Mad Max 4 : Fury Road - Still A 3D Anime Video Game Crossover?

By Darryl Mason

Seven years after an aborted attempt to film the long overdue sequel, Mad Max 4 : Fury Road, is finally going into production, and will start shooting next year in New South Wales.

The Daily Telegraph reports that work on the film will start immediately, injecting tens of millions of dollars into the economy and creating more than 500 jobs.

Miller's company Kennedy Miller Mitchell will start pre-production immediately.

American actress Charlize Theron has reportedly signed on to co-star, with Sam Worthington expected to take over the role of 'Max' from Mel Gibson.

Today's mainstream media stories fail to mention that director George Miller has already said the new movie will be animated (in Japanese anime style), and will be released in 3D, in 2011 :

“The anime is an opportunity for me to shift a little bit about what anime is doing because anime is ripe for an adjustment or sea change,” he explained. “It’s coming in games and I believe it’s the same in anime."

Has Miller now dumped plans for a 3D animated Fury Road? It seems unlikely, as he's already spent close to three years developing a video game to accompany and expand the scope and history of the new Mad Max tale.

Worthington, or whoever takes on the lead male role, will not be playing Max Rockatansky. If director George Miller sticks to the Fury Road script that is being used to develop the video game, the new 'Max' will be a modified clone of the original Max, with most of the action set way into the future.

Here's a summary of the Fury Road script as it read back in the early 2000s :

The new film is set two centuries on from where we last left Max, wandering the wastelands at the end of third instalment, Beyond Thunderdome.

While the first two films saw women and gasoline as being the most precious resources left to be plundered by biker road armies, and water became a plot catalyst in Beyond Thunderdome, this time around the unpolluted DNA of human 'pure breeds' will be the treasure all seek to possess.

Gibson's Max is expected to show up in the new film in flashbacks, to reveal what happened to him in the last years of his life, before the new Max, a 'son' derived from his DNA, takes over the story.

The new Max's mission will be to act as a 'protector' and escort a group of non-mutants across the wastelands with their precious stock of unpolluted DNA. This pure DNA stock is desired by the mutant hordes, as it can be used to clean up their genes, and make them resistant to the radioactivity that still infects the land.

If you don't think a 3D CGI-anime Mad Max movie can work, wait until you see what James Cameron has achieved with Avatar, due for release in December.

George Miller will not be able to resist the temptation to try and make his movie even more spectacular, more mind-blowing, than Cameron's.

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Getting Nostalgic For A Post-Apcalyptic Aftermath


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Exclusive? We Got Nothing

By Darryl Mason

Sydney's Daily Telegraph, Melbourne's Herald Sun, the Courier Mail, the Adelaide Advertiser, proclaims a Mad Max 4 "EXCLUSIVE" today :



MTV had a story with far more detail back in early March, including the fact that director George Miller has already stated the fourth Max Mad movie is going to be animated, not live action, meaning there will be no "shooting" in Sydney :

“We’ll probably go a different route,” Miller told MTV News about the potential talent voicing the lead role. The plot would be partly lifted from the script of the fourth “Max” film, which was set to shoot in 2003 until financing collapsed in the wake of the Iraq War.

Now Miller is resurrecting the idea as an R-rated, stereoscopic anime flick for theatrical release. It’s a curious undertaking, to be sure, but one made all the more certain to happen after the runaway success in 2006 of his computer-animated “Happy Feet”—not that the newest, ever-violent “Max” film will have much in common with that kid-friendly penguin party.

“I see myself as someone who is very curious about storytelling and all its various media,” Miller said. “I’ve always loved anime, in particular the Japanese sensibility. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do.”

The Orstrahyun covered this story back on March 8 :

Max Mad 4 Is Coming, Animated And Mel Gibson Free

So what's the big Exclusive all these Rupert Murdoch daily newspapers have nabbed?

Nothing :

The Daily Telegraph could not confirm casting intentions because nobody at Kennedy Miller was available for comment.

Nor could we confirm whether Miller intended to direct Mad Max 4 himself. And if he did, whether he intended to direct it simultaneously with Happy Feet 2, which is currently in production in Sydney.

Nothing about Mad Max 4 as anime, or the extensive video game that will see release before the fourth Mad Max movie, nothing about Miller's already announced plans for the movie, nothing about the old Mad Max 4 script, 'Fury Road', that has been kicking around for years and will likely supply at least the basic plot of the new movie :

The new film is set two centuries on from where we last left Max, wandering the wastelands at the end of third instalment, Beyond Thunderdome.

While the first two films saw women and gasoline as being the most precious resources left to be plundered by biker road armies, and water became a plot catalyst in Beyond Thunderdome, this time around the unpolluted DNA of human 'pure breeds' will be the treasure all seek to possess.

Gibson's Max is expected to show up in the new film in flashbacks, to reveal what happened to him in the last years of his life, before the new Max, a 'son' derived from his DNA, takes over the story.

The new Max's mission will be to act as a 'protector' and escort a group of non-mutants across the wastelands with their precious stock of unpolluted DNA. This pure DNA stock is desired by the mutant hordes, as it can be used to clean up their genes, and make them resistant to the radioactivity that still infects the land.

How hard is to fluff out an "Exclusive" with some actual information from a Google search, seeing as the Daily Telegraph couldn't get an interview with George Miller, or find out any hard detail from anyone connected with the project?

The MTV story quoted above, with Miller's quotes, is the third story listed when you Google 'Mad Max 4.'

Rupert Murdoch thinks that people will soon pay him to access this kind of non-event "Exclusive" content online.

Good Luck with that.

Here's an old trailer for the original Mad Max, the American trailer with, akk! American voices dubbed over all those excellent, characteristic, funny Australian ones. How wrong is this?

Getting Nostalgic For A Post-Apocalyptic Aftermath