I feel it is safe to assume if you’re an online movie junky you are excited for George Miller‘s Mad Max: Fury Road. Sure, I can understand a little bit of skepticism or concern over what may or may not be a movie without a story and only a shit ton of explosions and insanity, but my god how insanely great does this film look?
Said to be budgeted at $150 million, the film has taken some time to make its way to theaters and while those of us that eat up every little bit of movie information online may be excited to see it, I can’t tell just how excited the general public will be. After all, this is a sequel to a franchise that began over 35 years ago and hasn’t had a new entry since 1985’s poorly-received Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. Of course, it does have Tom Hardy, though the performance and release patterns of The Drop and Child 44 don’t suggest people are necessarily running to see the next movie from Tom Hardy. Maybe Charlize Theron will bring in a few people, Nicholas Hoult two more and if anyone remembers Rosie Huntington-Whiteley from Transformers: Dark of the Moon we’ll get a couple more. Or maybe, just maybe Warner Bros. has another tactic… let’s bring in some car enthusiasts.
Today Car and Driver has a cool feature taking a look at 10 of the more than 150-modified vehicles used in the film conceived by production designer Colin Gibson. The text accompanying the article also makes reference to the practical effects utilized in the film, which is to say this thing isn’t slathered in CGI, but the question is, Does anyone care anymore?
A lot is already being made of Tom Cruise‘s stunt work in Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, but how many people watching these movies will enjoy any measure of visceral response believing these people actually did these things rather than assuming they did them on a Hollywood sound stage? At the very least we’ll know and with that said check out the 10 vehicles of the apocalypse.
Above is Max’s Interceptor, a 1974 Ford XB Falcon, and below you get the following in this order:
- Peacemaker – A modified 1971-78 Chrysler Valiant Charger
- Plymouth Rock – A modified 1937 Plymouth sedan
- The War Rig – A six-wheel-drive Tatra semi with a cab extended with the rear half of a late-1940s Chevrolet sedan
- The Big Foot – Assumed to be a modified 1939 or 1940 Fargo pickup
- Buggy #9 – A modified Perentti
- FDK – A modified Volkswagen Beetle
- The Gigahorse – Two 1959 Cadillac Coupe DeVilles
- Mack – A modified Mack R-series wrecker
- The Nux Car – A ’34 Chevrolet coupe
I’ve included the pictures below, but there is much more to learn about each at Car and Driver.
From director George Miller, originator of the post-apocalyptic genre and mastermind behind the legendary Mad Max franchise, comes Mad Max: Fury Road, a return to the world of the Road Warrior, Max Rockatansky.
Haunted by his turbulent past, Mad Max believes the best way to survive is to wander alone. Nevertheless, he becomes swept up with a group fleeing across the Wasteland in a War Rig driven by an elite Imperator, Furiosa. They are escaping a Citadel tyrannized by the Immortan Joe, from whom something irreplaceable has been taken. Enraged, the Warlord marshals all his gangs and pursues the rebels ruthlessly in the high-octane Road War that follows.
Directed by George Miller
Starring: Charlize Theron, Tom Hardy, Zoe Kravitz, Adelaide Clemens, Nicholas Hoult, Riley Keough, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Megan Gale and Abbey Lee
In theaters: May 15, 2015
