It may have been the most fortuitous street-crossing since The Beatles’ “Abbey Road.”
Back in 1998, director George Miller was walking across a Los Angeles intersection when an idea for a new “Mad Max” film struck him.
By the time he’d reached the middle of the street, he had a kernel of a story. And by the time he reached the other side, he swore to himself he’d abandon it.
He’d already made three movies set in that universe — 1979’s “Mad Max,” 1981’s “The Road Warrior” and 1985’s “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome” — and Miller thought he’d said all he had to say about the dust-choked, post-apocalyptic wasteland where leather-clad gangs battled for gasoline.
“I kept pushing the idea aside, but it kept growing,” Miller recalls to The Post.
About a year later, high above the Pacific on an LA-to-Australia flight, the idea coalesced. Miller conceived of a story where violent marauders were fighting, not for oil or for material goods, but for human beings.
He might have wished he’d just slept on that flight instead.
The movie’s epic journey from Miller’s head to the screen took 17 years and was beset by a long list of hardships — including biblical downpours, a continental location change, an actor’s untimely death and one-time-star Mel Gibson’s well-publicized meltdowns.
But next Friday, “Mad Max: Fury Road” finally roars into theaters. It brings with it sky-high expectations fueled by the decades-long wait and one of the greatest trailers in recent memory.
Through all the twists and turns over the years, one thing that’s remained surprisingly unchanged is the story. Lone warrior Max (Tom Hardy) reluctantly teams with Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), a badass truck driver who has rescued five slave wives from the hands of a brutal warlord, Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne). Max and Furiosa flee across the irradiated Wasteland in an attempt to outrun Joe and his army of white-painted “War Boys” (including Nicholas Hoult) and bands of other local psychos.
The movie was all set to shoot way back in 2001, and then 9/11 happened.
“The American dollar collapsed against the Australian dollar, and our budget ballooned,” Miller says. “I had to move on to ‘Happy Feet,’ because there was a small window when that was ready.”
(Yes, “Happy Feet,” as in the animated movie about dancing penguins.)
“Fury Road” was also going to star the original Max, Mel Gibson, now 59. But then he was busted for drunken driving, called a police officer “sugar tits,” was embroiled in an ugly battle with his girlfriend, made anti-Semitic comments and was secretly recorded ranting insanely at a screenwriter. And that’s just the abridged version.
“By the time we got there, not only had Mel hit all the turbulence in his life, but this is not a ‘Mad Max’ in which he’s an old warrior,” the director says. “He’s meant to be that same contemporary warrior. I guess in the same way that James Bond had been played by various people, it was time to hand over the mantle.”
Heath Ledger was reportedly considered for the lead before he died from abuse of prescribed medications in 2008. Hardy, who is now 37 and was just 6 weeks old when the original “Mad Max” started shooting, got the part instead.
With the cast in place by 2010, Miller planned to return to the Australian Outback, the filming location for the previous trilogy. One small problem — the once arid desert had been flooded by rain for the first time in years and was now a lush garden.
‘NOT ONLY HAD MEL HIT ALL THE TURBULENCE IN HIS LIFE, BUT THIS IS NOT A ‘MAD MAX’ IN WHICH HE’S AN OLD WARRIOR.’
- Director George Miller on not casting Mel Gibson
The production scouted the world for a new location and settled on the African country of Namibia, home to a 1,200-mile desert that’s virtually uninhabited. The cast and crew, numbering as many as 1,700, wouldn’t leave until some five months later.
“It’s very tough being out there so long,” Miller explains. “The dust gets in your eyes and every crevice. The heat gets to you, but that kind of sinks into the movie. I don’t think it would be the same movie without [the conditions].”
In his quest for realism, the director also vowed to use as little CGI and green screen as possible. That meant going old-school, to use Miller’s term, performing all the stunts, practically, out there in the Namib Desert. Cars were flipped, stuntmen were thrown, trucks were exploded in massive orange fireballs.
Because the movie is basically a two-hour chase scene, the script began as a storyboard, created in part by the comic-book artist Brendan McCarthy. It contained some 3,500 drawings detailing the film’s narrative, including the complicated set pieces and stunts — most involving dozens of cars speeding across the sand.
“I wanted to make a movie [in which], as Hitchcock [once] said, they don’t have to read the subtitles in Japan,” Miller says. “A full visual exercise.”
Something else that translates into non-English-speaking countries is the character of Max. He’s a classic archetype recognized around the world.
“He’s that lone gunman wandering the western landscape, or that lone samurai, or a viking wandering a wasteland in search of some meaning,” Miller says. “He’s a universal character across many cultures.”
Max is also the strong, silent type — with an emphasis on silent. Hardy speaks relatively few lines of dialogue, especially in the movie’s first half.
“He’s living in a world where language is not recreational,” the director says. “You don’t say anything unless you have to.”
Hardy’s own personal vocabulary probably contained a few more words, especially those of the four-letter variety, as he was called on to perform a number of stunts.
In one sequence, he was strapped to the front of Hoult’s car (S - - t!) as it raced across the flats at 40 mph (F - - k!). Hardy’s stuntman was swapped in when the car was required to make more dangerous maneuvers or to drive through explosions.
Hardy also took part in one of the film’s more creative sequences. Enemy cars were fitted with 300-foot-tall poles atop which a stunt performer stood. The pole swung from side to side, almost like a giant metronome, allowing the stuntperson to jump onto a neighboring vehicle.
At one point in the story, a “pole cat” snatches Hardy from his speeding vehicle and the two slug it out while hanging on the swinging pole.
“I didn’t think we’d ever be able to pull that off for real,” Miller admits. “If something went wrong, it would go horribly wrong.”
What felt right was Miller’s return to the franchise he last visited in 1985. The director has spent the interim making more family-friendly films, such as “Babe: Pig in the City” and the aforementioned “Happy Feet.” He says transitioning from penguins to the apocalypse was no big deal.
“It’s like going back to your old hometown and seeing it again after you’ve changed and the world has changed,” he says.
One of the bigger shifts in movies since 1979 has been the speed at which they unfold. “Fury Road” was carved out of about 480 hours of footage, ultimately ending up as a rapid-fire string of 2,750 shots. Compare that with “The Road Warrior,” which had just 1,200.
So, is “Fury Road” the best in the series?
“It better be,” Miller says. “Otherwise I haven’t learned anything.”
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