It is the first sight of Mad Max, the post-apocalyptic saga which made a star of Mel Gibson, in almost 30 years. A three-minute trailer for Mad Max: Fury Road, featuring Britain's Tom Hardy as the no-nonsense Aussie desert road warrior, has hit the web after debuting at San Diego's Comic-Con 2014over the weekend.
Director George Miller described the fourth instalment in the long-running series as a "very simple allegory, almost a western on wheels" during an appearance on 26 July. The movie was shot without a traditional script, using only storyboards, and is said to feature minimal dialogue. Miller told Comic-Con it was a "chase movie" based in a future where people have gone back to an "elemental form of behaviour" in a land with "no rule of law".
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He added: "The story popped in my head and just wouldn't go away. I love chase movies; they're the purest form of cinema. I wanted to make one long extended chase, and see what we could pick up about the characters on the way."
Mad Max fans will be pleased to see the return of Hugh Keays-Byrne, who played gang leader Toecutter in the first film. In the new version, the Australian-based actor portrays a villain with a skull-like face mask named Immortan [sic] Joe.
Fury Road has been a long time coming, with Miller first raising the prospect of the movie in 2003. A shoot in the New South Wales outback was planned for 2010, but abandoned when the desert environment sprouted grass and wildflowers following unprecedented levels of rainfall. The movie was eventually filmed in Namibia.
Despite the film's long gestation period, bloggers at Comic-Con have hailed the footage as some of the most impressive seen at this year's event. The trailer, which features traditionally-filmed action sequences enhanced with CGI, kicks off as Max is seen crushing a two-headed lizard beneath his heel in the radioactive wastes of future outback Australia. A chase scene ensues with a long-haired Hardy hunted down by a gang of motorised marauders before being tortured, shorn and branded with strange inscriptions. Later, he meets a shaven-headed Charlize Theron, who plays Imperator Furiosa.
Fury Road is set for release in May 2015, with a supporting cast that includes Nicholas Hoult, Nathan Jones, Zoë Kravitz, Riley Keough and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. Are you pleased to see Max back on the big screen?
