Uh.....
In all fairness I posted this before I started your podcast.
I'm so glad you guys loved it as much as I did. I'm a big Road Warrior fan, but everything seemed to indicate that this would be a costly misfire. After years of development hell, I was expecting an interesting disappointment at best. Everything about this movie just feels so confident. I'm still buzzing a week later. It might be one of those rare time I make a second trip to the theatre.
There could also be room for a night between Max's capture and Furiosa driving out.
Christien, I just listened to this, and I wanted to reassure (or warn?) you that you are not the only one whose mind went straight to NKOTB at the mention of "Step one."
My local art-house-y cinema, the Electric in Birmingham (the UK's oldest working cinema, they say, at 100+ years) serves La Fee absinthe in a traditional fountain. It's rather much diluted with water for my tastes, but it is an aniseed amusement while you're waiting for the film to start.
On the timeline of movies, Immortan Joe is actually the same actor as the Toecutter, so it takes place approximately 40 years after Mad Max. Max is eternal.
If you have the opportunity to see the black & chrome version in theaters, take it. In my opinion, Fury Road is the best action movie ever made, and the black & white (or chrome, as it were) version is even better.
There’s so much detail, from the warts/tumors on Immortan Joe’s back to the skull on the steering wheel, that is heightened to a level of beauty, it becomes something truly special.
I don’t think we’ll be seeing a sequel. :(
“Simply put, we are owed substantial earnings for diligent and painstaking work which spanned over 10 years in development of the script and preparation and three years in production of the movie. That hard work resulted in a picture which found wide acclaim globally. We would much prefer to be making movies with Warner Bros than litigating with them but, after trying for over a year, we were unable to reach a satisfactory resolution and have now had to resort to a law suit to sort things out.”
Warner Bros responded with a short statement saying: “We disagree and will vigorously defend against these claims.”
“I’m not done with the Mad Max story and I think you have to be a multi-tasker and there’s certainly another Mad Max coming down the pike after this,” he said. “We’re in preparation on that as well. It’s an interesting question, the idea of multi-tasking. I discuss this with other filmmakers and I think what happens to me is that when you’re working on one thing, and you get so distracted and focused on that one thing, it’s like a creative holiday to focus on the other one for a bit. It helps you achieve that objectivity, to look at the thing afresh each time and say, I thought I was doing this, but it doesn’t seem to be the case now.”
Extremely exciting to hear he’s about to start shooting his next film in early 2020.
I rewatched Fury Road last night and, as with most of my rewatches, I went in looking for at least one new thing I’d never noticed before (or forgotten: six of one, half dozen of another!). The thing was a small and brief but powerful and very deliberate image. It was a shot that can’t have been for more than a second long, and the specific thing is hardly a tiny flash or two. It’s so tiny I had to pause and skip through frame by frame to make sure I was seeing what I was seeing.
Max and Furiosa have finally but begrudgingly accepted each other so they can get past the mountain pass where Furiosa has made a deal for safe passage in exchange for fuel. The deal goes wrong as Immortan Joe’s forces arrive, so the pass is sealed, and the motorcyclists attack the War Rig, with Immortan Joe’s monster truck joining the fray after it gets past the sealed pass.
So now Max has given up all pretense of keeping the guns away from the women. Now Max and the women know they have to trust each other to get through this pitched firefight. And to remind of us of the stakes (“family squabble”, the Bullet Farmer will call it), during that pitched battle with the motorcyclists, George Miller zooms in on Angharad’s exposed midriff and we see shell casings bouncing off her pregnant belly.
Oh, what a lovely day!