Max Max: Fury Road Concept Art Show Off Crazy Cars And Crazier Characters

By Brent McKnight | Updated

This article is more than 2 years old

Summer movie season got an early start with Captain America: The Winter Soldier, but it really kicks into high gear this Friday with the release of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (unless you’re lucky enough to live in a place where it’s already open), followed shortly Godzilla and X-Men: Days of Future Past. All of the focus on this year’s massive action blockbusters makes the absence of one particular movie that much more glaring. Mad Max: Fury Road, George Miller’s long-awaited return to the post-apocalyptic world that he first created in 1979, is nowhere to be found. After an arduous production schedule, the film has been in the can for well over a year—though there were some reshoots last year—but it still isn’t scheduled for release until May 15, 2015.

Despite the long delays that included act-of-god style flooding that wiped the original location off of the map, we’ve been getting little tidbits with which to content ourselves while we wait. Hell, it’s been almost 30 years since Beyond Thunderdome, so another year probably won’t kill us. Just the other day we saw two new trailers for Warner Bros.’s upcoming Mad Max video game, and now we have a look at a ton of crazy-ass concept art from Fury Road.

These images basically show two things: the people and the cars. Makes sense since those are the two most important elements, and they both look pretty goddamned awesome. There have been a few set photos, mostly of star Tom Hardy, who takes over the Max Rockatansky role that helped make Mel Gibson a global superstar, but these drawings provide a wider array of the inhabitants of this world. And they look suitably beaten up and broken down and pieced together to have survived the collapse of civilization and the hardscrabble life in an arid wasteland ruled by motorized muscle.

[IMAGES REMOVED BY Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.]

There are sketchy mohawks, improvised weapons, cobbled together outfits, and all manner of bizarre looks. From the various appearances, it looks like there will be at least a couple of groups, the ones in black who look like they just stepped out of a bondage club, and those with a more paramilitary style of dress. I could be wrong, but that’s the general vibe you get looking at these sketches. They even have a Gimp.

Here’s the official synopsis for Fury Road:

Mad Max is caught up with a group of people fleeing across the Wasteland in a War Rig driven by the Imperator Furiosa. This movie is an account of the Road War which follows. It is based on the Word Burgers of the History Men and eyewitness accounts of those who survived.

A shaved-head-sporting Charlize Theron plays Furiosa, and it’s interesting that they mention the War Rig, because the next group of photos focuses on the vehicular side of the action. We’ve heard that the movie is essentially one long chase scene and that hundreds of cars actual cars were destroyed during the filming—which should make fans everywhere grin and giggle a little bit. When you compare these drawings to the pictures we’ve seen of what appears in the movie, the translation from page to reality went swimmingly. That must have been a blast, to imagine these badass battlewagons and see them fully realized right in front of you. We hope that Fury Road is as awesome as we hope it is.

[IMAGES REMOVED BY Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.]