Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) Script Review | #68 WGA 101 Greatest Scripts of the 21st Century
How Mad Max: Fury Road redefines the possibilities of what a great action movie can be.
Logline: In the post-apocalyptic wasteland, Furiosa rebels against the tyrannical ruler, Immortan Joe, fleeing in search of her homeland with his imprisoned wives with the aid of an escaped drifter named Max Rockatansky.
Written by: George Miller, Brendan McCarthy, and Nick Lathouris
Based on: Characters created by George Miller and Byron Kennedy
Pages: N/A
SCRIPT UNAVAILABLE
Even if a screenplay exists for Mad Max: Fury Road (there’s a draft but it’s incomplete- here’s the link if you’re interested), it doesn’t capture its true intensity in this white-knuckled, edge-of-your-seat, jaw-dropping fourth instalment of George Miller’s post-apocalyptic series. Picture Buster Keaton’s The General but on steroids— a two-hour road chase, minimum dialogue, and the kind of set pieces that makes you wonder how they pulled it off.
Although some form of a script was handed to Warner Bros., there’s no way you could convey on paper the sheer scale of what Miller is trying to achieve. Instead, Miller and his co-writers— Brendan McCarthy and Nick Lathouris— storyboarded the entire narrative, aided by artists Peter Pound and Mark Sexton; roughly 3,500 panels that informed the entire production, helping to communicate exactly what Miller had in mind. It’s a good thing, too— if you read the script without having seen the film before, you might be tempted to dismiss it.
Most of the time, action is derided for being little more than an excuse to smash objects together and make things go boom. But in the hands of an artist, action can reach the heights of, say, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers’ dancing, or the Russian ballet. It can also be used to convey a story all of its own, instead of being merely spectacle. In the case of George Miller, he wanted to see “how much of a story you could tell if the movie was constantly on the move? If you make an extended chase film, how much can you get across? How much subtext could there be? For any story to have any worth, there must be more to it than meets the eye, there has to be a lot of iceberg under the tip.”
Who are the characters in Mad Max: Fury Road?
“Mad Max” Rockatansky
Imperator Furiosa
Nux
The Five Prisoners
The Splendid Angharad
Capable
Toast the Knowing
The Dag
Cheedo the Fragile
Enemies of the Citadel
Immortan Joe
Rictus Erectus
The People Eater
The Bullet Farmer
The Organic Mechanic
Slit
The Doof Warrior
The Green Place Survivors
The Valkyrie
Keeper of the Seeds
The Vuvalini
For each character, Miller knew their backstory extremely well in order to create well-rounded and fleshed out characters that felt alive even though little information is conveyed. Take, for instance, the guy playing the guitar: Miller could “you who his mother was, how he survived the apocalypse and came to work in the service of the Immortan Joe. [Miller] can tell you where his guitar came from; it’s made of a hospital bedpan.”
“And everything has to be multipurpose if it is to survive,” he adds, “so the guitar is also a flamethrower.”
Does Mad Max: Fury Road have a screenplay structure?
You better believe it! And it is simple and clean, yet hums like a well-oiled machine!
Act 1
Setup
Max is captured by Immortan Joe’s War Boys, while Furiosa is tasked with going on a routine supply run
Inciting Incident
But Furiosa deviates by going off-road, prompting Immortan Joe’s discovery that she’s taken his brides— when a sickened Nux is determined to accompany Immortan Joe on the chase to bring back Furiosa, he takes an imprisoned Max as a ‘blood bag’
Plot Point 1
But Furiosa gives Immortan Joe the slip by driving into a sandstorm, while Max is able to escape from his restraints
Act 2
Rising Action
In the desert, Max and Furiosa reluctantly team up in order to survive, learning to trust each other through a series of harrowing encounters
Midpoint
But in the middle of a chase, Splendid Angharad slips and is badly hurt, forcing the others to continue without her, while a disillusioned Nux hides in the Rig
Plot Point 2
After losing a party sent after them with Nux’s aid, the group discover the survivors of Furiosa’s tribe but she’s devastated to learn that her former home, the Green Place, no longer exists; Max declines an offer to join them and sets out on his own
Act 2 Out
But Max changes his mind and rejoins Furiosa’s team to propose a risky plan: Return to the Citadel instead of driving into the unknown, and claim it for their own
Act 3
Build Up
But Immortan Joe catches to their plan and a new chase begins
Climax
In the clash of battle, Furiosa kills Joe but is badly injured, while Nux sacrifices himself to allow the Rig to escape
Finale
Furiosa succeeds in capturing the Citadel without violence after presenting Joe’s corpse but Max slips away at the last minute and disappears into the crowd
The odd thing about Fury Road is that despite its title, Max isn’t even the main character— it’s Furiosa. In some way, it presages Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, the 2023 animated adaptation of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim comics in which a supporting character is given the lead role. Was this because Miller didn’t think there were any new stories to tell with Max? Or that he found Furiosa to be a more interesting character? I think it might have been the latter; that, and the fact that— either consciously or unconsciously— in creating a feminist action story, it was more appropriate for the lead character to be a woman, while smuggling it under the Mad Max IP (can you imagine a studio green-lighting such a picture if it was pitched as an original story instead?).
Moreover, Fury Road offers a template for creating empowered female characters in an action screenplay who:
Are fierce and compassionate
AREN’T punished for their compassion
AREN’T victims
Have independence and agency
Going further, the female characters are notably of different ages. Here, you find women from young to old. In contrast to Immortan Joe’s brutal and dehumanizing violence— his entire creed is to treat women as ‘things’ in the face of civilizational collapse, using it as an excuse to be violent towards them— the women offer a model of reclaiming humanity in the face of survival. Apart from Furiosa, the Five Wives are given the most screentime; each of them has a different personality, and more importantly, each one gets a moment in the story where they get to prove themselves and shine.
As for Max— even if the other three films didn’t exist, his backstory would still be a mystery. Who’s the child that keeps haunting him? Why is he bombarded with visions of people who accuse him of failing them? The story never offers an explanation because it is unconnected with what is happening in Fury Road. If you want to give a character a painful backstory, only flesh it out IF it has a direct connection to the present.
(However, a comic tie-in does offer an explanation in which the girl and her mother was someone Max was unable to save from a bunch of sadists, and whose deaths he carries with him.)
What can Mad Max: Fury Road teach you about writing post-apocalyptic screenplays?
Mark Mangini, sound designer, has an interesting take on Fury Road— he compares the Rig to the Moby-Dick and Immortan Joe to Captain Ahab in obsessive pursuit of his quarry. It is easy to see what he means, and it offers an unusual piece of advice for the aspiring writer: If you are stuck for ideas, borrow allegories from classic novels to strengthen your screenplay.
It’s also worth noting that Fury Road offers a great template on how to create a fantastical dystopia that doesn’t waste time explaining the rules, throwing you into the deep end and expecting you to follow. The secret to making it seem so easy is that the story opens with news report voice-overs and footage snippets offering context about the events that led to the story’s present: Oil troubles led to water scarcity. Another voice over by Max explains he used to be a cop (this is for those who are entering this world with no information about the previous films).
The second thing that helps to create a believable post-apocalyptic world is to label things with unique names, beliefs, and sayings. Water is referred to as ‘Aqua Cola’; breast milk is called ‘Mother’s Milk’; Immortan Joe repurposes Norse mythology to keep his War Boys in thrall, promising them that if they die, they will be awaited in Valhalla, and they will be shiny and chrome. Is an explanation offered? No. Does it matter? Nope. We get it.
Another interpretation of Fury Road is that it’s about the effects of being in a cult (Immortan Joe keeps a tight fist on the Citadel by ruling it as the leader of a cult)— Nux represents the brainwashed, an innocent who switches sides when he is able to escape Joe’s programming. Considering that Miller first began thinking about Fury Road as far back as the ’90s, it’s alarming to draw parallels between Immortan Joe’s cult and the rise of QAnon and other cults, especially incels, around the world that, among its delusional beliefs, are determined to treat women as lesser than human or fit only for reproductive purposes. What is it about cults and the end of the world?
But that’s a discussion for another time. It’s rare to find an action story like Mad Max: Fury Road to be this insightful, brimming with material to dissect, and simultaneously entertaining? If cinema had more pictures like Fury Road, it would certainly make the film market a better and interesting place. What a lovely day!
Notes:
Bilger, Burkhard (May 19, 2024) | What George Miller Has Learned in Forty-five Years of Making “Mad Max” Movies (New Yorker)