George Miller Offers Up Some New MAD MAX Sequel News
Mad Max: Fury Road is one of the best films that has been released this year. Almost everyone enjoyed the hell out of it because it delivered everything that fans wanted out of a Mad Max movie, especially the adrenaline rush!
There has been talk of more Mad Max sequels since before Fury Road was released, and it's good to hear that director George Miller is still developing them. There's still no word on if Charlize Theron will officially reprise her role as Furiosa as previously rumored. The sequel was original supposed to be called Mad Max: The Wasteland, but it looks like that might not actually be the case. In an interview with Deadline, the director says:
"The more I speculate about what’s happening, the more I try to avoid spoilers this far out, and also I find myself talking around in circles. So the best thing I can say is that we’re definitely in discussion about making more of these, but the timing of it, I’m really not sure. Probably won’t be called Wasteland. I can say that. It was just the working title we gave it."
Miller goes on to confirm that we will not see Mel Gibson appear in any of these films, even in a small cameo role. Tom Hardy has already signed on for three more movies, and now that the audience buys Hardy as the new Max, they are going to stick with him. He explains:
"Not in these movies, for a very simple reason. If Mel, who is Max in a lot of people’s memories, appeared in the next movie, it would pull audiences out of the movie for a bit, and we worked so hard to keep people immersed in the movie as much as possible. It would be like, I don’t know, seeing Roger Moore appearing in a Daniel Craig James Bond movie. It would be fun, but it would also pull you out of the experience of the movie."
It makes sense not to bring Gibson back, but it still would have been fun to see him return to the role in the last film. I liked Hardy in the movie, but I liked Theron more, so hopefully they are able to get her back on board to kick some ass.
The filmmaker goes on to talk about superhero movies and why he thinks they are so popular right now:
"I’m really, really interested in them a lot, but the truth is, and I shouldn’t be admitting this: I haven’t seen many of the recent crop for the very simple reason I’ve had my head down immersed in the process of doing Fury Road. However, stories are conducive to their time or somehow fit their time, and I think the fact that we’re seeing these films all around the world now, that kind of is an interplay between these superhero movies and what some people call the global monomyth, and the zeitgeist. And I think there’s interplay there, and I think you need to dig down deep and really understand why we need them."
He goes on to explain that these films offer us "a sense of empowerment, a sense of a struggle. I think we, as individuals in many ways, don’t feel we can impact the world in some way as much as we’d like to, and that’s just a stab at it."
As you know, Warner Bros. offered Miller the opportunity to direct Man of Steel 2 or another one of their superhero movies, but it didn't sound like he would be taking the gig, which seems like a shame. Maybe he just wants to get his next Mad Max sequel off the ground and into production!