Why George Miller Thought He Failed As A Filmmaker With The Original Mad Max
At times, you can tell that the sequel is the kind of movie that the filmmaker wanted to make the first time around. Whether due to a low budget or lack of experience, the director couldn't properly realize their vision with the original film. The sequel is thus not just a chance to revisit the characters and their world, but an opportunity for a redo. One such film is 1981's "The Road Warrior," the sequel to 1979's "Mad Max."
George Miller has never sugarcoated his struggle while making his debut movie. While the then-32-year-old Miller had produced an award-winning short film prior to "Mad Max," he had no history of writing a script or helming a feature film. Still, Miller felt he had an obligation to his financiers to do his job well. Miller recounted to The Guardian last year: "My partner, Byron Kennedy, and I had raised a pretty meager budget from our closest friends from school. So there was an obligation to get them back their money. It was a terrible thing if we didn't do it."
But it wasn't the "meager" $264,700 budget that hampered the shoot — it was the director himself. In 2015, Miller told USA Today about how his inexperience impacted the "Mad Max" shoot: "I just thought if you had a film all mapped out and worked out in your head, you could just go out and it was just a matter of executing it. I didn't realize you'd get all sorts of weird landmines in the way, like the weather is not how you expected on that day."
The trouble didn't end when principal photography did, either.
Editing your own mistakes
One effect of the tiny budget was that George Miller couldn't afford to hire an editor. So, he edited "Mad Max" himself. This meant that every day, for what turned into a year-long process, he was reminded of all the mistakes he felt he'd made as a director. Miller told The Guardian: "I was faced with the evidence of what I hadn't done, what I'd failed to do. Why did I put the camera there? Why didn't I ask the actors to go faster? Every day facing this film, this wreck."
After the film was ready, Miller felt it was "a complete disaster ... in terms of what I wanted to do. I really thought I wasn't cut out to make films." And yet, "Mad Max" became an undeniable success. For a time, it held a Guinness World Record for the highest box office return to budget ratio. That unexpected success must have been invigorating for Miller. Despite the bad memories of making "Mad Max," he pushed on with a sequel, Miller told The New York Times, because there was pressure to make one and he felt he could "do a better job with a second movie."
Miller would indeed improve on "Mad Max" with "The Road Warrior," which is considered one of the greatest action films of all time. (Three decades later, he would deliver an equally well-received companion piece in "Mad Max: Fury Road.") It helped that he had a bigger budget and could recognize his mistakes. Cinema and the audience are better off that Miller didn't give up after his first attempt.