New Mad Max Box Set to Include Black and White Version of Fury Road
It might be hard to believe but there’s a better version of Mad Max: Fury Road out there and you’ll be able to see it soon.
According to Mad Max director, George Miller, the best version of the film is the black and white version. Unfortunately, it never made it to the big screen despite Miller hoping that such monochrome films would be taken out of the art house ghetto and brought kicking and screaming into multiplexes.
Now, according Indiewire, who spotted a pre-order listing on Amazon Germany for a new six disc 'double dip' Mad Max box set called Mad Max: High Octane Collection including all four films in the series, a brand new one hour documentary about Fury Road, and a 'Black and Chrome' version of Mad Max: Fury Road, which the listing refers to as ‘the surreal black and white film version of Fury Road.’
Elaborating on what Miler calls the ‘authentic and elemental’ version of the film, Miller, speaking to /Film said:
“The best version of ‘Fury Road’ was what we called a ‘slash dupe’: a cheap, black-and-white version of the movie for the composer. Something about it seemed more authentic and elemental. So I asked Eric Whipp, the [‘Fury Road’] colorist, ‘can I see some scenes in black and white with quite a bit of contrast?’ They looked great. So I said to the guys at Warners, ‘can we put a black-and-white version on the DVD?’ There wasn’t enough room. [It’ll end up] on another version with commentary and other features.”
In regards to the films post-apocalyptic aesthetic, Miller added:
“We spent a lot of time in DI (digital intermediate), and we had a very fine colorist, Eric Whipp. One thing I’ve noticed is that the default position for everyone is to de-saturate post-apocalyptic movies. There’s only two ways to go, make them black and white — the best version of this movie is black and white, but people reserve that for art movies now. The other version is to really go all-out on the color. The usual teal and orange thing? That’s all the colors we had to work with. The desert’s orange and the sky is teal, and we either could de-saturate it, or crank it up, to differentiate the movie. Plus, it can get really tiring watching this dull, de-saturated color, unless you go all the way out and make it black and white.”
What isn’t included in the listing for the new release is the aforementioned audio commentary. The new box set comes out in Germany on September 29th.
