The last franchise standing is still taking it to the Max

Ahead of next week's release of 'Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga', Geoffrey Macnab explores how Aussie director George Miller masterminded one of cinema's wonderful anomalies

- Geoffrey Macnab

When George Miller was starting out as a filmmaker, he was known as “Doctor George”. It’s one of the many paradoxes about Miller that the 79-year-old Aussie – ranked by many among the finest action directors in movie history – began his career in medicine. Since his early days working alongside producer partner and “filmmaking brother” Byron Kennedy (who tragically died in a helicopter accident in 1983), Miller has been uncompromising about health and safety. Not that you’d know it by watching his films.

There were no reported serious accidents or injuries during the shooting of Miller’s new feature, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga  (premiering in Cannes this week) – a remarkable feat, given the film’s frantic, stunts-heavy ethos. After all, Miller likes his action scenes to be as realistic as possible. He’ll hire Cirque du Soleil gymnasts to perform gravity-defying stunts rather than try to trick the audiences with visual effects. Like its predecessors, the new movie is awash with blood, carnage, mayhem, decapitations and disembowelling.