If the filming Furiosa turns out to be anything like its predecessor’s production, Taylor-Joy, her castmates, and the crew should be prepared to get their hands dirty and go above and beyond. But it’s important to remember that, while the making of Fury Road was fraught, the final product turned out to be a modern classic and one of the best action movies of all time.
Furiosa Isn’t Mad Max: Fury Road 2
At a press conference for the film earlier this year, Miller commented that Furiosa’s story will take place over “many years” as opposed to Fury Road’s, which was set over the course of a few days. Most of Miller’s comments thus far have indicated that he isn’t looking to outdo Fury Road but rather make a new style of movie that stands on its own, telling the Los Angeles Times, “You’re not looking for more, you’re looking for it to be as good as it can be. You’re definitely looking to not repeat what you’ve just done and you are looking to make it, if you like, uniquely familiar. It’s got to be its own thing.”
It’s encouraging to hear that Miller isn’t looking to simply make a bigger, badder version of Fury Road, but not surprising from a director who has often sought to experiment with each new installment in the franchise. As he told LA Times, his condition for making Mad Max sequels has always been to not just make more of the same.
“After I made the first Mad Max all those years ago, I didn’t want to make another Mad Max film,” Miller said. “Then I made a second one. And for me, personally, it was on the condition that I was able to overcome all the mistakes that I thought I learned from the first film. So the second film had to be different from the first. So it was a different film in tone, in style and everything. The only thing really in common was that it was Mel Gibson. The third film, the same, and that was Thunderdome. They had to be different.”
Miller faced a similar challenge when setting out to work on Fury Road almost 30 years after the release of 1985’s Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, a film that is notably different in tone and setting from its more beloved predecessors.
“I remember on Fury Road, that had to be different again. People were saying, ‘Oh, can you make it like Road Warrior? Road Warrior was really the best of those films,’” the director said of the pressure to just play his greatest hits. “And I thought, ‘Well, wait a minute, that was 30 years ago. Everything’s changed. If we were just to go back and I’m doing a remake of that film, we’d be fools.’”