Tarantino's clearest praise for George Miller is dated and specific: December 2015, Mad Max: Fury Road.
A choice stated in 2015
On December 15, 2015, Premiere published its conversation with Quentin Tarantino at the Paris screening of The Hateful Eight. Asked for the best film of the year, he chose Mad Max: Fury Road. He also discussed his initial reservations about replacing Mel Gibson with Tom Hardy and how seeing the film changed his position. The testimony documents a specific enthusiasm, born after seeing the movie, and not a foregone approval based on loyalty to a franchise.
That shift is significant because it separates the memory of a star from the experience of a new work. A familiar character may seem inseparable from his original performer; another film has to prove on screen that the relationship can change. The response does not depend solely on the new actor imitating familiar gestures. What matters is the place the story gives him and the world it brings him into contact with.
The 2015 statement should not be used to fabricate reviews of every earlier installment. Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, from 1981, is a key reference for comparing the evolution of Miller's cinema, but that historical importance does not by itself provide a Tarantino quote about it. It is possible to analyze the relationship between both films while keeping the documented praise clearly separate from later critical interpretation.
From Mad Max 2 to Fury Road: the road as story
In Mad Max 2, the movement of vehicles and the struggle for resources organize a world that barely needs lengthy explanations. Objects make hierarchies and needs possible to infer. A fuel depot or a vehicle capable of crossing a territory has value because the film shows what people can do with it and what they are willing to risk to get it.
Fury Road takes that ability to tell a story through action into a tightly focused chase structure. The direction of travel, relative positions, and changes of vehicle matter as much as words. The viewer has to understand a situation that changes quickly. Clarity does not require slowness: it can come from repeating a spatial objective and then changing the conditions for reaching it.
Bodies make visible the effort that sustains that movement. Driving, holding on, helping someone, or reaching an object are simple actions that gain intensity because they happen under pressure. The film makes the journey feel like a sum of physical decisions. The spectacle matters for its scale, but also for the immediate relationship between a gesture and its possible consequence.
Comparing the two films makes it possible to see the persistence of one idea: civilization can appear as a precarious organization around machines, resources, and groups. No prior lesson about collapse is needed to understand that every useful object is contested. The world is built while the characters act within it, and the viewer learns its rules at the same time as they witness its conflicts.
Furiosa, Max, and shared action
In Fury Road, Furiosa introduces a goal that Max has not conceived. That arrangement changes the expectation that the title character must explain and drive the entire adventure. The relationship between the two is built through tests of trust, cooperation, and disagreement. Understanding does not appear because one of them delivers a complete speech about his past; it emerges largely from seeing what the other does when given the chance to help or betray.
The film also distributes abilities among several characters. One action sequence may depend on who is driving, who is watching, and who is carrying out a seemingly small task elsewhere on the vehicle. That coordination prevents the spectacle from being reduced to the isolated feat of an invincible figure. Survival becomes a shared activity, and the editing has to make that dependence understandable.
The visual environment helps the conflicts be read quickly. The difference between enclosed and open spaces, the scale of the machines, and the presence of vulnerable bodies help organize our attention. Exuberance does not eliminate the need to orient the viewer. When an image contains many things, it is especially important to know which action is changing the situation.
The direction of gazes also organizes speed. Knowing who detects an obstacle before the others makes it possible to anticipate a maneuver and feel its risk without needing a character to explain it.
That is why Tarantino's praise is more interesting as an invitation to look than as a medal meant to close the discussion. Fury Road allows us to see how a large-scale film builds emotion from movement, resources, and trust. His 2015 choice acknowledges a specific cinematic experience. The comparison with Mad Max 2 broadens the journey through Miller, but preserves the distinction between what Tarantino said and what each viewer can discover when revisiting the films.
See the selection of filmmakers and actors admired by Tarantino.