Despite Gibson’s willingness to participate in the new incarnation of Mad Max, Miller recognised that casting Gibson would create an aged Max Rockatansky, a direction he was reluctant to take the franchise further, Gibson’s infamous personal problems following his arrest and anti-Semitic rant added an extra complication. With Miller’s location finally set, he then had to settle on the casting of his protagonist. While aiming for his desired return to Australian outback, he again had to settle for Namibia, because an unprecedented rainstorm in the desert caused sudden blooming of vegetation which altered the desert’s appearance. The project was then shelved until 2009, when Miller began production once again. Landing on Namibia, Miller experienced still more difficulties after beginning the shoot in 2003, when Namibia was declared a risky location for security purposes. For Miller, this setback meant finding a new location in which to shoot the film. Mel Gibson cited a willingness to return to Mad Max 4 as late as 2001, when the film first entered pre-production, but the events of 11 September 2001 forced the film into a new set of delays, including the US dollar’s collapse against Australian currency, making a film shoot in the Australian outback impossible for the studio’s budget. After an idea came to him for a fourth Mad Max entry in 1998, he began to plan the next film. After international successes with Mad Max (Australia 1979), The Road Warrior (Australia 1981) and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (Australia 1985), Miller turned to animated fare, such as Babe (Australia/US 1995), for which he wrote the screenplay. Miller’s late foray into extending his 1980s Mad Max franchise took an unexpected hiatus that ultimately would last over 25 years. The sheer multiplicity of responses to the film renders the production of a succinct DVD review a difficult task, as all these components have gathered together to extend the film’s cultural impact well beyond the short season of the typical summer blockbuster.

The film’s release on earned immediate critical acclaim, including a 99 per cent rating on Rotten Tomatoes the film’s Oscar buzz garnered ten nominations and six awards, the most awarded to a single film in 2016, despite hype for more ‘Academy-friendly’ fare such as The Revenant (Iñárritu US/HK/Taiwan/Canada 2016), Spotlight (McCarthy US 2015) and The Big Short (McKay US 2015).

An academic review that seeks to summarise, contextualise or encapsulate George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road (Australia/US 2015) quickly finds itself besieged by a proliferation of responses, ranging from critics lauding the film’s stunning visuals to others bemoaning its ecstatic hyperviolence to feminists and men’s rights activists wrangling over its complex gender politics.

Mad max fury road rating