Fans were excited that there was going to be a black and white silent cut of ‘Mad Max: Fury Road‘ and now it seems that we’ll be able to bring a copy of it home! George Miller’s goal for the black-and-white release was to be able to shine a light at the on screen action and not just how beautiful it could be without the distraction of how beautiful it was from the amazing color. The sound itself was removed minus the score to truly highly the imagery which tells a story all in its own.
In a recent interview with the LA Times, Miller announced the arrival and why he felt that this “slash dupe” version worked so well:
“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.
So a future release sounds like it was already on the books that it will have even more additional special features. Sadly, there is no ETA for when this DVD will see the light of day.
What is interesting, though, is that Miller actually sounds as if he would have preferred the initial theatrical release that we all love to have been a pure black-and-white version. When explaining how they came up with the look of the film, Miller reveals:
“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.”
While the black-and-white version of ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ never made it onto the big screen as was initially being rumored, there is always a chance of a limited release happening down the line. At least, one can only hope.
Are you looking forward to checking out a quiet and black-and-white version of ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’? Do you think without the color and dialogue that we’ll be getting a completely different movie in this edition? For Valhalla, Share your thoughts below!
