Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About 'Mad Max: Fury Road' Is In This Book

George Miller is an absolute visionary and without him there's no denying that Mad Max: Fury Road be a very, very different movie. However, he didn't build its world entirely on his own. Miller spent nearly two decades working on the movie with a close team of artists to flesh out every single detail of the hellish world that Max lives in, and the amazing characters that occupy it. They came up with a backstory for every single thing in the movie, big and small, even if it was something that would never actually end up in the final movie.

But if you're the kind of fan who obsesses about a movie and wants to learn as much about it as possible, then Titan Books is here to save you. They've just published the must-own The Art of Mad Max: Fury Road, which is basically the holy grail of details for every crazy thing that Miller, artist/writer Brendan McCarthy, storyboard artists Peter Pound and Mark Sexton, and many more dreamed up in order to make Fury Road possible.

The huge hardback bible is nearly 200 pages of glossy greatness, and we highly recommend any fan of learning how movies are made pick it up. And to entice you, we've included just a few details gleamed from within.

The Stuff You Didn't See In The Movie

The Doof Warrior's Backstory - George Miller actually explained a bit of everyone's favorite flaming guitarist to us in Fandango's exclusive interview and how he grew up blind in a cave, but the art book goes even futher by providing this crucial detail: The Doof's mother was murdered when he was a kid and the mask he wears is her dead face.

The Underground Mall - Knowing that people would wonder where Immortan Joe gets the resources to run his entire city, Miller and company devised a plot involving them knowing the location of a giant underground shopping mall that had been covered by sand but whose stores and parking garage were still stocked with goods.

The Bullet Farm and Gas Town - We get to meet the rulers of the brother cities to The Citadel, but the production didn't just give them names and leave it at that. They designed the cities and how they would function, even though there was no reason to ever show them in the movie. You can get a glimpse at what Gas Town would've looked like in the below concept art, beneath the hovercraft. And speaking of hovercrafts...

The Hovercrafts - All of the vehicles in the final movie are heavily modified cars, but at one point Miller and company did cook up a tribe of people who would lure victims into quicksand by using hovercrafts. And as you can see in the corner, they even had some people who used personal helicopters to survive in the wastelands, which feels like a big callback to the disheveled personal helicopter featured in The Road Warrior.

The Many Faces of Immortan Joe

There were many versions of Immortan Joe drafted up before the creative team decided on one, but a few things were always constant: He had to have a breathing apparatus that was used for two things: 1) Intimidation and 2) to filter out the poisonous air that everyone else has to breathe.

Furiosa, Max Rockatansky, and Nux, Concept Art

As you can see from the below concept art, the early versions of Furiosa and Nux were quite different than what their final versions in the movie ended up looking like. Max Rockatansky, however, looks very similar to how he was first sketched way back in the late '90s.

And for those thinking the fan theory about the feral kid from The Road Warrior being the new Mad Max in the movie, the book makes it pretty clear that they simply recast the actor from Mel Gibson to Tom Hardy, and that the actor isn't nearly as important as the design of both Max and his car.

Fury Road Glossary

One of the great things about Fury Road is that it never stops to explain its world -- you just need to catch up and figure out how everything works. But if you want to talk about the finer details of things, you may as well use the right words.

Black Fingers - Mechanics

Gynotopia - A haven of love and freedom founded by a tribe of women. This was in the original pitch for the movie and has since evovled into the Green Place.

The Plains of Silence - Where Max is considering triving through at at the beginning of the movie, but the War Boys catch him before he can get deeper into the vast nothingness.

War Boys - What the name says. They are Immortan Joe's soldiers.

Imperator - The commander of Immortan Joe's army. She was originally called simply the Warrior Woman.

The V8 Interceptor - Max's car, a black '74 XB Ford Falcon.

The Citadel - Immortan Joe's stronghold. The closest thing to high tech in the Mad Max world.

The Wretched - The people who wander at the base of The Citadel but who are too sickly to contribute.

The Blood Shed - Where Max and others are stored so they can donate healthy blood to the diseased War Boys.

The War Rig - The biggest vehicle in Immortan Joe's armada and the one always driven by the Imperator, which in Fury Road is Furiosa.

The Gigahorse - Immortan Joe's own personal car. And considering Joe is obsessed with extending his bloodline, it is no coincidence that his own car looks like it's having sex with another car.

Gas Town - A nearby oil refinery / city that is run by The People Eater (the fat guy with all the piercings and the fake nose).

Bullet Farm - The other nearest town to The Citadel which specializes in gun powder and is run by The Bullet Farmer (the guy who gets blinded by Furiosa).

Buzzards - A tribe of scavengers that live in the wasteland and who use all of the spikey vehicles. They're one of the first who pursue Furiosa's War Rig, but they don't actually work for Immortan Joe.

The Toxic Storm - The name of the massive sandstorm filled with tornados and lightning.

The Rock Riders - Another tribe of scavengers that live in the canyon Furiosa drives through. Motorcycles are their vehicles of choice.

The Night Bog - The new name of The Green Place / Gynotopia after its lush land is turned into a muddy mess.

The Vuvalini - The name of Furiosa's tribe who founded Gynotopia. When we meet them in the movie, all that's left are a handful of warrior women known as The Many Mothers.

The Original Pitch for the Movie

Included in the art book is the original description of Mad Max: Fury Road. A few things have changed (the number of wives has lowered and Max's role has changed from tracker to bloodbag), but for a movie that has been in and out of production since 1997, it's amazing how close the final movie was to this original vision.

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Seriously, Get This Book

There are hundreds more pictures, pages, and details within The Art of Mad Max: Fury Road, as well as an oral history of the film's production delivered by the mad men and women who made it all possible.