Interview, director George Miller

The Australian filmmaker continues to expand the mythology of the Mad Max world -- what he calls "Westerns on wheels" -- with the "Fury Road" prequel, "Furiosa."

George Miller has been building the cinematic landscape of the “Mad Max” franchise for 45 years now. Most thought the post-apocalyptic saga ended in 1985, but he surprised everyone by bringing it back, bigger and badder than ever, with 2015’s “Mad Max: Fury Road.”

He continued to confound expectations by, approaching age 80, making a follow-up, but instead focusing on the character of Furiosa, played by Charlize Theron in “Fury Road” and by Anya Taylor-Joy in “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” which essentially acts as her origin story. Chris Hemsworth co-stars as her nemesis, the warlord Dr. Dementus.

Miller sat down for a video interview with select members of the Critics Choice Association, of which I am privileged to be a member, taking our questions and sharing his thoughts on making a Mad Max movie without Max. Here is an edited transcript.

Question: Why does Mad Max still resonate with people years later and all the way around the globe?

George Miller: You know, I don't think you could come down to a fixed answer to that. But I think it's a thing why I'm still sort of drawn to telling these kind of stories. They're basically allegories. In the same way that the American Western you could argue is allegories. And indeed, certainly for everything from fairy stories to folk lore, mythologies, even religious stories, where the story is in the eye of the beholder, wherever you are. Wherever you are in time or space.

Q: Why did you know that Anya Taylor-Joy would be ideal to take this mantle of Furiosa? Especially knowing that this was, again, gonna be a different look for this character that folks were already familiar with?

GM: Yeah, so, I mean, she definitely had big shoes to fill. And I'd only seen a few short clips of “The Witch.” And this was before she did the “Queen's Gambit.” But Edgar Wright showed me a very early cut of “Last Night in Soho.” And I saw her for the first time. There was something very compelling about her. And I did until Edgar at that point, you know, what I was interested in casting her. But he picked it up straightaway and said, "She's got it all, George. Whatever you need her to do, she can doit." And I really trusted his opinion.

And it proved to be right. I mean, it's a difficult role. Like a lot of these classic sort of characters, particularly in the Westerns, you could argue that the Mad Maxes are Westerns on Wheels. The lead character is often quite iconic. Yet, Max, throughout all these stories, hardly ever says anything. Furiosa, in Fury Road, hardly said anything.

And in this story, she can't. People who speak the most are the warlords in this world. Immortan Joe, and indeed, Dementus. Because it's part of their pageantry, if you like. And she had to do it. She had to do it. And of course, something about there's a timelessness to her. Something about her face. The way that you know there's a lot of stuff roiling inside, and it somehow is, you know, it becomes apparent without having to work itself hard and make it obvious.

Q: I wanted to bring this next question for folks that maybe don't know is that your first degree was in medicine. And there's a realness to a lot of the, I would say, physicality of the wasteland and some of that. Like, how has your medical background helped you with filmmaking in general, but particularly within this sort of Mad Max arena?

GM: Well, as time went on, I began to realize that probably the reason I'm still making films is because, it's the same reason why I was first interested in being a doctor when I was a little kid. I was very curious about who we are as human beings. And you have the opportunity to really think about, to actually look at ourselves as human being, from every point of view.

I mean, the first thing, and these are things that just occurred to me in recent years, the first thing that you do as a doctor is to take a history. You basically want the history, you'd want the story of the patient, let's say. Because it's only there, first of all, you're looking at the whole human being. And then you narrow it down on the specific pathology if there is one. That's number one.

You're also seeing people in extreme situations. People don't turn up to a hospital where I mainly work unless there's something serious going on. Sometimes it's childbirth, which has got its own issues. Each of us were born to our mothers, and yet there's something heroic about childbirth. Particularly for a woman who basically relinquishes her own self-interests for another, which as Joseph Campbell said, is the essential quality of the hero.

Q: And you’ve always approached Mad Max with such a detailed vision for everything that you want to do and everything that you want to achieve. How have you been able to keep that clarity throughout the shifts?

GM: Well, to be honest, look, I have to say, curiosity definitely. No question. I’ve still got an appetite for it. And I’ve found when I started making, I was trying to figure out how to tell stories, and that’s become not only an inquiry, basically now lifelong. I never intended for this to be the case, but it’s a lifetime inquiry into not only how to tell stories, but why we tell stories.

And what is the function of the story? Somehow, whatever the medium always changes. But story is fundamental to who we are as human beings, there’s no question about it. We are hard wired for it. It’s the way I think that our brains work, both individually and collectively. And I know it’s been with us for all of time.