Furiosa - The Spence Edit (Released)

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Mad Max Fury Road is one of my favorite movies, and personally I regard it as the best action film since The Matrix. Nothing has dethroned it yet (Though M:I-Fallout got close).

So needless to say, I was very excited to hear that George Miller was returning to the world for a prequel about Furiosa. What an excellent cast! The trailer looks great! It was my most anticipated film last year.

I was severely disappointed. Though the cast was great and the additional world building was interesting, I found myself checking my watch through it’s extended run-time, never really engaging with the film and feeling like it never got off the ground. I wasn’t just disappointed, I was kind of heart broken.

I’ve spent the time since seeing the movie trying to figure out what exactly didn’t work for me, and it comes down to my favorite word: pacing. That lean and mean momentum and energy of Fury Road had been replaced with a bloated run-time, needless scenes, stops and starts, and the movie never fully gets in motion. An incredible mid-film action sequence on the war rig comes too late and doesn’t do enough to keep the movie moving forward. It’s just too long, too slow, and lacks oomph.

futon88 made a great edit of the film already that I encourage you to check out, but my intentions are a bit more aggressive.

So I’m giving a fanedit a go, with the intention of getting the movie down to 2 hours or less and replicating as much as possible that momentum that Fury Road carried with it. That means I’ve got to cut roughly 30 minutes, so a lot is being ejected, but I’m hopeful that the movie may feel more satisfying for those that felt it didn’t quite work like I did.

Some overall notes:

• Cut the narration, chapter title cards, subtitles for locations, and anything else that needlessly stops the film.

• Cut quite a lot of the over-explaining of the wasteland, part of it’s charm is that George Miller is the only person that really understands it.

• Speed up the first half of the movie significantly to get to adult Furiosa sooner. The majority of the cuts to the film will happen before the war-rig sequence.

• Significantly increase the pacing of Furiosa’s kidnapping and the desert chase that follows.

• Cut Dementus finding the wayward War Boy in the desert. We don’t really need to know why he’s decided to attack the Citadel.

• Cut Dementus coming up with the “disguised war boys” plan after capturing the war-rig from Gas Town. We get all the information we need when we see them enacting the plan.

• After Furiosa escapes from Rictus, jump forward to her already being embedded with the the black thumbs as they start work on the war rig.

• Remove references to how long the war with Dementus is, and speed up the section where she makes her robotic arm and cuts her hair.

• Cut from “I need a vehicle” to Furiosa already pursuing Dementus.

• Cut the “multiple deaths” of Dementus, going straight from the desert to him under the tree.

• Various micro-cuts for pacing throughout.

• Slight adjustments to saturation and film grain, and the addition of some slight camera shake to certain shots to give the film a less “digital” look.

I’ve already got the movie down to exactly 2 hours, but I need to go through and make sure I haven’t “over cut” it and that the emotional beats still resonate. This one isn’t far off from release.

Here’s a few sample clips!

This is the opening chase through the desert, significantly paired down and with some added background music from Fury Road to make it more intense and pacey:

https://streamable.com/5wzlad

This is the first part of the war rig chase. I didn’t do many edits to this as I think the scene is great already, but I did add some music from Fury Road:

https://streamable.com/hdjlja

And this is my version of the ending. I’m still working on this and trying to decide if it’s what I want to do with it. Shortened, no narration, new music from Fury Road:

https://streamable.com/gqtf2e

Sounds great Spence, and I’ll look forward to seeing the final cut when you’re ready!

I’ve only seen Furiosa once at the cinema, and my memory is that it did run a touch too long (particularly at the very end, the ‘multiple deaths of Dementus’ as you call it).

It felt like binge-watching four or five episodes of a show back-to-back, and if your edit can make it feel more like a single propulsive movie (as you say Fury Road and Mad Max 2 were so lean and mean, really no fat on them) then it would become more in keeping with the hi-octane visual storytelling of those two classics.

The opening Narration is quite good on the wasteland game I think… It’s Mad Max but it is not but set in the same world Furiosa. This could have been a good set up and Harkening back to Mad Max 2 Narration.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QAbgNx3mrg

I did enjoy Furiosa and I get where you are coming from it was bloated and pace tightening.

I think the ending is lacking Furiosa cutting out Dementus toungue would have been Hard Hittubg scene and should have stayed in. THat then makes the slow torture of Dementus with the tree more horrific too. Not that you can do anything about this but I thought I would say it.

Check Color Grading of theatrucal Trailer 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJMuhwVlca4

Reds dialed down in official release

It felt to me that when the war was announced it was glossed over far too briefly with a small montage and that should have been expanded somehow.

I am sure it can be whittled down more and tightened but as the trailer says it is an odyssey tale so It is meant to be somewhat long.

It needed the sense that Mad Max was out there and was somehow intertwined with the tale of Furiosa. The Wasteland is actually happening concurrent to some of the events in Furiosa but not shown. But there is not too much to it I don;t think.

Good luck though with it.

Can’t wait to see this. Furiosa made me think that George miller didn’t understand what made fury road so good.

This is done!

Brilliant - I’d love to get a link and watch this asap?

Please send me a DM for any link requests. Also, slight delay as I found a video issue in my current version. I’m fixing that then I’ll re-upload.

Thanks very much for the link Spence, I just watched it this evening and really enjoyed it. The pace is considerably improved and more kinetic, and having only seen the film once before I didn’t have exacting knowledge of what you cut but for the most part it wasn’t missed and the movie still ‘worked’ in its shortened form.

There were just two exceptions where it felt like we went from A to C without passing B. Dementus (now ‘The Red’) showing up to attack the Citadel (which we’re seeing and hearing about for the first time), that lost me a bit and maybe needed some explanation. Later the scene with Praetorian Jack saying he’d teach Furiosa, and then the next scene he says words to the effect of I’ve taught you all I know - I wonder if there was a way to add a sense of ‘passage of time’ to better bridge those two scenes?

I liked what you did near the end of the film by repurposing the war montage, it now played out as Dementus’ forces being wiped out by Immortan Joe in one fell swoop. At the films very end I felt you could go even further with the cuts, it still feels slow with too much monologuing. Perhaps it could work well that after Furiosa snips the teddy off his groin you segue straight into the final shot of withered Dementus with the fruit tree growing out of him? Just a thought.

Regardless of these small suggestions it’s an entertaining and very effective edit. It keeps all the good stuff and modestly trims a bit of the fat, thanks for putting the effort in, it’s a big thumbs up from me!

Matt.F said:

Thanks very much for the link Spence, I just watched it this evening and really enjoyed it. The pace is considerably improved and more kinetic, and having only seen the film once before I didn’t have exacting knowledge of what you cut but for the most part it wasn’t missed and the movie still ‘worked’ in its shortened form.

There were just two exceptions where it felt like we went from A to C without passing B. Dementus (now ‘The Red’) showing up to attack the Citadel (which we’re seeing and hearing about for the first time), that lost me a bit and maybe needed some explanation. Later the scene with Praetorian Jack saying he’d teach Furiosa, and then the next scene he says words to the effect of I’ve taught you all I know - I wonder if there was a way to add a sense of ‘passage of time’ to better bridge those two scenes?

I liked what you did near the end of the film by repurposing the war montage, it now played out as Dementus’ forces being wiped out by Immortan Joe in one fell swoop. At the films very end I felt you could go even further with the cuts, it still feels slow with too much monologuing. Perhaps it could work well that after Furiosa snips the teddy off his groin you segue straight into the final shot of withered Dementus with the fruit tree growing out of him? Just a thought.

Regardless of these small suggestions it’s an entertaining and very effective edit. It keeps all the good stuff and modestly trims a bit of the fat, thanks for putting the effort in, it’s a big thumbs up from me!

Thanks for the feedback! I honestly wasn’t sure if that jump to the Citadel would work, but I thought I’d try it anyway. I don’t know that the context for why he’s there or why he’s red is really needed, but if that’s the general feedback I’d consider adding some scenes back in.

As far as the Praetorian Jack stuff, I actually didn’t cut anything in there so that’s how it plays in the original version too.

My argument for not cutting any of the climactic scene with Furiosa and Dementus is that I actually think it’s a really strong, really well acted scene. It could technically be trimmed down, but I think my personal preference is to let it breathe.