Mad Max: Fury Road Breakdown: Why I Think Nux Is the Film's Most Transformative Character, and the Secret of the Chrome

I'd say Mad Max: Fury Road isn't Max's story, and it isn't even Furiosa's. The most transformative character is Nux. His moment of pure insanity is why Nicholas Hoult keeps coming up as the possible next big super something, and in Fury Road he demands that we blood bags in the audience witness his rebirth from War Boy to human being. It all comes down to that shiny chrome spray, a horrible truth Nux overcomes.

I also think the movie is smart to ask who killed the world without ever explicitly, condescendingly answering that question, as much as we may deserve it. Fury Road is one of the best action movies of all time, and it rewards a close look at the attention to detail George Miller and his team worked into it.

George Miller Wanted Fury Road to Be Almost a Continuous Chase

Fury Road is the fourth film in Miller's series after 1979's Mad Max, 1981's The Road Warrior and 1985's Beyond Thunderdome. Miller started gestating the idea back in 1987, wanting a film that was almost a continuous chase, in his words. Guy Norris, the stunt coordinator and second unit director, described the first half as an enormous chase. The engine revving over the opening Warner Bros. title signals that it's time to start our engines, and this movie never stops.

Tom Hardy replaced Mel Gibson after the film stayed in development hell for decades, with Miller moving on to shoot other films. Hardy carries the role with the weight of a man beyond his years, which is kind of why Max seems older than Hardy is. Many of his lines are dubbed. Hardy admitted he had no idea during the shoot what Miller was trying to do, was reportedly pretty hard to work with, and later apologized to the director at the film's premiere at Cannes.

Over the credits, voices mention the oil wars and a world running out of drinkable water. The truth is there, but the movie doesn't really hit us over the head with it. Max was a cop in that first 1979 film, which seems tame next to how the franchise evolved. You could say it was The Road Warrior where Miller started to realize his true vision.

3,500 Storyboard Panels Gave Fury Road Its Graphic Novel Look

Miller wanted every scene to look like a graphic novel, a contrast to the desaturated post apocalyptic films of the time. They shot in the deserts of Namibia, and in post production colored the sand a deep golden orange and the sky a radiant blue. It glows off the screen, radioactive, since according to the opening titles this planet has been nuked.

Miller spent years storyboarding the movie shot by shot with artists, with 3,500 panels around the room, and I'd say a good 80 percent of those panels are reflected on screen. The screenplay by Nico Lathouris and Brendan McCarthy is a hybrid of storyboard art with exposition and dialogue, like an incredible graphic novel, and you can see that intentionality in every frame.

The Prelude Comic Explains the Interceptor and the Girl Who Haunts Max

Max stands beside the V8 Interceptor he drove in the first two films until it exploded in The Road Warrior. A four part prelude comic that George Miller shares credit on fills in backstories for Nux, Immortan Joe, Furiosa and Max. It sets the story after Beyond Thunderdome, with Max fighting in a Thunderdome Plus in Gastown to win a new V8 engine. He's haunted by people he let die, including a young girl whose mother saved Max during a conflict with the Buzzards. The Buzzard who stabbed Max in the femoral artery is the one who later runs over the girl and her mother.

Max stomps out the voices haunting him, kicks up a two headed lizard, mutated probably by radioactive fallout, and gobbles it whole. I believe that lizard symbolizes Max, handcuffed to Nux as a blood bag and later tethered spiritually to Furiosa in order to survive and reach redemption. The Buzzards then flip his car, a reference to the T-bone stunt in The Road Warrior. This time they used a mechanical arm to flip the Interceptor. Norris drove it himself, but Miller masks an edit with a cloud of dust so that when we push in, it's Hardy.

Center Framing Let Margaret Sixel Rapid Cut 2,700 Shots

The Organic Mechanic, played by Angus Sampson, is kind of a mechanic of organs in this car worshipping dystopia. Concept art for Max's tattoos marks day 12,045, measures his height in hands as you would a horse, and notes heals fast, O plus universal donor, no gasoline or supplies and an instruction to isolate him. It's written upside down because a blood bag hangs like a human IV drip.

The film was edited by Miller's wife, Margaret Sixel, who cut down 480 hours of material. It took three months to get through, and they ended up with 2,700 cuts in 120 minutes, which is 22 and a half cuts per minute. Miller brought cinematographer John Seale out of retirement, and Seale said 50 to 60 percent runs at the normal 24 frames per second, sometimes below. Miller had Seale frame every shot so the visual focus sits at the center rather than on the usual third, so the eye wouldn't have to move across the frame during rapid cutting. You see it when the hot brand pushes in and cuts straight to Hardy's reaction in the same part of the frame.

Immortan Joe's Armor and the Symbols of the Citadel

Furiosa's neck is branded with Joe's sigil, a skull on a steering wheel. In the mythology, steering wheels are detachable because the Immortan grants them and they return to an altar room. Joe's armor gives his tumor stricken body a fake muscular appearance, and its chainmail mimics the water pouring from the skull carving in the rock, which is Joe's true power. His sons have the best names: Corpus Colossus, ironically the small one; Rictus Erectus, who wears a necklace of baby heads; and Scabrous Scrotus. Joe is played by Hugh Keays-Byrne, Toecutter in the 1979 film. The prelude comic says he was a war veteran who took the aquifer by force and somehow survived, earning the name Immortan.

The white powder on Joe's tumors is inspired by the makeup of Indian holy men, and the War Boys mimic it with darkened eyes so they look like the Citadel's skull. Their salute interlocks fingers four on each side like the eight valves of a V8, hence the chant. When the platform rises, a lone woman remains, from a deleted scene in which she offers her baby to be a War Boy. I think it was a solid cut. As Furiosa leaves, she waits for the mirror signals between the Citadel and Gastown before veering off, to get the best head start.

The Wives' Message Was Written in White

Joe kept his wives behind a bank vault door, because to him they were possessions. Five chairs face a chalkboard for lessons from Miss Giddy, a History Man covered in tattooed names and stories. Storyboard artist Mark Sexton said the film was originally going to be narrated by an older History Man, kind of an unreliable narrator, but that idea went into the comic, and the film ends with a quote from the First History Man. Miss Giddy stayed behind with a gun to stall the pursuit. The wives' phrases, like "our babies will not be warlords" and "we are not things," are written in white, the color of mother's milk.

Nux's Sense of Destiny Comes From a Misread Glance

Production designer Colin Gibson said the Doof Wagon's name came from the sound of the speakers, and that every army needs a drummer boy. Nux has two tumors and a half life, so he wants to go out in a blaze of glory, and Max is his mobile blood bag. He straps Max to the front of his car to freak him out and feed that adrenaline back into his own bloodstream. In the comic, a guard called the boy Nux a tough nut to crack. Coma the Doof Warrior, played by musician iOTA, plays a practical flaming guitar with the flame controlled by the whammy bar, and his Chuck Taylor soles aren't worn because his feet never touch the ground.

Max had been looking at Joe moments before Nux calls out, and I really do think Joe was looking at the insane sight of a blood bag on a car. Max and Joe never really interact much, and they don't really have any personal antagonism toward each other. I love that Nux's whole sense of destiny comes from a glance meant for someone else, the crucial spark that sends him speeding ahead. The chase that follows kind of feels like an homage to John Ford's Stagecoach, and Furiosa's pedal is sized for a woman's shoe and needs her unique switch sequence. Then Morsov sprays his mouth silver and leaps onto spikes, done practically on wires, and Max witnesses it up close so he knows what it means later.

The Secret of the Chrome

In the sandstorm, the imagery turns bonkers, with fiery red tornadoes and lightning. We aren't grounded in visual reality, but it works because it's Nux's point of view, and Nux is high on Max's blood and the chrome. Miller based the chrome on a 1981 documentary, Frontline, following Tasmanian born combat veteran Neil Davis in South Vietnam and Cambodia, in which Cambodian soldiers held jade deities in their mouths as they ran into battle. He merged that with chroming, inhaling toxic paint to get high. The prop was an aerosol cake paint sprayer that the actor said tasted disgusting.

The idea is that Joe laces the chrome with a drug that makes a War Boy euphoric and more open to death. So Nux is caught between two toxins, Joe's suicide serum and Max's life blood, and the result is a devilish fever dream mixing life and death. Nux lights a flare and prays, "I live, I die, I live again," but Max stops it and Furiosa rams the car. His prayer is answered, though not as he expects: we witness the death of the boy and, from here forward, the resurrection of the man.

Max and Furiosa Need Each Other to Survive

When Max wakes, his hearing stays muffled until he yanks out the bloodline to Nux. He looks like his Road Warrior self again, with the jamming sawed off shotgun and the leg brace, presumably from the knee injury in the 1979 film. Much of the fight plays out nonverbally, and the sound mixing leaves a ringing after a gun fires by Max's ear. Max shoots Angharad through the leg, a critical wound later. The movie could have ended there, but Furiosa finally offers what he wants: the thing off his face.

It's one of many things the movie does well: it doesn't talk down to its audience with a condescending agenda. It only asks whether you want to survive. The characters still don't trust each other, which is why Max collects all the guns. The wives won't let Furiosa kill Nux, and his white paint gradually wears off as he deprograms. Furiosa later shows Max her ignition sequence, and Max reloads for her. There's no time to argue about gender politics; survival forces pragmatic role playing.

Who Killed the World? The Film Leaves It Implicit

Miller brought in Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues, to consult on the sexual violence, and Ensler said she was blown away by the script's depth and spent a week in Namibia advising the actors. Leaving the answer implicit gives bad faith contrarians no room to take it out of context, and the movie moves so fast that it doesn't give the haters time to hate. You can say so much more by just making a good movie.

Then there's the People Eater, leader of Gastown, fattened from cannibalism with a metal nose cap covering rot from leprosy. His limo has a steering wheel of human hair, an abacus for lost gas and men, and a revolver gear shift. He's kind of an amalgam of everything bad about people in capitalism. If anybody killed the world, it's this hoarder of fossil fuels. Meanwhile Nux relapses, offering to kill Furiosa for Joe, and humiliates himself. But it's the chain from his blood bag line, his umbilical cord to his real papa Max, that saves him.

Angharad's Loss Shows Characters Cracking Under Pressure

When Angharad falls, Max sees her framed like the dead girl who haunts him and makes a choice for all of them, and Furiosa trusts it. Joe's normally sealed mask opens as he screams, a separate prop made just for that moment. Cheedo tries to run back to the War Boys. That's what fully realized characters do: sometimes they break, sometimes they retreat. Capable finds Nux in the back cab, shivering like someone literally in withdrawal, and takes pity on him. Later, Nux doesn't know what a tree is, and it takes women taught by Miss Giddy to explain it.

My favorite choice here is restraint. After showing every death in full detail, Miller doesn't show Max killing the Bullet Farmer. Max just returns with a new wheel, more guns and someone else's blood. That's because this isn't singularly Max's story; it's all of humanity's, and humanity will always be blind to certain battles some people fight so we can all move forward.

The Green Place Is Gone

According to concept art and backstory from Miller and Colin Gibson shared with Empire magazine in November 2015, Furiosa's tribe, the Vuvalini or Many Mothers, banished their males to swamps where they became the Crow Fishers, and would attack them when they reached puberty to keep the matriarchal society going. Furiosa went from the sexual violence of one cult to perpetuating it in another, and she carries that guilt.

When Furiosa learns the Green Place is gone, Miller and Sixel stay in one 35 second take as she drops her arms and collapses in the sand. I think it's one of the most striking shots of any film in at least the last decade. The dunes evoke Lawrence of Arabia, but where that was an idealist preaching nothing is written, this is a realist realizing she's doomed to the Wasteland.

Hope Is a Mistake Only If You Don't Fix What's Broken

Max tells Furiosa "hope is a mistake." He's right in his diagnosis but flawed in his prescription. The simple mechanic logic of this car driven world is to fix what's broken, and hope is only a mistake if you sit idly in it. A single frame cut into the return of the dead girl's voice shows the man who'll later fire a crossbow at Max's head, so her ghost saves him. The movie moves east for the first half, then turns back west. Toast's music box is the one Max gave the Feral Kid in The Road Warrior, but Miller has debunked the theory that this Max is that kid grown up.

The War Rig Was Meant to Be Moby Dick

According to sound designer Mark Mangini, the rig is Moby and Joe is Ahab, so its sounds were layered with whale calls and blowholes, and its destruction with slowed bear growls, an idea from Steven Spielberg's Duel. Miller pitched the Polecats after seeing street performers, and Norris brought in help from Cirque du Soleil, using counterweighted poles. Showing the counterweight operators lets us know there's real weight and real danger. The fuel truck was remote controlled and detonated with over 1,000 liters of petrol, and Max swinging in front gives it scale, like Richard Dreyfuss in Jaws. At the climax, Furiosa's harpoon hooks Joe's mask in the one second it's open.

Witness Me: Nux Takes the Sacrifice Play

Nux rolls the War Rig through the canyon pass so the others can escape. Because of his half life, he isn't allowed to see the promised land. Stunt driver Lee Adamson performed the roll with a dummy of Nux, and Miller, seeing the dummy crash on its head, thought Lee had died. Max becomes a blood bag again, saving Furiosa, and tells her his name. I'm pretty sure, though I can't be certain, that I once read Christopher McQuarrie saying he casts action actors for how they look and move rather than transformative acting. Hardy, like Max, does his job without taking over, and sometimes the most heroic thing you can do is support the driver from the back seat. That's what Nux does. "Witness me" means tell my story.

Miller said of the ending: "very early on I had Max going up to the top of the Citadel with them but Tom Hardy picked that up very early Max would never go he wasn't even remotely ready for that." Whether Furiosa and the others will do any better is an open question. So who killed the world? In these survivors' eyes it's mostly the man, but all of us have blood on our hands. Furiosa is indisputably the most formidable hero, but she needs help, like Miller and Sixel editing hand in hand. For my money, it was the best film of 2015. It was nominated for 10 Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director, its biggest wins were for editing and production design, and it really deserved a sweep.

How did Mad Max: Fury Road change the way you look at movies?