Do you have any idea what completely upended my expectations of what a fight scene could be? The war rig chase sequence in 2015's Mad Max: Fury Road. I recall when I first watched it, I was certain I was seeing incredible CGI wizardry, and then I learned that George Miller actually built these giant vehicles and had real stunt performers tossing themselves off moving cars at highway speeds in the Namib Desert.
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1392190/
The sequence I'm talking about takes place about halfway through the film when Furiosa's massive war rig is ambushed by the Buzzards on the way to the Green Place. What makes this sequence absolutely breathtaking has to do with vehicle combat that's reminiscent of a gladiatorial arena stretched across miles of desert highway and nothing whatsoever to do with traditional hand-to-hand fighting. The choreography of the fight occurs among machines, and human bodies are projectiles and weapons in themselves.
The whole movie is essentially one long chase across the desert wasteland, and this sequence is a highlight of Miller's brilliance in practical filmmaking. When you see a War Boy jump from a swinging pole arm onto the war rig in motion, you're seeing actual human beings do these stunts with very little protective gear. The visceral response comes from knowing that when someone is tossed from a car or squished between two cars, there is actual physical impact being realized on screen.
https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/13/8600639/mad-max-fury-road-review
Miller's filming here provides a tremendous sense of three-dimensional space that most action films totally forego. He uses deep space composition, putting the War Boys and other vehicles at different locations within the frame so you never ever have any question whatsoever where everyone is within the frame in relation to each other. The camera never cheats - when someone jumps from one car to another, you see them from the beginning. There is not fly cutting to cover up impossible jumps or artificial special effects. What I like about this sequence is how Miller uses the cars as personalities that are individualized on their own. The war rig is this clattering stronghold that Furiosa pilots with a mother guardian's ferocity, and the Buzzard automobiles are skeletal, nearly insect-like predators that dart in and out of the shot. When the Buzzards use their long poles to pole vault from car to car, the whole atmosphere changes from a chase to what appears to be air dogfighting, only it is all taking place on the ground at 60 miles per hour.
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1392190/
The sound effects rely on a buildup of mechanized brutality that precisely synchronizes with the visual chaos. Every metal crash, every engine complaint, every tiresqueal echoes out across the desert ruin. Miller contrasts the howl of the engines with the more personal sounds of human fighting - grunts, punching, ripping cloth - this sonic weave that makes the brutality both epic and strangely intimate.
The rig sequence of war is a further extension of the concept of fight choreography on a macro-level, where blocking is achieved through huge automobiles instead of bodies. The action builds upon the initial Buzzard assault through a series of increasingly violent stages - pole-vaulting boarders initially, followed by explosive spears, and eventually the final attempts at blowing out the rig's wheels.
The practical effects have the stunt teams' work create an overwhelming sense of weight and mass that is just impossible for CGI to achieve. The entire fleet of cars in Mad Max: Fury Road were built from real cars - wrecked cars and prototype cars - that were found anywhere on the planet, and you can sense their weight with every collision. When a Buzzard car gets crushed under the wheels of the war rig, there is this bone-crushing sense of permanence that comes about when real metal gets smushed up by real force.
Miller's choreography of action in this sequence repositions the nature of the fight scene itself. Instead of highlighting expert martial arts execution or superhuman abilities, he creates conflict employing machinery and human ingenuity. The heroes win through ingenuity and make-do desperation as much as cutting-edge combat skills. Furiosa's wheeling is combat performance, and Max's improvisational facility amidst apocalyptic catastrophe renders him a tactician more than a skilled warrior.
The action sequence also demonstrates Miller's preference for using landscape as a player in action sequences. The endless desert road is this environment where the standard laws of physics and geography bring in natural possibilities and challenges.
https://n3rdcore.it/mad-max-fury-road-la-recensione/amp/
What sticks with me years later is how it somehow feels both sensational and realistic simultaneously. The stunts are truly death-defying, but they're done by real people using real cars in a real location. There's no digital safety net, no cheating of physics, no characters who can brush off hits that would kill normal people. The tension comes from the knowledge that everyone involved - characters and actors alike - is really risking life and limb for every moment of screen time.
My entry to Cine TV Contest #140:-
