PEDAL TO THE METAL

THERE ARE FEW WRITER/ directors who can boast a filmmaking career as eclectic and successful as George Miller’s.

- TARA BENNETT

The multiple BAFTA and Academy Award winner possesses a singular CV that covers 50 years of film projects made up entirely of wild, incongruous swings.

From beloved family classics like Babe (1995) and Happy Feet (2006) to the heavy drama of Lorenzo’s Oil (1992), Miller has built a career around writing characters that compelled him, crafting great films around them, and letting the naysayers be damned.

The cinematic series that tops and tails the span of his career is centred on his ultimate rebel character creation: Mad Max. At 79, Miller has been making Mad Max films for more than half his life. While he took a hefty 30-year break from the franchise he created with producer Byron Kennedy, the character kept chasing him.

When he did return to his bleak, testosterone-fuelled, post-apocalyptic landscape in 2015 with Mad Max: Fury Road, Miller came at his world like a man possessed. Not only did his gonzo shooting style get amped to the nth degree, he and screenwriters Brendan McCarthy and Nico Lathouris injected the world with a feminist slant.

In the process, Max’s (Tom Hardy) story literally took a back seat to the mission of Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) and the women she frees from warlord Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne).

FURIOUS GEORGE

In Furiosa, Miller created a fierce hero infused with a purpose that Max had been lacking since the original film. She was laser-focused in her purpose: returning to the “Green Place” of her childhood to reunite with the female Vuvalini clan.

Theron’s Furiosa was a force of nature to behold and forever changed the tone and tenor of Miller’s franchise. With