“I just really follow my nose”: How curiosity led George Miller from ‘Mad Max’ to ‘Happy Feet’
When George Miller made his directorial debut, he opted for a gritty action film complete with plenty of violence and crashing cars. Mad Max wasn’t for the faint of heart, but enough people were intrigued by this indie exploitation film to make it a sensation.
It would soon spawn a franchise, with Miller then recruiting the film’s star, a young Mel Gibson, to reprise his role in a sequel, Mad Max 2. Then came Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, which didn’t perform as well, although it still received fairly positive reviews from critics. It’s safe to say that Miller’s film career at this point was almost exclusively dedicated to this dystopian world that he had so lovingly crafted, but by 1987, he found himself with a chance to make a Hollywood comedy, and he took it.
The Witches of Eastwick gave Miller more mainstream success, grossing over $100million. It might have been a bit of a change-up from Mad Max, but it was nothing compared to the projects the director would come to take on in the following years, which surprised everyone.
Firstly, Babe. That beloved talking pig film was, believe it or not, written by Miller, who would then go on to direct the sequel, Babe: Pig in the City (which is actually one of Tom Waits’ favourite films). You wouldn’t expect a man who made a gritty, violent cult classic to then make family-friendly movies about a pig who wants to be a sheepdog, but, as Walt Whitman famously said, we contain multitudes.
Even more surprising, though, was Miller’s decision to direct Happy Feet and its sequel a few years later. The animated talking-penguin movie was a hit, grossing $384.3m and becoming a staple of many 2000s babies’ childhoods. But how did Miller go from Mad Max to Happy Feet?
Not only is Happy Feet an animated movie about penguins, it’s also a jukebox musical featuring songs by the likes of Elvis Presley, Earth, Wind & Fire, and The Beatles, although Prince did pen an original track for the film. How did this come from the same mind that gave us an R-rated exploitation movie a few decades prior?
Talking to Paul Fischer, Miller explained the simple reason why he made a movie that even surprised himself. “I could never have imagined having done something like this,” he said. “I just really follow my nose in these things. I don’t make many films, and I’m driven by curiosity more than anything else.”
He explained, “The one thing I find extraordinary is that I’m still able to make films in this new digital age, which I think is the most significant advance in cinema since the invention of sound, but I could have never imagined this.”
So, intrigued by this CGI technology that could bring talking penguins to life, Miller threw himself into the project, and he made a family-friendly classic in the process… The director has never forgotten his roots, though, making Mad Max: Fury Road in 2015, which would become one of the most acclaimed action movies ever made.
