Why Mad Max and the motorcycles of Fury Road needs to be seen this summer

Mad Max Fury Road could be the most compelling film of the year. Original, creative and spectacular bike stunts mixed with a healthy serving of explosions and a surprisingly well-received plot line has people excited about the return of this old-school action flick.

The reviews are in. Rotten Tomatoes gave Fury Road an impressive 98% approval rating and audiences have been gobbling up tickets, earning back the movie's $150 million budget with a cool $70 million to spare in the two weeks since its release date. “One can look at any quarter of the screen and see more action and more amusing detail than in in any three other action films this summer,” said film critic Mark Leeper on Rotten Tomatoes.

In Fury Road, legendary director George Miller picks up “Mad” Max Rockatansky, now played by Tom Hardy, escaping his imprisonment as a “blood bag” for the blood-thirsty ruler of the desert, Immortan Joe. Max links up with Imperator Furiosa, played by Charlize Theron, who helps Immortan Joe’s wives flee as Theron's Furiosa fights for her life to find her way home.

Together they tear through dangerous dunes and ominous canyons hoping to escape the fleet of marauding motorcyclists (riding Yamaha YZ250Fs and Gas Gas TX250s) attempting to bring down the crew.

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Miller opted for extravagant rigs and stunts over the use of CGI in order to "accentuate the Namibian landscape." With the help of stunt coordinator Guy Norris, the man who broke his femur doing an elaborate motocross stunt for Mad Max 2, and five-time Australian MX champ and freestyle coach, Stephen Gall, the film is able to pull off some stunningly realistic shots. Norris says Miller sensed that audiences were getting tired of the unrealistic nature of CGI and that they started to crave a return to some good, old-fashioned action.

“You know, the Charlie’s Angels upside down on a motorcycle with explosions behind them: There’s just no base in reality, no peril. The Matrix movies were very good, but a little soft," Norris said. “We wanted to create action that’s never been seen before, and Stephen has his fingers on the pulse of all the best motocross racers and freestylers out there. And what his guys did on this film was just above and beyond. It was amazing."

It took some 150 stunt drivers to create the over 300 staggering stunt scenes filmed for Mad Max: Fury Road. Norris himself got to relive some of his glory days by crashing a 10 ton truck into a 16 wheeler at 60 mph - surviving without a scratch. This will have been Norris' last hurrah as he announced his retirement from stunting after starting his career on Mad Max 2, 35 years ago.

“George and I laugh quite often about it all, since I turned 21 during the making of Mad Max 2," said Norris. “Crashing a ten ton truck was a nice way to go out.” Via Wired

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Stunting wasn't the only heart stopping component of the film. Last week, photographer Bernard Testemale shared fifteen recently-released motorbike photos of the stunt bikes used in the film.

Unlike the original, the bikes in this years sequel aren't just Kawasaki Triples - they are diverse; each one has a unique character. “Make it cool or I’ll kill you,” Miller purportedly said to production designer Colin Gibson when he hired him to do the production design.

The result is an eclectically cool collection of motorcycles featured in spectacular stunts. The bikes look like nomadic-desert versions of KTM 250s, Yamaha YZ250Fs, Gas Gas TX250s, a Yamaha R1, BMW R80, Royal Enfield, and even a Honda Goldwing.

To go with the desert theme, Gibson felt that bikes with advanced computer chips or significant carbon fibre components were unrealistic for a desert world, and tried to stay away from them. Though Gibson is far from a motorcycle guru, he managed to find classic looks that were modded to work with a dune-filled theme.

Not all of the bikes can be identified clearly, since many of these bikes were stripped right to the bone before being rebuilt.

All of this had work was used to pull off-intricate sequences like the "Rock Riders Bombsquad scene".

"The idea behind the Rock Riders came from mountain goats — they live in the mountains, so they know them like a mountain goat would. We got the best motorcycle trick riders and Motocross riders in Australia and trained for several months. They had to ride a motorcycle, fly through the air, and throw a bomb at the same time, and then get ready to land. And we had four or five of them doing it all at once, so that was pretty intricate. That was a really cool sequence, and I hadn't seen motorcycles used in that way before."

 Via Rolling Stone

The original Mad Max from 1979, featured a young, and strangely likeable Mel Gibson as the front man. The low-budget series took a simplistic revenge story, and elevated it with a gorgeous desert dystopian setting (Australia) where we became acquainted with Miller's imaginative car and motorcycle redesigns accompanied by the death defying stunts that turned the films into a cult classic.

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In Fury Road, George Miller brings Mad Max back 30 years later and this time he's upgraded his Kawasaki Z1000s for some of the craziest, souped-up rat bikes you've ever seen.

See all the motorcycle of Mad Max: Fury Road below added by @Agent3012