Kill James Bond! - S4E41.5: Mad Max: Fury Road

Episode Date: June 19, 2026

What do you get when you trap a hundred stuntmen and actors in the namibian desert and force them to film cars exploding for a solid year? You get something like Mad Max: Fury Road, the first and last film to ever be made like this ----- HANDS OFF LEBANON Here are some fundraisers to support collective rebuilding and survival efforts on the ground in Lebanon. -Beit El-Baraka started out as a food bank, but has grown to help people afford rent, cover their essentials, and live with dignity.  https://beitelbaraka.org/donate-directly/ or donate in general https://beitelbaraka.org/donate-now/ -LiveLove was a charity for a number of other matters, but since 2024 has been solely comitted to helping people displaced by Israeli attacks. https://livelove.org/donate -Lebanese Food Bank supports displaced and impoverished people https://lebanesefoodbank.org/take-action/donate/ Solar Powered Lebanon is an initiative to restore people's power using solar panels, since larger infrastructure is at constant risk of attack. https://fundahope.com/en/campaigns/solar-powered-lebanon ----- FREE PALESTINE My friend Ahmed still needs to feed his family and afford medicine. Anything you can kick in would be hugely appreciated. https://chuffed.org/project/150817-please-help-ahmed-and-his-family-get-food-drink-and-medicine And these are some more general links you can support collective efforts with! -The Palestinian Communist Youth Union is doing a food and water effort, and is part of the official communist party of Palestine https://www.gofundme.com/f/to-preserve-whats-left-of-humanity-global-solidarity -Water is Life, a water distribution project in North Gaza affiliated with an Indigenous American organization and the Freedom Flotilla https://www.waterislifegaza.org/ -Vegetable Distribution Fund, which secured and delivers fresh veg, affiliated with Freedom Flotilla also https://www.instagram.com/linking/fundraiser?fundraiser_id=1102739514947848 ----- WEB DESIGN ALERT Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/ ----- Kill James Bond is hosted by November Kelly, Abigail Thorn, and Devon. You can find us at https://killjamesbond.com , as well as on our Bluesky and X.com the everything app account

Hello and welcome to another bonus episode of Kill James Bond. I am November Kelly. I am joined, as always, by my friends Abigail Thorne and Devon. Brimvin! A bonga, ladies and gentlemen. Oh, yeah, baby. It's more truck season than it's ever been, I would suggest. Oh, yeah.

I'm calm, I'm normal. Good fucking movie. This is the summer of the truck. This is the age of the truck. Yes. Because it's Fury Road. It's Fury Road. Fury Road, baby?

It's Mad Max Fury Road to give it its full title. What a good movie. What a fucking great movie. Cards on the table. Yeah, big surprise. Hot take from Kill Chase Broad. Mad Max Fury Road fucking whips. Mad Max Fury Road, maybe one of the greatest movies ever made,

certainly in my top three, if I ever had to actually pick. I have a sort of nuanced take, right? Which is on the one side of the scales, this movie fucks. Of course. And that's a heavy sort of weight. On the other side of the scales, it does have the kind of finest feminism of 2015. Yeah, for sure.

And that was not a good vintage of feminism, I would suggest. But it's got some feminism, you know? It's got some feminism in it? It does. It's got the spirit. It's a little confused, but it's got the spirit. Yeah. I can't believe it's taking us this long to get to this movie.

But we should set the stage in trying to explain Mad Max and the Mad Max universe. Yeah. Shall I give you a little potted history of production of this? All right. George Miller is an Australian man who you may be most familiar with if you've played a shitload of death stranding, too, over the last couple of weeks, which I have, because he's tar man in that.

He drives you around the whole time. Fuck, yeah. He was born in 1945 in Chinchilla, Queensland, by Greek immigrant parents to Australia. The place for the Chinchillas are from? Yeah, I guess they invented the Chinchilla out there. Just like small town guy, cinema, he trained as a doctor, gets into a directing workshop and meets a long-time collaborator called Byron Kennedy. Together, the two of them film Mad Max 1, this guy's first ever movie, basically gorilla.

They don't have permission, they don't have like permits, they don't have road closures, they just show up, get the shots and then run away as fast as they can. That, to me is the truck as code. That's real cinema to me. That's real filmmaking. He filmed it throughout 1977. I think, and it was up into 78. He spends all of 79 editing it on his own, and he is in the weeds for the entire year.

He's, like, going through hell and back. He thinks that he's made the worst movie ever. He's, like, gun to head the whole time. Stolen line from my wife. He releases it, though, and it turns out that he's made fucking Mad Max, so it goes great. Everyone loves the fuck out of it.

This is a lesson about imposter syndrome, I would suggest, is that sometimes you think you are the worst cunt on earth and then it turns out you've actually made mad max. Oh, this is dog shit, I'm going to kill myself. And then it turns out it's madmacks. This is a useful lesson for me to learn. I've also been struggling with imposter syndrome. And maybe, you know, lately.

And maybe it turns out that the whole time, I've been making mad max, unbeknownst even to myself. You've been making mad max as far as I'm concerned. Oh, thank you. So, obviously, great. He comes back, him and Byron Kennedy, and they're like, I'm going to put all of our lessons, all of our losses are now going to be lessons for the second one. They make Mad Max 2, which Road Warrior, one of the greatest, the greatest movie ever made.

It's incredible. He's since read Joseph Campbell's hero, over the thousand faces. So he's like casting Mad Max as this quasi-mythological figure. Getting a lot of mono-mythological vibes from this. This first one is so funny. Guy who's just read every book vibes getting a lot of every book vibe from this. Mel Gibson has 14 lines of dialogue in Mad Max too.

We'll do it at some point. Obviously, it goes insanely huge. And what we'll do is we'll do the first three as live shows, probably. That would be wonderful. Now, before the creation of the third one, two major tragedies occur. The first of which is that Byron Kennedy

perishes due to the natural predator of the suddenly wealthy, the helicopter. Oh. Yeah, almost as dangerous as the motorcycle. Huge shame. Takes his ass out in 83. Windlifter just got in there.

Secondly, Warner Brothers forces the rating to PG-13. Oh, for the third one? For the third one. It's fine. It's just, it feels like two movies taped together if you do watch it. It's fine.

We'll do it eventually. We then enter the wilderness years. For this entire period now he does, he's like doing Babe, he's doing the witches of history. Yeah, he did Babe. Everyone who ever works with him in their head,

going, one day this man is going to turn to me and go, I've got an idea for another, Mad Max. Mad Max movie, would you like to be involved? Everyone is like, well, just fucking weather the pigs. He contains within him the possibility of making a Mad Max film, which is true of anyone, really, and that's why they killed Jeremy Corbyn is because he was trying to tell you the truth, which is that everyone has a Mad Max film inside them. Everyone has a Mad Max film inside them. Eventually, the studio tries to pitch him on doing a TV show because they're thinking about merchandising. thinking about the toys and they're going, this is a fucking million dollars. And they, they show him

like a mock up for the toys. And he goes, oh, amazing. Not interested at all. No, no, no, thank you. I'm going to make another Mad Max movie. I've just had the idea. And they're like, oh, okay, get out of his way. Get out of his way. Clear the parking lot. One of the things about George Miller, right? Well, two things. One is that he's a very Catholic filmmaker, not in the Scorsese sense, but in the sense that he will draw inspiration from any number of places. Comic books are a big one. We'll get to that. We'll run the cinematography, toys even, right?

But also, the other one, this is the most ADHD having man you can imagine. Right? Really? What other career could bring you from happy feet to happy feet to Mad Max Fury Road? Oh yeah, he did do happy feet. Yes, he did. Yeah. He did, Babe 2 pig in the city, which.

The babe's darker sequel, it's a lot more George Miller really than the first one. But it didn't go as well, obviously. You can see the Mad Max, the tide beginning to come in again. He's like, maybe I want to fucking make this. And one of the guys who he gets in is this guy called Brendan McCarthy, who is one of the people who has, like, gotten onto, I think it was Babe with the mindset. Eventually, this guy's going to ask me about Mad Max. And he does. And this guy's a storyboard artist by way of graphic novels.

So eventually, and he's a huge fan of the second movie. and he basically does the perfect fans like the fans jutsu where you get involved with the guy that you're a fan of but you still manage to remain normal and like get into a collaboration with him so he's keeping this guy true to like if we're making this fucking movie

it needs to go insane because I as a fan of the originals wouldn't accept it if it didn't and I know nobody fuck else this is this is all of our audience's fondest dream which is to become friends with all of us in real life and then suggest the episode that they really want and then help us make it. Yeah.

Throughout the year 1997, so we're seeing the timeline really moving up now, George Miller, Brenda McCarthy, a writer called Eric Blakely and Norma Morseau, who was the costume designer for the first two movies. The four of them are basically in a room together all day just working on a storyboard because this Brenda McCarthy guy was a graphic novelist

so he could just draw what's in Miller's head and they lay out 6,000 fucking drawings around this big Ovoid room that's just the plot of Fury Road. They didn't have a script. They had a fucking storyboard. George, won't you join us in this Ovoid room? George, why don't you join us in the chamber?

In the Ovoid? They called it the Mad Max room. In the Ovoid, yeah. Get into my Ovoid room. Yeah, but in 19, you just spin around really fast. It's like being in a zoetro, but it's his 1998. This was 98, yeah. They barely even had Ovoid rooms.

Yeah. Now, you might have noticed, but this movie didn't come out in 1998. No, it came on in 2015. Mm-hmm. There were three significant delays. Okay. Basically, at this point, they were ready to go. They had Mel Gibson ready for this because he was going to be like an older max.

He would have been driven completely insane by the waste land, ready to come in as this tabular rasa. And then just to get in character, Mel Gibson was driven completely insane. In a car. Yeah. He, yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

The fucking Mobile Force Patrol pulled him over and he just, he said some things. Yeah. Yeah. 2003. Studio pulls out. Mm-hmm. It's over. Because Mel Gibson.

It's over. Because of Mel Gibson. Not just necessarily because of Mel Gibson. They were just panicking about money. Oh, okay. Studio shit. All three times, they just panic about money. We've all been there.

Ice soup, ice soup weeks, you know? In 2003? They had so much more money panicked. to come, but all right. Yeah, there's a direct quote from George Miller in this behind-the-scenes book I've got where he says, after 9-11, everything changed. And I couldn't agree more. Yeah. 9-11, I'm learning more and more that 9-11 was a bad day. Because, like, first of all, it almost killed Jackie Chan. Second of all, it destroyed Wesley Snipes' apartment. And third, it delayed Fury Road for 20 fucking years.

Or listen up, meatbag. If you want to hear the rest of this episode of Kill James Bond, you're going to have to go to patreon.com slash kill James Bond. And sign on to stay for at least five pounds a month. It becomes more operator by the end of it, doesn't it? Mission failed. We'll get him next time.