A sequel was supposed to happen, with Charlize and Tom Hardy believed signed up, but George Miller was in litigation with Warner Brothers over an undisclosed sum and is 73, so it is doubted; asked directly, one host would absolutely love one, and IP lives forever.
Letting someone else direct seems inevitable but could not possibly be as good; names floated are Michaud (as transcribed), Jeremy Saulnier, David McKenzie and Michelle McLaren (as transcribed), since the first three films lacked Fury Road's frenetic pace and editing, yet nobody else speaks this cinematic language of frame rate, quick cutting and practical explosions, and Miller, like Martin or Tolkien, has been thinking about this mythology for most of his adult life since his first feature, Mad Max.
Did Max leave the Citadel? He shrinks into the crowd at the end, perhaps to become anonymous again or to find something elsewhere; he has never gotten over the tragic-hero curse that everything attached to him dies, so he likely wanders the wasteland again like Ethan in The Searchers, not right for society or capable of normal life, 'more of a bullet farmer' in the joke.
George Miller is weighed first, with a joke that Happy Feet was easily better and Babe and Babe 2 called excellent; The Road Warrior is named his best film, the one that laid the carpet for him to become a Spielbergian director who could do action and drama, and Lorenzo's Oil, about Susan Sarandon and Nick Nolte trying to cure their child and drawn from Miller's experience as a doctor, a fine tearjerker; because he never worked at the volume needed to stay in the mix, one host answers no for this film and names Road Warrior as Miller's apex.
Tom Hardy is called really complicated: Inception, with the Ames (as transcribed) character, is rated higher than Fury Road, Dunkirk and The Revenant come up, and Warrior is picked as the best he has ever been as a performer if not in fame, Tommy Conlon being a better version of Max in a largely silent physical performance.
Charlize is put to the table: two voices say no, then one says yes, placing this over the Oscar win for Monster, the Jason Reitman collaborations and A Million Ways to Die in the West; her shaved head meant she wore a wig in the Seth MacFarlane western comedy.
The dissent on Charlize is that Monster is her Apex Mountain, so her yes does not carry the table.
For Miller, a second host answers yes, this is Apex Mountain, even while agreeing The Road Warrior is the better film in story, characters and pacing: as an achievement it is almost unparalleled, a movie where you feel the physics in a near-fully-CG era, made from non-Marvel IP after all the struggles to get it made, a top-five action film that, like The Fugitive, grabs you and cannot be switched off once it starts; this yes stands against the earlier Road Warrior answer and is not resolved.
The Doof Warrior is easily at Apex Mountain, agreed with several 'easily's.
Pre-production began as early as 1997 and 2001 and 2003 shoots were delayed by September 11th and the Iraq War; Miller briefly considered a computer-animated version in 2007; iOTA's guitar weighed 132 pounds and shot real flames; the film was shot in sequence; a 120-day shoot in Namibia and Western Sydney wrapped 17 December 2012; Miller demanded colourful cinematography and beautiful art direction; John Seale came out of retirement; Eve Ensler consulted on the female characters
Fury Road sat in development hell with pre-production as early as 1997; attempts to shoot in 2001 and 2003 were delayed by the September 11th attacks and the Iraq War; Miller returned to it in 2007 after Happy Feet, briefly considered a computer-animated film, then went live action, which everyone agrees was the right choice; his filmography of Happy Feet, Babe, Babe Pig in the City and Lorenzo's Oil is called incredible, one of the most fascinating in movies.
iOTA, the Australian artist whose real name is given as Sean Hape, told Vice the guitar weighed 132 pounds and shot real gas-powered flames controlled by the whammy bar, which the hosts half doubt was verified; the movie was shot in sequence, from page one straight through, surprising given the complexity, and Charlize appears 15 or 20 minutes in after Max is captured and escapes.
Principal photography began on 26 June in Namibia, with work at Potts Hill and Penrith Lakes in Western Sydney; in October 2012 The Hollywood Reporter reported that Warner Brothers sent an executive to keep the production on track, and filming wrapped on 17 December 2012 after 120 days, a long shoot.
Miller's two stipulations were cinematography as colourful as possible to set the film apart from desaturated post-apocalyptic movies, after producers talked him out of an initial black-and-white concept, and art direction as beautiful as possible; the hosts doubt the second was achieved, calling it not a beautiful movie nor one rich in interior design, with only the 'Rose of Cabbage' (as transcribed) and the stilt-walkers at the now-defunct Green Place standing out.
The untreated YouTube clips of the car sequences show overcast days, off-white skies and light-brown rocks in shabby deserts, with the computer grade supplying the contrast; John Seale, who shot many of Miller's films plus The English Patient and The Talented Mr. Ripley, came out of retirement in his 70s at Miller's behest; and Eve Ensler, creator of The Vagina Monologues, was consulted to enhance the portrayal of the female characters.
The obvious recommendation is the action sequences, pinnacle work only three years after release; the other suggestion is everything Charlize is doing, a classical performance in which she is really the Mad Max of the film, clearly the star and the hero on something like a Joseph Campbell journey.
Furiosa is called an iconic action-movie performance by far, a character never seen before and a version of the Mad Max archetype: the lone, complicated but still moral person in a desert moral wasteland.
Max's quick flashbacks apparently point to a story set between Thunderdome and Fury Road that mirrors the first film, Max failing to save a woman and her child, but the film never shows it, so the emotional investment lands with Furiosa and the lie at the centre of her journey; her collapse into the sand when hope turns out to be an idea rather than a place is a shot Oscar montages will play for 30 years.
The action is the pick, with agreement that Charlize is magnetic: her introduction, a figure striding away from everything as if about to leave this world, the bionic arm, everything about her reads as a badass you cannot take your eyes off. — Jason Concepcion
Furiosa kneeing the metal grate on Tom Hardy's face, realising it hurts and doing it again because she needs to put him down is the badass moment singled out. — Micah Peters
She is called a great badass action-movie creation; another pick is George Miller's thesis, crafted 10 to 20 years before the film: could a film be an almost continuous chase, how much can the audience apprehend of character, relationships, world and backstory, and the MacGuffin should be human because we are all commodities now; this is one part highfalutin, one part genius, and the film-crit reading finds feminism, ecological collapse and the tolls of war inside a movie about Excitebikes throwing bombs onto a truck full of oil and women.
The dialogue works like the Kuleshov effect, cutting between people to convey feeling; watching with closed captions reveals revelations buried under exhaust sounds, such as why Max is so angry.
Three sequences are proposed to start, all more sequences than scenes: the War Boys coming after Imperator Furiosa, which introduces the Doof Warrior and Rictus Erectus and culminates in the sandstorm; the Bullet Farmer pursuing the war rig while it is stuck in the mud and the chain-up to the tree, which impressed on second watch; and the return to the Citadel with the pole cats and the Vuvillini's valiant defence; the slower dialogue-laden scenes are deliberately left out, and a joke calls Andres Biedrins the original Doof Warrior.
The canyon sequence, with Furiosa warning she will drop the pod and the signal to go when she yells, is added as the thing to show someone asking what makes the movie special: a director taking a wide-open vista and putting it into a rectangle so you know where everyone is and how long it takes to get there, pure visual filmmaking only ten or eleven people have mastered, and very John Ford-ish as the rig arrives at the canyon surrounded on all sides.
Any of the big chase scenes would do, and the Excitebike scene is off the charts. — Jason Concepcion
The film's spatial awareness is called underrated: a chaotic film usually leaves you asking where you are, who is doing what to whom and why the camera flipped, but here the cutting from the top of the truck to the cab to the action outside always keeps you oriented with a million things going on.
The first meeting of Max and Furiosa is a favourite over many rewatches: Max wakes face down in the sand, has his flashback, tries to bite Nux's hand off to free himself, then instead takes the sawed-off shotgun and carries Nux to the war rig, asks for water and for the chain to be clipped, and the wives yank him around on the chain during his fight with Furiosa; it is called one of the speaker's favourite action sequences ever. — Micah Peters
The way that fight begins after the sandstorm is playful Miller: what looks like a mountain in the distance is a close-up of Max buried in the sand, a shot compared to a Charlie Chaplin movie.
Picks are split: one goes Excitebike while also liking the crows sequence out in the mud; the return to the Citadel, with the pole cats jumping from vehicle to vehicle, draws 'same, same' from others, which without diarization could be two or three voices and possibly a majority; and another goes the first 30 minutes for the take-your-breath-away feeling that movies rarely accomplish these days.
Early on, the 33-minute stretch leading to the sandstorm blackout is flagged as probably the most breakneck sequence in movie history, and any rewatchable scene here is expected to run 18 minutes in what is essentially a six-scene movie.
