First Official Look + Images for Mad Max: Fury Road!

[biolumen]

JoBlo's take on the apparently 6 minute sizzle reel.

Comic Con: Mad Max: Fury Road panel with George Miller!

Jul. 26, 2014by: Eric Walkuski

Let's not mince words: MAD MAX: FURY ROAD looks amazing. Warner Bros. showed off a brilliant extended trailer for the George Miller film today in Hall H to a rapturous response. The film, described as being in the same vein as ROAD WARRIOR, appears to have cost about $8 billion if my eyes are to be believed. George Miller was in attendance, but stars Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron were not (although Charlize sent a nice little video message championing Miller at the front of the panel). Here's what went down…

- First there was an awesome tribute to the previous three MAD MAX movies; just great footage from all three rolled into one splendid trailer. Warner Bros. would do well to release this online at some point.

- Miller came out and spoke about revisiting the franchise. He said he had the story in his head for a while and it just wouldn't go away. That said, years ago he never would have imagined that he'd actually get to make it.

- He's always loved chase movies because it's the purest form of cinema. FURY ROAD is essentially one long chase sequence.

- 7,500 storyboards were apparently drawn up for the film; it was basically the way Miller wrote the screenplay. He said there aren't many words spoken in the film, people only speak when they have to. This is primarily a story told in pictures.

- Miller describes the movie as a western on wheels. Not unlike the previous films, there's no law or honor, just primal violence and survival.

- "For some reason, I just love wrecking cars," Miller said.

- Chris Hardwick made a crack about Mel Gibson "really turning into Mad Max." Miller, a bit taken aback by the joke, went on to say there's an element of danger to every charismatic person. He compared Hardy to Gibson in an offhand way, saying he can be extremely lovable, but sometimes he's like watching "a big wild animal" in that you don't know what you're going to get from him at any given moment.

- Charlize plays a character named Furiosa; Max gets swept up in her story, even though, as always, he just wants to be on his own.

And then the trailer. I'll attempt to just highlight the visuals that stood out to me the most, but honestly there was just so much going on in this preview that it was dizzying. I wrote down words like "fire tornado!" "lightning!" "two-headed lizard!" "crashes" "Nicholas Hoult WTF?!" and so on; it was at least six minutes long. Bear with me.

- Trailer begins with a two-headed lizard running toward Max, who has long hair and looks as wild as ever; it seems as though he's fiddling with a radio. He stomps on the poor thing.
- Max says in V.O. "My world is fire and blood."
- The villain is a badass-looking beast called "Immortan Joe" - he's played by Hugh Keays-Byrne who happened to be in the first MAD MAX as "Toecutter." He's got wild hair and a strange breathing mask that covers the lower half of his face. A very intense dude indeed, he appears to be on the hunt for Theron's character.
- Max is captured by a roving gang (after they run his car off the road). In one sequence he's bound, shaved and tattooed by the savage-looking folks.
- Naturally, there look to be about 200 car crashes in the film, all of them accomplished with practical effects. As in the other movies in the franchise, every car has been outfitted in elaborate ways to survive the landscape, so if you're a fan of the vehicles in ROAD WARRIOR you'll not be disappointed here.
- One of the major set pieces in the film includes massive tornados, as cars attempt to avoid getting sucked into them. A couple do, of course, and they fly and crash through the air in operatic fashion. There's heavy CGI here, so don't believe the rumor that everything will be done practically. It looks impressive as all get-out though.
- Nicholas Hoult's character is clearly a total maniac. During the aforementioned tornado sequence, he drives a car while Max hangs off the back of it and begins spray painting his own face while driving like hell and screaming, "What a lovely day!" Don't ask me what that's all about, but it was bizarre in the extreme.
- Max evidently turns the tables on Hoult's character, as we see him carrying his unconscious body through a desert.
- Many, many shots of vehicles driving through the desert, many explosions, many crashes. Can't stress enough just how many damn car crashes there will be in this movie.

To be perfectly honest, there was so much more carnage but I can't even recall it all. It really does appear as though the film is one non-stop bundle of carnage and excitement, and there wasn't a single thing I didn't like about what I saw.

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD hits theaters in May 2015. it's simply not fair that we have t wait so long.

http://www.joblo.com/movie-news/comic-c ... miller-890

[biolumen]

Devin Faraci's take.

Published July 26, 2014 by Devin Faraci

SDCC: MAD MAX: FURY ROAD Debuts Synapse-Searing Footage

This movie looks INCREDIBLE.

I don't even know how to describe the Mad Max: Fury Road footage that screened in Hall H at Comic-Con this morning. It was a fairly quick-cut montage that sketched the basic outline of the story but also get a sense of the practical, brutal and inventive action that is going to burn up movie screens next year.

The footage began with a two headed lizard scampering across the sand to Max, who stands with his back to the camera. Max stomps on the lizard, saying in voice over "My world is fire." And then a chase begins, as maniacs in dune buggies explode his Interceptor and capture him. His long hair is shorn, he is foribly tattooed on his back and he is placed in chains at the front of a car with a cage over his face. And then they drive off.

That's where Max starts the movie, it seems, and along the way it gets fucking nuts. There's an extended sequence where Max, chained to the back of a car, is fighting a huge white painted dude while in a chase inside a fucking tornado swarm; other cars get sucked up into the funnels and explode bodies. The driver of his car takes a huff of spraypaint, fills his vehicle with gas and lights a road flare.

The Hughes Keyes-Byrne character, The Immortan Joe, is unreal looking, with flowing white hair and a menacing skull mask. He's a maniac. Charlize Theron is a lithe killer introduced sniping guys off motorcycles at a distance, leading a group of beautiful women. And the cars! The chases! There are scenes with crazed post-apocalyptic maniacs on bending poles attached to speeding vehicles, and they swoop in from above to attack other cars. People fall in front of trucks and explode. Max says one of his sixteen lines in this footage (sixteen lines confirmed by George Miller!).

It's largely practical, it's all huge and it's as imaginative and exciting as The Road Warrior. This looks like the real sequel to The Road Warrior we wanted back when Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome came out. This footage thrilled me, had me laughing and cheering at the brutal and senseless violence and gave me that classic Mad Max feeling: did they actually kill guys when making this absolutely beautiful mayhem?

http://badassdigest.com/2014/07/26/sdcc ... g-footage/

[biolumen]

Slashfilm's take.

‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ Footage Debut Triumphs in San Diego [Comic Con 2014]

Posted on Saturday, July 26th, 2014 by Russ Fischer

Warner Bros. publicly unveiled the first footage from Mad Max: Fury Road today in Hall H at Comic Con, and I wish we could just show you what the studio showed today. Ideally, you’d want your screen to open up to IMAX size to watch this new Mad Max footage, because it is staggeringly huge. Director George Miller described the film as being right in line with his three previous Max films — “a very simple allegory, almost a Western on wheels.”

But there’s nothing simple about the footage we saw. It may not have much dialogue, and it really is a car chase… but saying it is “just” a car chase is to wildly undersell what Miller has made. This trailer featured what appears to the the ultimate car chase, starting with the DNA of The Road Warrior, but then opening up into incredible vistas and blasts of action that go far beyond what Miller has put on screen in the past. It was incredible to see.

Update: We’ve got four character posters for the film, which you’ll find below.


Taking the stage early in the panel, Miller explained his desire to create an extended chase scene. “The story popped in my head and just wouldn’t go away. I love chase movies; they’re the purest form of cinema. I wanted to make one long extended chase, and see what we could pick up about the characters on the way.”

This film has so little dialogue that Miller didn’t even write a script for the movie. Rather, he did a series of 3500 storyboards to write the film, in order to map it out visually. “Even though this is set in the future,” he said, it is a ragged on in which we have “gone back to an elemental form of behavior. There’s no rule of law.”

The appeal of the spartan story, and the Western, is that these can be “very spare and clear movies.” More to the point, “you can get away from all the clutter. And for some reason I just love wrecking cars.”

Miller’s comments were thoughtful and hopefully will be expanded into an eventual blu-ray commentary when the film has done its theatrical run. But the greatest effect came from playing some of the movie.

The screened footage opens with that poster shot of Max, back to the camera, up on a plateau with his car nearby. A lizard crawls into the foreground, and turns its head to reveal two heads. We hear a radio broadcast talking about water wars as Max stomps on the lizard, and eats it. “My name is Max,” we hear in voiceover, “my world is fire and blood.” He hears something, dives into the car and takes off. And in rapid succession, an angry line of vehicles powers after Max.

From there, it’s madness. Max is captured and tortured, with words carved into his body. He’s eventually fitted with a metal face mask and mounted on the front of a vehicle that is part of one of the chase sequences. There’s a villain with a skull-ish face mask (seen below, played by Hugh Keays-Byrne from Mad Max) who seems to be calling the shots, and a number of figures with faces and bodies painted white. Nicholas Hoult seems to be among them. (Update: he is, as seen in his poster below.)

In one location we see walls painted with bloody text: “ Who killed the world?” and “We are not things.” The conflict seems to be over a set of women in white, who are protected by Charlize Theron.

And from there, the chase is really on. Cars race forward through HUGE storms. A set of vehicles is pulled up into a tornado. Cars explode high in the air. Max struggles through this sequence, still with the metal prison mask over his face, until he finally pries it off his head in a painful sequence.

There’s more, but it’s a bit ridiculous to write out the effect of scenes that were explicitly designed as purely visual storytelling. We’ll present footage from the movie as soon as possible. In the meantime, here are the four character posters.

http://www.slashfilm.com/mad-max-fury-r ... -con-2014/

[biolumen]

Alex Billington's take.

Go Mad! See Four Badass 'Mad Max: Fury Road' Character Posters

by Alex Billington
July 26, 2014

Only the mad survive! Aside from Interstellar, the best footage I've seen at Comic-Con 2014 (so far) was for George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road. This movie has been in the works for a very long time, and will finally be out in theaters next summer (May 2015). The footage shows an epic scope and some incredible, amazing, unbelievable (and supposedly practical) vehicle/car action. One scene shows them driving into a massive sandstorm, with tornadoes that tear some of the cars apart before they burst into flames. It looks insane, but insane in every good way possible. A new set of character posters have debuted - see them below.

Brian Truitt ✔ @briantruitt
Follow
Mad Max looks INSANE. Like the best kind of INSANE. As if a meth lab exploded all over a hot rod flick. #sdcc
7:45 AM - 26 Jul 2014

robertliefeld ✔ @robertliefeld
Follow
I could not possibly begin to describe the amazing footage I just witnessed for Mad Max:Fury Road. It's stunning-Miller strutting his genius
7:44 AM - 26 Jul 2014

ErikDavis @ErikDavis
Follow
FURY ROAD footage was massive. Highlight was car chase into a massive dust tornado w/ Max strapped to the hood of a car as hostage #SDCC
7:47 AM - 26 Jul 2014

Peter Sciretta ✔ @slashfilm
Follow
Mad Max Fury Road looks like the next level of the evolution of whats possible in a cinematic car chase sequence. amazing. #ComicCon

Before we get into more of the artwork, I have to say - this is not just hype, Mad Max: Fury Road looks like an extraordinary action movie. Just take a look at some of these tweets from colleagues at the Comic-Con Hall H panel talking about how insane it looks. These are proof that many, many people felt the same as me about the footage - that this movie is going to be fucking awesome and I cannot wait to see it next summer.

http://www.firstshowing.net/2014/go-mad ... r-posters/

[biolumen]

Collider's recap.

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD Comic-Con Panel Recap: “Comic-Con Belongs to the Mad”; First Footage Unveiled

by Matt Goldberg

The Mad Max: Fury Road Comic-Con panel was one of the biggest question marks of Comic-Con 2014. It’s been decades since the last installment. It took years for the reboot/sequel to get made. It was a new Mad Max, but the return of the series’ director, George Miller. And how do you bring one of the most memorable visions of the post-apocalypse into the 21st century? These questions made me eager to get a first glimpse at the madness. But the fourth Mad Max doesn’t look mad. It looks fucking insane in all the best ways.

We open with a video message from Charlize Theron, who tells us that “working with George Miller” is like winning the lottery. She doesn’t say much more than that, but that’s okay because once the video ends, the bass starts booming, the room starts rocking, and the side screens bear the words “Blood Fire Oil” and then “Comic-Con Belongs to the Mad”.

We then get a retrospective for the Mad Max movies to help get us primed for the new installment. The tagline is interspersed with footage and reads , “Over three decades ago, director George Miller broke every rule.” We then hear the narration from Mad Max 2: “I remember the Road Warrior. The man we call ‘Max’.” We then get a barrage of the crazy vehicles, wasteland, costumes, explosions, violence, etc., and now we are pumped for the fourth go-round.

Panel Highlights

George Miller then takes the stage. He says it was interesting to return to the world.

On working with Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron: “They say 75% of your job is done in your casting. I was waiting for someone like Tom Hardy to come along. And for Theron, when you see the movie, you’ll see there are characteristics that exactly fit the character of Imperator Furiosa.”

On coming to Comic-Con for the first time: “I was always the kid who got into trouble for drawing cartoons, and reading too many comic books, and seeing too many movies, and I never dreamed that people would come from all over the world to a place like this. This is like a spiritual homeground.”

Miller says they decided to board the film as a long comic book rather write screenplay. There are 7500 storyboards, and not much dialogue. They’re telling the story mostly in pictures, and that’s what the film looks like.

How has the process changed since 1979? The initial idea was to tell a simple allegory kind of like “Westerns on wheels,” even though it’s set 45 years in the future. It’s like Westerns in its sparseness. “You can get away from all the clutter. And I also love wrecking cars.”

“And who knew Mel Gibson would literally turn into Mad Max?” quips moderator Hardwicke. Miller is a bit at a loss for how to respond, but is able to redirect in terms of actors needing charisma but also having an element of danger. “I’m simplifying it,” he notes, “but Tom has that quality. It’s like watching a big, wild animal. You don’t know what they’re going to do next.”

Was he surprised when the film came to the states and it was a huge success? “I’m always surprised when you put a movie out there and it’s well received.” He also says he wouldn’t believed it at the time that he would be making a new Mad Max movie 30 years later.

All of the vehicles would be ones you could recognize today. They could only base the vehicles on real vehicles and ones that could conceivably survive (i.e. ones that don’t have too much technology).

Audience Q&A

Has he taken a different approach to this one having considering what he’s learned over the past 30 years? “I hope I’ve matured,” says Miller. He says he’s fascinated with how the world has evolved, and some of it is fascinating, some of it is scary, and you try to get that into your work. He looks back at his previous movies and he was making them mostly out of instinct. But this one where you’re filming for months in African, crashing vehicles, “and you kind of lose sense of yourself and work from instinct and gut.”

Miller says he was definitely able to make the movie I wanted to make. “I’ve been making movies with Warner Bros. since the first Mad Max. They allow filmmakers to have their process.” This is as close to as fully realized to the movie he had in his head. And also, he notes that the world has radically changed, especially compared to the $400K budget of the first one. “We waited a week to see our dailies, but now you can see it immediately.” Also, as an audience, we can perceive cuts much faster. “If you look at movies like music, the tempo has increased.”

Tonally, how does Fury Road fit within the original trilogy? “Closer to Mad Max 2, simply because it happens over a short period of time. A few period of days, and there’s an extended chase,” says Miller.

Where are they in the process of making the movie? After taking his Comic-Con memories back home, he’ll get to work with Tom Hardy on ADR. They’re also working on the music and Junkie XL is doing the score. Then they’ll soon be mixing it all together, and “tidying it up.”

As for any other characters, “there are a lot of characters,” but he points out the character with the gas mask was Imorden Joe is played by Hugh Keyes Burns who played Toecutter in Mad Max 2, and died at the end of that movie. “I figured if you wear a mask, people won’t know it’s a different character.”
Footage

There’s not much in the way of plot. We get the idea that Mad Max is captured by bad guys who are led by a guy with long hair and a gas mask with giant scary teeth painted/embedded into it. Max manages to escape along with Nicholas Hoult’s character, and then they team up with Furiosa, who has rescued some innocent young girls.

This footage is really more of an assault of images. It’s a mind-blowing demolition derby. When a vehicles crashes, it gets absolutely destroyed in the most glorious fashion. But I believe the footage can be best summed up this fact: There’s a tornado made of explosions. Max and Hoult’s character are chased into a dust storm, and storm is filled with lightning, and one of the pursuers’ vehicles is sucked into a tornado, and the tornado alights in fire.

This kind of lunacy pervaded all of the footage. The crazy vehicles are back, but they’re now on steroids. They have drums, spikes, people who are tied to poles, and other twisted elements. One of the vehicles has a guy with an electric guitar, and when he strums the guitar, flames shoot out the end of it. The footage managed to keep topping itself, and I can’t wait to see how it all comes together.

http://collider.com/mad-max-fury-road-c ... nel-recap/

[DGSimo]

I have to say seeing all the journos and whatnot rave about the footage and pretty much list it among the top things shown at Comic Con beating out Batman v Superman and The Avengers 2...Wow.

Now it's just a question of when we get to see some footage!

Edit: Miller talking some at the press conference.

(Reuters) - A dynamic new lead and an epic-scale chase will be at the center of the new "Mad Max" reboot, as Australian director George Miller reignites his explosive action thriller franchise as the fight for survival in the wasteland rages on.

"Mad Max: Fury Road," the fourth installment of the "Mad Max" franchise that began in 1979 with Mel Gibson in the lead role, saw a post-apocalypse dystopian Australia where police officer Max Rockatansky battles hardened criminals of the outback.

Time Warner Inc-owned Warner Bros' "Fury Road," due in theaters next year, is set 45 years in a post-apocalyptic future, and Miller said the whole film is a "105-minute chase scene through the wasteland."

"Everyone in the story is either a villain or a good guy; this is a very dangerous world and everyone you encounter could be out to kill you to simply to take what you have. So it's all survival," the director told Reuters.

The film has been about 15 years in the making, and Miller said that initially he was working with Gibson, but after 9/11, the project was scrapped. By the time the director picked it up again, Gibson was past the age he wanted Max to be.

"It's not about an old Mad Max, it's about the same Mad Max," he said.

British actor Tom Hardy picks up the mantle of Max, and Miller said he embodies many of the qualities he first felt with Gibson.

"They are (both) the guys who are very lovable, and at the same time they've got their dark side, and that contrast is at the core of their charisma."

Not much is known about the plot, but fans at San Diego's annual Comic Con were treated to exclusive footage on Saturday, which showed leading characters including Max and Nux, played by Nicholas Hoult, in action and explosion-filled clips.

Much of the first three films centered on the battle for energy resources and fuel, a conversation that was just beginning to gain traction at the time. Three decades later, Miller said, the same issues remain pertinent.

"I'm beginning to realize that's the nature of the world and humankind, and we're always fighting these kind of struggles, these tensions," Miller said.

"In many ways, the world is getting a lot better, but there's still lots of stuff out there that could go wrong."

Max, who becomes a lone, hardened warrior in his journey, will find himself once again caught up in other people's journeys and problems in "Fury Road."

Joining Hardy is actress Charlize Theron, who plays Imperator Furiosa, a character that Miller described as an "equal" to Max, and who leads a slew of female actresses in the film franchise that was previously male-dominated.

"She's just a hardcore warrior with a purpose and it's really the engagement of the two that is the central conflict that helps the story unfold," Miller said.

[biolumen]

So the movie has been whittled down to 105 minutes. Wow. That's only 10 minutes longer than MM2 and goes in the completely opposite direction of most other blockbusters, movies that are padded out to 150 minutes or more with extended scenes and filler. Gravity at 91 minutes was similarly short, and we all know how that was received. I like it. It means we're getting a movie that's all killa and no filla.

As for a teaser, I read of rumors that one was to be released today, but that obviously didn't happen. Might need to wait awhile for it.

[Stamper]

Where is the naysayer from the rough cut preview now? hahaha

[P-Tron]

The Batman v Superman footage has leaked already and that was also part of the WB panel so hopefully the Fury Road one leaks too.

The Aint It Cool guys seemed to think a teaser was going to be released today too, obviously that's not happened yet either.

[croft007]

Fury Road....