150 tanks were destroyed for the filming of the blockbuster 'Mad Max'.

The filmmakers of "Mad Max: Fury Road" went to the desert, built and destroyed 150 military combat vehicles, and employed 150 stunt actors to perform all the action scenes.

Mad Max: Fury Road, which premiered globally on May 15th, has received high praise from both audiences and critics. Many reviewers have stated that the film is more than just an action masterpiece.peakIt is also a prime example of filmmaking that emphasizes live action effects from the set. This is a traditional filmmaking style of the 20th century.

Four years to choose the setting.

The Mad Max: Fury Road project started in 2000 but stalled for over five years due to its large budget of $150 million, while the US dollar and Australian dollar depreciated due to the economic recession. The outbreak of the Iraq War also made Mad Max: Fury Road a risky film project because of its political implications.

One large-scale scene features over 30 custom-built vehicles from the film racing at 80 km/h.

The pre-production process intensified in 2006, when director George Miller began designing the storyboard for each scene. George stated that he needed the storyboard before the film script because he envisioned the film as a series of chase scenes across the desert with very little dialogue.3,500 drawings were the result of a team of five artists who transformed the director's ideas into images on paper.

During the same period of preparing the graphic script, George Miller tasked his close assistant, Colin Gibson, with selecting locations. “After being invited to be in the film by George, starting in 2000, I traveled the world, to places rarely visited, to find locations. We needed a large canyon with sheer cliffs, but right next to a vast desert.”

Colin Gibson recounted: "Almost everywhere we went had canyons but no deserts, or deserts that were too far from the canyons. Furthermore, most of the beautiful and majestic locations were unsuitable for a large film crew and demanding filming schedule. Ultimately, we chose the Namibian desert."

For the film crew, Namibia was a valuable choice because of its rich variety of small settings – sand dunes, plains, salt lakes, and even shallow river basins.

150 combat vehiclesIt was built and then destroyed.

Before filming began, the crew built 150 combat vehicles of various models. Colin Gibson was also responsible for this process. He believed: “Each vehicle is a character with its own personality, like a human being. The weather and terrain conditions on the desert set made it difficult for us to maintain these war machines. But it was precisely the scratches and bruises from the harsh filming environment that made the war vehicles look even more beautiful on screen. Therefore, the film is more realistic.”

Tom Hardy in an explosion scene on set.

Among the war machines, three iconic vehicles were designed for the main characters. The small four-wheeled Interceptor is for the hero Max "the Madman." The female protagonist Furiosa's War Rig is an 18-wheeled vehicle with a fuel tank and a cabin connected like a ship's axle. And the villain Joe the Immortal's Gigahorse is based on a classic 1959 Cadillac Devilles.The large vehicles in the film are designed as bulky and massive military-industrial complexes, yet capable of moving at high speeds. In addition to trucks and combat vehicles, there are also tanks and motorcycles to make the vehicle lineup even more diverse.

The producers hired a company that specialized in building tanks for the U.S. military to create 150 field vehicles for the film. These smaller vehicles closely followed the larger war machines, much like small fish swimming alongside sharks for a parasitic existence.

On set, most of these beast-like vehicles were traveling at speeds close to 100 km/h. The film crew used helicopter cameras to film over 80 vehicles racing together in the final chase scene. “The camera crew was terrified at times. They were afraid they would miss capturing a certain angle of the entire scene with 80 vehicles. We destroyed more than half of the vehicles after they were used for filming,” Colin Gibson recounted.See more12 unique war machines and vehicles from Mad Max.

All the stunts were done for real.

Mad Max was filmed on real sets, with 90% of its scenes performed on location. All action and stunt scenes were done by the film's star cast or a team of up to 150 stunt performers. The filmmaking team used almost no computer-generated imagery (CGI), except to highlight the vast landscapes of Namibia, remove equipment stands, and use a prosthetic hand (one of the character's arms is missing) for the warrior Furiosa, played by Charlize Theron.

Explaining his seemingly unconventional choice, director George Miller shared: “This isn’t a fantasy film. There are no dragons or spaceships. This is a realistic film. A story about the frenzied psychology of humans thrust into an extreme post-apocalyptic world on the brink of extinction. We needed to make everything truly authentic.”

The stunt actors were strapped to the top of tall poles and performed dangerous fight scenes. The scenes were filmed live.

The 150-person stunt team includes many Hollywood stars such as Keir Beck, Dayna Grant, Guy Norris, Richard Norton, and Greg van Borssum. They have performed action scenes in Oscar-winning films for their visual effects. They execute stunts such as leaping from one tank to another while the vehicles are in motion, or crashing into each other in the desert. Safety cables are used to support the high-speed stunts. These cables are then removed from the image using computer-generated imagery (CG).

Guy Norris was the stuntman responsible for many scenes, including the scene where he drives a 12-ton truck into the nearly 20-ton tank of the female lead, Furiosa. He shared that he enjoyed most the scene where the stuntmen were strapped to the tops of tall poles. These poles were securely fastened to the tanks of a group of suicide soldiers. To perform this high-speed, circus-like action sequence, the group of stuntmen trained for eight weeks.

The actress doubles for the famous Charlize Theron in performing dangerous stunts.

Actress Dayna Grant doubled for the movie star.Charlize TheronIn her role as the one-armed female fighter Furiosa, she also performs a series of spectacular stunts, such as riding a motorcycle through flames or fearlessly hanging herself under a speeding gasoline truck.

"The 120 days of filming were 120 days of risk," said George Miller. Many action scenes posed a risk of death or injury to the actors, but after filming concluded, no casualties occurred.

After filming and post-production, the film cost over $150 million, many times more than the total production budget of the three previous Mad Max films. The production budgets for the previous Mad Max films were $650,000, $2 million, and $12.3 million, respectively.

According to VNE