Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
Short description
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is set in a devastated world where survivors compete for scarce resources. The story follows a young woman named Furiosa, taken from her home, the Green Place of Many Mothers, by a biker horde commanded by the warlord Dementus. Their wanderings bring them into contact with the Citadel, ruled by Immortan Joe. As the two leaders fight for supremacy, Furiosa endures a series of ordeals while gathering what she needs to make her way back home. The film is a prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road, explaining the origins of that film's central character.
George Miller directed and co-wrote the screenplay with Nick Lathouris, and produced it with Doug Mitchell. It is the twelfth of the thirteen films Miller has directed, following Three Thousand Years of Longing and preceding a black-and-white version of this same film. Anya Taylor-Joy plays Furiosa, with Alyla Browne as her younger self. Chris Hemsworth appears as Dementus, Tom Burke as Praetorian Jack, Lachy Hulme as both Immortan Joe and Rizzdale Pell, and George Shevtsov as the History Man.
Released in May 2024, the film runs 149 minutes. It is an Australian, American and Korean production with a reported budget of 168 million US dollars and a worldwide gross of 174 million, a narrow margin over its cost. On IMDb it holds 7.5 out of 10 from around 317,000 votes, while on TMDB it has 7.4 from roughly 5,200 votes. A critics' rating of 7.9 from 426 reviews places it somewhat above those audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- Screenwriter and director George Miller initially intended to cast Charlize Theron in the role of Furiosa and use so-called visual rejuvenation technology.
- At one point, screenwriters George Miller and Nick Lathouris considered having director Mahiro Maeda film an anime film about Furiosa based on their script. All that remained of the original concept of the anime film in Miller's picture was a toy bear that Chris Hemsworth's character carries as a talisman.
- It took George Miller 9 years to complete this project. The project stalled for several years due to legal disputes between Miller and Warner Bros. regarding the 2015 science fiction action film "Mad Max: Fury Road".
- George Miller wanted to more explicitly show the mutual romantic feelings that the characters played by Anya Taylor-Joy and Tom Burke had for each other, but the latter convinced him that it would be better and more believable to delay the expression of feelings until the characters felt safer according to the script.
- According to director and screenwriter George Miller, the script was ready even before the filming of “Mad Max: Fury Road.”
- Anya Taylor-Joy wanted to shave her head, like Charlize Theron did for the role of Furiosa in "Mad Max: Fury Road", but this was prohibited by other contracts. Miller himself was also against this idea.
- Anya Taylor-Joy was cast in this film before she became famous for her role in Scott Frank's miniseries "The Queen's Gambit" (2020). The actress immediately hired a personal trainer and began training to get in shape. Filming did not begin until a year later.
- Filming the 15-minute chase scene, which the filmmakers titled "Stowaway to Nowhere", took 78 days with the participation of around 200 people.
- George Miller met Anya Taylor-Joy after seeing her in Edgar Wright's thriller "Last Night in Soho" (2021).
- After filming ended, Anya Taylor-Joy took one of the prosthetic arms that she used in the second half of the film with her. According to her, there were several of these prosthetics – both soft and rigid, depending on what was required by the script.
- The facial features of Eilay Brown and Anya Taylor-Joy (both of whom played Furiosa, the first as a very young girl, and the second as an adult) are not identical, so director and screenwriter George Miller and Andrew Jackson (who was responsible for special effects) used artificial intelligence to switch one actress's face for the other's. According to Taylor-Joy, Miller wanted the transition to be smooth. She spent two days with special effects specialists who constantly filmed her facial expressions. In her own opinion, at the beginning of filming, about 35% of Brown's face was altered to resemble her own, and by the end, this figure reached 80%. Incidentally, the actors' union went on strike, demanding better legal regulation of the use of artificial intelligence tools. Miller used artificial intelligence with the consent of the actors.
- Anya Taylor-Joy performed many of the stunts herself, and did so well that director George Miller repeatedly confused her with her stunt doubles.
- Initially, it was planned that Goran D'Kluje's character would appear on a flying motorcycle, but director George Miller forbade performing this stunt for safety reasons.
- George Miller said that he already has a script for another project in the franchise (its working title is "The Wasteland"), but everything depends on the box office results of this film.
- The scar on the right side of Tom Burke's character's face is partially prosthetic and partially the result of surgical correction of a cleft lip.
- Throughout the entire film, Anya Taylor-Joy's character has approximately 30 lines of dialogue. The actress later said that for weeks and months she played her role without a single line spoken by her character. According to Taylor-Joy, George Miller demanded that she act only with her eyes. Miller himself explained the lack of lines and dialogue in the film by his belief that the action in such films should unfold quickly, while dialogue only slows it down.
- Chris Hemsworth said that the voice of his character, Dementus (the biker gang leader), contains echoes of a carnival barker and his grandfather (who, the actor hastily added, was a wonderful man), as well as the cries of seagulls.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
