George Miller breaks down all the head-shaving, lore-filled, epic moments in new “Furiosa” trailer
Plus, the "Mad Max" mastermind reveals the identity of that mysterious narrator heard at the end of the clip.
At the end of the first teaser for Furiosa, Chris Hemsworth's Dementus asks, "Do you have it in you to make it epic?"
Like a call and response, then, comes the first full-length trailer for the Mad Max: Fury Road prequel, which dropped Tuesday and is, in fact, quite epic. Featuring more of the eye-popping cinematography and lengthy stunt sequences fans of the franchise have come to expect, the new high-octane footage (below) also includes a lot more of the world and characters from Furiosa's odyssey.
EW caught up with director George Miller to break down the most iconic moments in the trailer (above) — from Anya Taylor-Joy's Furiosa finally shaving her head to that hidden narrator and more.
Furiosa shaves her head for the first time
In Fury Road, Charlize Theron's Imperator Furiosa famously sported a buzz cut. Storyboards for that film originally featured the character with long hair pulled back off her face, but Theron suggested a road warrior like Furiosa wouldn't bother with such things. "She said it would drive her nuts, and she's got to be much more efficient than that," Miller recalls of those initial conversations. "So she said, 'I'm thinking of shaving my head, and I just want to make sure that you are okay with it.'" Spoiler alert: He loved it. "I was so happy because it defined the character."
So far, first looks at Furiosa have featured Taylor-Joy with long, dark hair, but the new trailer shows her shearing off her locks for the first time — a major moment for her character. "We basically tell the story [in Furiosa] from her being a child, 10 years old, all the way through until this story butts up directly into Fury Road, and obviously we see that transition in the climactic scenes of this movie," Miller explains.
The Green Place of Many Mothers (and Furiosa's mom)
The film follows a young Furiosa as she's taken from the Green Place of Many Mothers and falls into the hands of Warlord Dementus and his Biker Horde. The new trailer features more of this integral moment, as well as a better look at the Green Place, the weapon-clad mothers, and for the first time, Furiosa's own mom, played by Anyone But You star and model Charlee Fraser. We even see the pivotal scene alluded to in Fury Road when she makes her daughter promise to find her way back home.
"This is an odyssey without question of someone who's taken from her home and spends the rest of her life trying to get home," says Miller. "I don't want to give away too much, but the one thing is Furiosa, in order to survive as a child in a world that's in extremis, she has to have a lot of innate resources."
He continues, "What's remarkable is we see some people endure [those extremes] and still emerge with a degree of human magnificence. Others are crushed by it and lost on the way. So you can see from the behavior of the mother the sort of things that the daughter inherits in the story. I think we are a product of our parents and those that came before to some extent. And we take all that material as human beings and negotiate the world. I think that's all of our stories, one way or another. And that's the same in this story."
Dementus vs. Immortan Joe
As explained in Fury Road, the Wasteland is divided into three sections, each presided over by a warlord: The Citadel, commanded by Immortan Joe; Bullet Farm, overseen by the Bullet Farmer; and Gas Town, run by the People Eater. Upon arriving in the Wasteland with Furiosa, Dementus finds himself at odds with Immortan Joe (played by Lachy Hulme, taking over the role the late Hugh Keays-Byrne originated in Fury Road). "He heads a Biker Horde — which we see throughout history, these great hordes that kind of make their way across a great landscape plundering, like Genghis Khan, Hannibal, the Romans, and so many that we see in stories — and he's another variant on that," Miller says of Dementus.
In a particularly interesting moment from the trailer, Furiosa seems to tease a potential team-up with Immortan Joe against their common enemy, Dementus, telling the former, "If you find him, he’s mine." A Furiosa-Immortan Joe alliance would be a far cry from their relationship in Fury Road, in which Joe was the main villain. "They're all antagonists against each other," Miller explains. "Furiosa as an individual, just as happens so much throughout history, I think, is caught up in a conflict between two competing tyrants, let's say. But I think I can say that Dementus is the main antagonist... at least in this story."
The cars
It wouldn't be Mad Max without badass vehicles, a franchise staple since the first film hit theaters in 1979. "When the first Mad Max came out, it seemed to resonate with a lot of different cultures," says Miller. "In Japan, they saw him as a lone Samurai. And in Scandinavia, he was like a Viking. But the French said Mad Max is a Western on wheels. And what I noticed when I used to watch Westerns as a kid, is that every Western character had a horse that had names. They all named their horses, and they were part of their characters."
Max's ride, the Interceptor, "was an extension of himself," says Miller. "And that definitely follows the case in Fury Road, and it's certainly the case in Furiosa." The trailer highlights several new vehicles, which shall remain anonymous for now. "Each character has vehicles that basically are an external expression of who they are as their story unfolds through the years, and I think that will be evident to the audience when they see the whole film," Miller adds.
The mysterious narrator
At the end of Fury Road, a cryptic quote attributed to the First History Man states, "Where must we go... we who wander this Wasteland in search of our better selves." These "history people," as Miller calls them, are "the only way that the culture or information is retained or shared" since the Internet and books are gone in this post-apocalyptic wasteland. And, if you listen carefully, at the end of the full-length Furiosa trailer, a man says via voiceover, "To get home, Furiosa fought the world."
"That's a narrator called the History Man," Miller explains. "In this story, we meet the History Man, and because it's a saga — Fury Road happened over three days and two nights; this movie happens over basically 16 years from when she's 10 to 26, it goes on a little further when she becomes 28, but it's basically over those 16 years — and we meet this character, and he is integral to the story. So, he's the narrator."
Furiosa revs into theaters May 24.
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