Trailer Trashin’: Unearthing the New Mad Max: Fury Road Trailer

We’re halfway through April dear readers, and that means the summer movie season is closer than ever. On this week’s Trailer Trashin’, I take another look at one of my most anticipated films of the year, George Miller’s action extravaganza Mad Max: Fury Road.

Premise: In a post-apocalyptic wasteland, loner “Mad” Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy) meets Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), a woman who wishes to cross the desert. Captured by the forces of warlord Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne), Max’s only hope for freedom is Furiosa, who is on the run from Immortan Joe because she stole his most precious resource: five young women who have been kept as objects and whose purpose is to mother the next generation. They need Max’s knowledge of the desert to safely cross it and escape the madness of their enemies.

My take: The trailer kicks off with Max, who has manacles on his wrists and a gag in his mouth, running through dimly-lit tunnels, pursued by a gang of ghostly-pale, shirtless bald guys. The chase passes through a cave where several more of the pale guys are taking apart a car, possibly Max’s own V8 Interceptor. In voiceover, we hear Max say “In this wasteland, I am the one who runs from both the living and the dead.” This is accompanied by unnerving flash-frames of what look like the faces of children. Max continues, “A man reduced to a single instinct…” Max pushes through some doors to the outside, only to find himself faced with a sheer drop. With no other options, Max leaps toward an old construction crane, trying to snag its hook with the chain of his manacles. “Survive,” Max’s voiceover finishes.

After the studio logos, we get a close-up of a hot branding iron bearing a symbol we’ll keep seeing throughout the trailer, an image of a human skull in the middle of a steering wheel with flames coming off the top. This is the symbol of our villain, Immortan Joe, who we’ll meet shortly. The shot of the branding iron is immediately followed by a close-up of someone, presumably Max, with the symbol branded on the back of their neck.

We hear the voice of Immortan Joe booming and echoing over some kind of loudspeaker as he addresses his followers. “It is by my hand you arise from the ashes of this world!” As he speaks, we see his people – including the same kind of pale, bale goons from earlier – gathered in front of a stone pinnacle where Joe’s symbol has been carved into the cliff face. We see Immortan Joe himself putting on his mask, a wicked-looking gas mask-like contraption decorated with a human jawbone and teeth. Another shot of the symbol in the cliff face, but this time with water flowing out of three massive valves embedded in the rock; if this means that Joe is able to control these people’s access to water, that shows how he has so many followers. A quick shot of Joe looking through a telescope. A truck with a trailer racing across the desert. A close-up of Imperator Furiosa, driving that same truck. In the back of the truck we see four of Joe’s five “brides,” whom Furiosa has sprung from captivity; from left to right, they are Toast (Zoë Kravitz), Capable (Riley Keough), Fragile (Courtney Eaton), and The Dag (Abbey Lee Kershaw). As Joe finishes speaking, we see Max in a cage inside Joe’s lair, surrounded by several sleeping goons.

Next we see Joe, wearing some freaky translucent armor, opening what looks like a bank vault door, which leads into the chamber where his brides are kept. Inside the chamber, which is actually kind of nicely furnished for a post-apocalyptic world, he finds no brides, only Miss Giddy (Jennifer Hagan), who points a gun at Joe while saying “We are not things. We are not things!” with those same words written on the wall behind her. Joe advances on her, bellowing “Where is she taking them?”

Furiosa’s truck drives through the desert, with either a sunset or sunrise behind it. Furiosa checks her mirror. We see all five brides in the back – from left to right, Toast, Capable, Splendid (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley), Fragile, and The Dag. Inside the prison we saw earlier, the bottom drops out of Max’s cage, and he’s left swinging. Out in the sunlight, Joe’s fleet of modified vehicles are out in force, with poor Max strapped to the front of one of them, a weird metal mask over his face. Joe himself is driving one of the vehicles, clearly leading the hunt to get his women back. Fast cutting between shots of Joe’s goons, ending with a close-up of one fellow who’s supplemented his pale skin and black makeup around his eyes with a Glasgow smile.

More quick cutting of action follows as intense music kicks in. Furiosa and one of the pale goons, who must have switched sides, are leaning out of her truck and firing weapons – Furiosa has a mini-crossbow, while the goon has an old grenade launcher. Immortan Joe’s goons use spears to destroy a car covered in spikes, including one crazy bastard who leaps onto the car with a spear in each hand. A guy manning a gun turret on top of a car shields his face as what looks like a tanker truck explodes.

“I want them back!” Immortan Joe bellows as we see him at the wheel of his vehicle, with a strange canopy of what looks disturbingly like human skin stretched across a metal frame behind his head. A quick shot of the brides, just to make it clear who Joe’s referring to. “They’re my property!” Joe finishes, as we see Splendid leaning out the open door of the truck, looking defiantly back, with Capable holding her so she doesn’t fall out. This is followed by a close-up of the waist of one of the brides, who is wearing some kind of chastity belt branded with Joe’s symbol, plus nasty-looking claws over the genital area. But the brides are clearly done with him, as a pair of bolt cutters held by someone off screen cut through the side of the belt.

A distant shot of Furiosa’s truck heading into a massive sandstorm, followed by a close-up of Furiosa wearing goggles and a cloth over her nose and mouth. As the wall of airborne sand hits the vehicles, Max – who’s hanging on to the top of one car – is thrown backward. Driving that car is Nux (Nicholas Hoult), one of Immortan Joe’s main henchmen, who gleefully says “Oh, what a day! What a lovely day!” even as the winds tear off part of his car’s roof. A big truck rams a smaller car from behind, smashing the car and sending pieces of metal flying.

We now cut to what must be the aftermath of the storm, as Max pulls himself out from under the sand. Furiosa stands next to her truck, holding what look like a wrench filed down into a crude knife. Max approaches her truck, holding a double-barreled shotgun and with an unconscious Nux slung over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. “Wanna get through this?” Furiosa says to the brides, “Go!”

The music ramps back up and the fast cutting resumes. A guy in a gas mask wields a chainsaw. A motorcycle lands on top of a tanker truck. A dude with wild hair and a blindfold fires twin submachine guns. Two of the brides run away from the truck. A pale goon jumps from his car onto a flatbed truck, as Rictus Erectus (Nathan Jones), another of Immortan Joe’s main henchmen, stands behind him. Behind the wheel of a big truck decorated with skulls, Max shifts into high gear to get away from an explosion. A group of pale goons beat massive drums set up on the back of a dump truck. A motorcycle slides under the wheels of the skull truck. A car with a mounted machine gun on top flips end-over-end as it falls into a pit-trap. Max jumps from the roof of one moving vehicle to another, body-checking a guy out of his way as he lands. One of the brides falls out of Furiosa’s truck as the door rips off its hinges. Max and a couple goons are hanging from some crazy arm rig. The brides are shocked as a grappling hook pierces the roof of their truck, mere inches away from their heads. A huge truck covered with spikes comes apart in a massive cloud of dust.

Several shots of Immortan Joe’s fleet chasing Furiosa’s truck through the sandstorm and across the desert follow. In voiceover, Max says “As the world fell, each of us in our own way was broken.” Furiosa’s truck is surrounded by four of Joe’s vehicles, which use those arm rigs in a way almost like pole vaulting. A goon on the end of one rig grabs hold of Toast and pulls her out of the truck. Max’s voiceover continues “It was hard to know who was more crazy, me, or everyone else.” Rictus Erectus, looking quite pissed-off, hefts a heavy machine gun and grimaces. A monster truck made out of an old coupe jumps in front of Furiosa’s truck. Furiosa pulls her truck hard sideways to smash into one of Joe’s cars, which is shooting a flamethrower at the truck. A shot of Max back in Joe’s prison, thrashing around in waist-deep water and surrounded by goons. A Max’s voiceover finishes, we see the other side of the dump truck with the drums in the back, where a guy dressed in red stands in front of a massive bank of speakers, playing a guitar that shoots fire out of the neck. It immediately cuts to another shot, with Max also up on the speaker truck; he grabs hold of the guitar and swings it, and the guy in red, around to hit a pale goon.

An aerial shot of a line of vehicles racing through a canyon. A group of children made up like the pale goons gathered in Immortan Joe’s lair. Furiosa embraces a tearful Valkyrie (Megan Gale). More shots of cars and motorcycles racing across desert and over rocks. A pale goon wipes out his motorcycle and is crushed by what looks like a dune buggy covered in spikes. Another pale goon hangs upside-down off the hood of a car, holding a baby’s bottle in one hand. Valkyrie and an old woman hug the dirt as a truck drives by over their heads. Still more vehicular carnage. The brides look up, through the torn-open roof of the truck. Max falls out of the truck, only saved by Furiosa grabbing him with her mechanical left arm. Furiosa, a look of pure rage on her face, head butts a bald guy with a beard. A car that’s on fire is lifted off the ground by the winds of the sandstorm. Max racks the slide on his pistol and fires over his shoulder at some goons on motorcycles. Joe’s convoy is rocked by a massive explosion. Max in the tunnels being chased by goons. A flamethrower car is rammed from behind and totaled. Finally, a modified old-school roadster, decorated with skulls and with Rictus Erectus hanging on to it, is sent airborne in the canyon from earlier.

This might be the most exhaustive and detailed Trailer Trashin’ column I’ve ever written. But I’m just that excited for this movie. The first footage that came out from San Diego Comic-Con last year got me interested, but now I’m chomping at the bit to see this. This film looks insane, and in the best possible way. When the middle of May rolls around, I’ll definitely be seeing Mad Max: Fury Road.

ANTICIPATION: This look like just the thing for a lovely day at the movies.