To fans of cult movies, George Miller is famous for being the director, writer, producer etc for the original trilogy of Mad Max films. Somewhat improbably, however, he's also famous to small children, for being the director, writer, producer etc of Happy Feet. In a feat of late-career pirouetting that would put convicted rapist-turned-animated comedy star Mike Tyson to shame, Miller has spent the last decade or so presiding over films that bear absolutely no resemblance to the grimy, gritty and violent apocalyptic thrillers that he cut his teeth on in his native Australia. He wrote the script for Babe, for crying out loud. He followed that up by directing the totally bananas sequel Babe: Pig In The City - seriously, that thing's almost Lynchian in its grotesque weirdness - which set him up to make the Happy Feet films, a couple of animated family movies about dancing penguins. True, they may have included some pretty sophisticated anti-religious imagery, but all that probably went right over the heads of the under-fives. They were just there for the animated dancing penguins. Voiced by Elijah Wood. Directed by the guy who made the Mad Max films, which were full of blood and guts and swears and Mel Gibson and other things you don't see in Happy Feet. You could've been forgiven for thinking that perhaps George Miller had lost something in the intervening decades. Maybe he'd gotten a little soft, and he'd struggle to return to the balls-to-the-walls action of the Mad Max franchise. It looked like that might be the case for a while, as Fury Road languished in development hell for nearly 25 years, and almost became a 3D animated movie for a second there. Well, the news that the film will definitely be R-rated and on the basis of this trailer, we would like to announce that George Miller hasn't lost anything. Just in these three minutes we got examples of that fast-paced editing style that was so innovative in the early Mad Max films, the practical stunts that made them so exhilarating, the colourful characters that populate this ridiculous world and manage to make it halfway-believable, an excellent ensemble cast of new and familiar faces, explosions, a pumping soundtrack, some truly sumptuous cinematography (the shot of the smoke bombs going off is spine-tingling), and plenty of delightful violence. Oh yes, Miller has still got it. And Mad Max: Fury Road looks like it will prove that. With more explosions.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
