After spending almost a quarter of a century in development hell and actually seeing progress within the last decade, George Miller’s franchise anti-hero Mad Max is returning to the big screen in a big way – without lead actor Mel Gibson.
Instead, British actor Tom Hardy is taking his place. How will Hardy fill Gibson’s shoes in Mad Max: Fury Road, the 4th film in the franchise? See for yourself in the first theatrical trailer.
Holy. God. Damn. Having seen the SDCC sizzle reel a few times over the summer, it’s easy to pick out the new bits and pieces in this new trailer, which looks – as you can no doubt guess from the three words at the start of the paragraph – amazing. The saturated color palette, the wide shots and pans across the hellish Australian (presumably set in Australian but shot in Namibia) desert, and the glorious action and destruction set the trailer (and what promises to be a rocking film) apart from the other franchises that are once again seeing the light of day in 2015 (Jurassic Park – since 1993; Terminator – since 1984; Marvel – since 2008; Star Wars – since 1977; James Bond – since 1962). There’s a little more of a plot (Max (Tom Hardy) joins with Furiosa (Charlize Theron) as they travel across an apocalyptic desert with roving gas marauders), but it’s still bare-bones, which I’m totally fine with. I don’t need the plot for every single film laid out piecemeal in the first trailer. And in some cases, like apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic films, less is more.
Mad Max: Fury Road races into theaters on May 15, 2015. Also in the cast are Nicholas Hoult, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Zoe Kravitz, Riley Keough, and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. George Miller is at the helm, in addition to producing and co-writing the script with Brendan McCarthy and Nico Lathouris.
Join the conversation