“Mad Max: Fury Road” — George Miller’s 2015 apocalyptic action epic — is stunning, spectacular and an amazing piece of art. This film explores the hardships of survival in a foreign yet not so unrealistic environment. Winning six Academy Awards and widely acclaimed as one of the greatest action movies, it’s time for us to get the sequel to Fury Road that we all deserve.
With such high praise and multiple award recognition, why hasn’t a sequel been developed yet? Despite grossing $378.9 worldwide, “Fury Road” didn’t succeed financially for what Miller and the production team had anticipated. What is actually stalling the production of the already written “Mad Max: The Wasteland,” is a lawsuit between George Miller and Warner Bros. Miller and the infamous production company are at odds over financial agreements. He claims that he wasn’t fully paid for his work after having to shoot certain scenes, where Warner Bros. is claiming that they never made a deal to reshoot certain scenes and thus Miller isn’t deserving of his bonus.
In addition to a script for “Mad Max: The Wasteland,” Miller says he has t another script written for a third film. Miller made three “Mad Max” films starring Mel Gibson prior to 2015’s “Fury Road,” — which features Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron —and it looks like he desires two trilogies.
Many films these days get sequels, most of which are completely unnecessary. Nearly every superhero gets their own franchise — each film being a regurgitated shuffle from its previous installment, while other films that conclude are rebooted for money.
What separates “Fury Road” from these films is how it brought us to a new world — visually arresting and mind-boggling — with different norms and atypical types of people all competing for survival in a grueling future. There’s still so much to explore in this dystopia: different settings (“Fury Road” showed us a beautiful and brutal desert environment), different groups of people, wicked villains (even crazier than Immortan Joe) and new heroes to fight alongside Max and Furiosa.
George Miller has crafted a truly magnificent concept for a film — one that is not necessarily rooted in character development or human and social themes — that transports us to a land far away and captivates the senses. We need this lawsuit to end so that we can get more depth to the protagonists and experience this imaginative universe in a full-throttle, action-packed adventure that both mirrors and differentiates from “Fury Road.”
George Miller and Warner Bros, get to work.
