![]() Sometimes surprising artwork - the vehicles often look right out of Heavy Metal magazine, and at least one sketch of Max looks a whole lot like the guy from Lethal Weapon - is supplemented by bits of the director’s thought process, providing “a-ha” moments that recontextualize crazy creative design as being, also, completely logical. But for lovers of the creative process, this collection of creative sparks from Miller, collaborator Brendan McCarthy and others is a gorgeous and compelling supplemental feature to the film. So surely this privileged look behind the curtain at all the expected character sketches, evolutionary steps and weird left and right design turns taken during the film’s development can only dilute the finished product, right? You could maybe make that argument, I guess. didn’t settle on the exact right designs for Imperator Furiosa and The Immortan Joe? No one, that’s who. They've been rightly chiseled away by the artist the Coma-Doof Warrior is perfect onscreen, no backstory needed. In that regard, the book is full of things you maybe shouldn’t see - roads not taken, obscured and omitted details. (I guess this is also true of topiary artists, but you get the idea.) As evidenced by Abbie Bernstein’s lovely book, Miller's amazing film is no less a feat - a lean, muscular work of art carved out of an incredibly dense slab of insanity. Someone working in marble creates art exclusively by subtraction, chipping away bit by bit until their masterful vision is revealed. Sculptors working in clay can introduce and add elements, putting things where they weren’t, adding and revising layer upon layer until the work is finished. Paging through it, I was put in mind of marble artists. It lays out the director’s original mission, and traces the long-gestating film’s journey to the screen. That iceberg is chronicled in The Art of Mad Max: Fury Road, a beautiful collection of storyboards, production design and even prose backstory for George Miller’s instant classic. ![]() And it doubles down on the previous films’ world-building, doing so artfully and economically while giving the barest hints to a larger universe, an iceberg of backstory under the surface. It repurposes its own legacy, eschewing nostalgia and continuity to emerge as something vital and new. It’s a film - maybe the only one - that disproves the otherwise sound idea that creators shouldn’t revisit their past victories. Mad Max: Fury Road is an absolute anomaly.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |