BACK IN 2015, when Mad Max: Fury Road first revved its thunderous engine and stormed into cinemas, I headed to the Curzon Soho to luxuriate in George Miller’s masterpiece for a third time. Cut to five minutes into the film. Max has gobbled a mutant gecko. He’s been branded and forcibly tattooed. A legion of pasty-white, hideously scarred, Gollum-y War Boys have leered, shrieked and cavorted. Suddenly, the middle-aged man next to me stands up and in a booming voice declares three words to the auditorium at large: “NOT FOR ME.” Then he scurries down the aisle and flees the building. BACK IN 2015, when
His loss. The world of Mad Max might not be for everybody, but frankly that’s why it’s so much fun to visit. Outrageous, lurid, gory, deliriously paced and seemingly unfettered by a single studio note, Fury Road was a straight-up instant action classic. So much so that in our March 2020 issue, you guys voted it the greatest movie of the 21st century so far. (Let’s face it, Paddington didn’t have a single chainsaw berserker on a pole.) And now, incredibly, the 79-year-old Miller is at it again. Furiosa is another desert epic, this time with Anya Taylor-Joy duking it out against Chris Hemsworth. There will be monster trucks. There will be mayhem. I highly doubt there will be anything mediocre. Read all about it from page 52, in our world-exclusive report by Empire’s very own Dementus, Chris Hewitt.
And because the landscape of cinema is as wild and unpredictable as the Wasteland itself, this issue also features the very firs tinterview with Jerry Seinfeld about his new Pop-Tart movie. Yes, the Pop-Tart, that unlikeliest of muses. At least it’s tastier than a gecko.