The 3 rules that helped create ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’

“Mad Max: Fury Road” presents a chaotic, post-apocalyptic world onscreen. Off-screen, however, things were a bit more orderly.

Writer-director George Miller insisted that everything in the film — the costumes, the vehicles, the out-there sets — had to fit into a cohesive vision.

“Everybody had to work to the same ground rules,” Miller says. “There was a unified aesthetic.”

The movie, which hits theaters Thursday night, is basically a two-hour chase scene. Nearly 50 years after the world’s collapse, drifter Max (Tom Hardy) teams with rig driver Furiosa (Charlize Theron) to rescue five young women from the clutches of a sadistic warlord (Hugh Keays-Byrne).

Here are Miller’s three ground rules for building the movie’s unique world.

1. Every item has a story

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“Everything had to be from found objects, repurposed,” Miller says. “And each piece has to have a logic that explained how it survived the apocalypse, whether a weapon, a pair of glasses, or Furiosa’s mechanical arm.”

Mass production no longer exists, so the objects that have survived the apocalypse have to be durable. That means the vehicles all date from the pre-1980s, before computer technology became standard and when cars remained reasonably easy to repair.

2. Artistic expression still exists

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“Just because it’s the wasteland, that doesn’t mean people stop making beautiful things,” Miller says. “I went to one of the poorest townships in Africa, and I noticed people were making beautiful toys out of wire. When you look at Paleolithic men, they make beautiful rock drawings.”

So even though the world of Mad Max is dusty and violent, there are still glimpses of beauty. For example, the Doof Warrior (Iota), who plays metal guitar atop a truck loaded with speakers, was fitted with a custom axe made from an old bedpan. The instrument also shoots flames from its neck.

3. The apocalypse can be funny

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As crazy as it sounds when you’re talking about a movie about the end of the world, it had to have humor.

“Here we are in this dark, crazy world, and it’s human nature for that to bring out a kind of insane, celebratory quality,” Miller says. “There’s a hysteria best described by Nux’s (Nicholas Hoult) line [‘What a lovely day!’] in the middle of a toxic storm as vehicles are being swept up into the air. For him, dying in this tornado of dust and fire is the loveliest possible day there could be.’’