem from any obligation to give the right answer, but from an urge to find the true answer.
“It had to start young, with the raw material of who a person was. Furiosa is one of those children, and I’ve certainly known them, who at a very young age have tremendous resources, tremendous skills. And it’s not as though one day someone comes along and anoints them as adults. Much of the time, they don’t have the nurturing that other children do, yet they manage to find their way in the world without being destroyed. I’ve always admired that. There are people I know who have gone through things, overcome them and developed strength. It’s part of emerging as a human being. That’s very fascinating to me, and that’s why we told the story of Furiosa.”
The question of allegory returns to the forefront of my mind, ignited by the substance of Miller’s words. Acceleration and deceleration. Moments of pain and moments of love. Green Places of peace and Wastelands dominated by violence. But, the point of allegory is not translation, just as the point of odyssey is not exposition. It’s about the inner journey, measured against the experience of living in our time. In this light, I cannot help but read a warning in the measure of Miller’s work. How quickly did Furiosa’s former world sink into the sands of the Wasteland? What will we become?
I thank the director for his thoughtful response. “I know it’s a long answer,” says Miller, “but you’ll be able to trim it up.”
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga – WB Owned Story
