George Miller reveals what the post-apocalyptic Mad Max films are really about

29:14George Miller: Furiosa, what Mad Max is really about, and his early career as an ER doctor

Picture a world where a nuclear apocalypse has dried up the oceans, the economy has collapsed, the fabric of society has disintegrated and a shortage of resources has pitted any remaining survivors against each other. This is the world George Miller built 45 years ago with his feature-length directorial debut, Mad Max.

That film launched a massive franchise, including the latest installment, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, which hits theatres today. But prior to releasing the first Mad Max film in 1979, Miller was an ER doctor who harboured a deep interest in telling allegorical stories about the hero's journey and the human condition. He says his early career in medicine is more related to his filmmaking career than you may think.

"It's all about the human being," the Australian director tells Q's Tom Power on today's show. "You have to have an intense curiosity about who we are and how we work … all the way back to our early evolution…. The first thing you do when you sit down as a doctor — and it's always been this tradition — is to get the history. You're looking for the story to see the overall pattern. That's what you do with characters."

Miller says all of the Mad Max films are allegories, just as the American Western was a vehicle for exploring contemporary American concerns.

Initially, Mad Max was to take place in contemporary Melbourne, but due to the film's shoestring budget, the production couldn't afford to block off busy city streets or rent buildings to shoot in. The solution was to set the story in the not too distant future, which allowed Mad Max to be shot in empty back streets and dilapidated buildings that could be used for free.

The director says that decision also unintentionally allowed the film to have a much bigger cultural impact, with Max being seen as different hero archetypes from around the world, like a samurai figure in Japan or a viking-type among Scandinavians.

"Here's basically how we approach these movies," Miller says. "We say, 'Imagine everything you see in the news — all the catastrophes we worry about — all happen together next Wednesday. What would you do?'

"You know, you've got no power grid, your credit card is no good, your cell phone doesn't work, your electric car doesn't work, your refrigerator doesn't work. What would you do? And then what would you do in 100 days? How would you survive in 1,000 days? And then go 45 or 50 years into the centre of some isolated continent, like Australia, and play that story out in the wasteland and see what behaviours people have. That's really what's interesting to me."

For Miller, the film's speculation about the not too distant future isn't so much a prediction of what will happen as it is a way of abstracting meaning about how we live in the present day.

"When I see it, and when I reflect on it, and when we work on it, and when we actually dig down deep into every facet of the film, it's all about what we're getting out of today," he tells Power. "What it is to live in a world that's, for a lot of us, very bewildering. And how do you find your way through that world? That's, I think, what stories are for….. That's, I think, how we make the world coherent. I think that's who we are as individuals and collectively."

The full interview with George Miller is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with George Miller produced by Catherine Stockhausen.