Tarantino's clearest praise for George Miller is dated and specific: December 2015, Mad Max: Fury Road.
A choice expressed in 2015
On 15 December 2015, Premiere published its conversation with Quentin Tarantino at the Paris presentation of The Hateful Eight. When asked for the best film of the year, he chose Mad Max: Fury Road. He also recounted his initial reservations about replacing Mel Gibson with Tom Hardy and how watching the film changed his view. The testimony documents a specific enthusiasm, born after seeing the film, and not an anticipatory endorsement out of 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 its original performer; another film must prove on screen that the relationship can be transformed. The response does not depend solely on the new actor imitating familiar gestures. What matters is the place the story gives them and the world it brings them into contact with.
The 2015 statement should not be used to manufacture reviews of every earlier instalment. 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 in itself provide a Tarantino quotation about it. It is possible to analyse the relationship between both films while keeping the documented praise clearly separate from later critical reading.
From Mad Max 2 to Fury Road: the road as a story
In Mad Max 2, the movement of vehicles and the struggle for resources organise a world that scarcely needs lengthy explanations. Objects allow us to infer hierarchies and needs. 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 in order to get it.
Fury Road takes that ability to tell through action into a tightly focused pursuit structure. The direction of travel, relative positions and changes of vehicle matter as much as words. The viewer has to understand a situation that is changing rapidly. Clarity does not require slowness: it can emerge 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 for 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 relation between a gesture and its possible consequence.
The comparison between the two films makes it possible to see the persistence of an idea: civilisation can be presented as a precarious organisation around machines, resources and groups. No prior lesson about collapse is needed to understand that every useful object is contested. World-building happens while the characters act within it, and the viewer learns its rules at the same time as witnessing its conflicts.
Furiosa, Max and shared action
In Fury Road, Furiosa sets out a goal that Max has not conceived. That distribution alters the expectation that the titular protagonist must explain and drive the whole adventure. The relationship between the two is built through tests of trust, cooperation and disagreement. Understanding does not emerge because one of them delivers a complete speech about the past; it arises largely from seeing what the other does when given a chance to help or betray.
The film also distributes capabilities among several characters. A moment of action may depend on who is driving, who is watching and who is carrying out an apparently small task elsewhere in 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 must make that dependence clear.
The visual setting helps the conflicts to be read quickly. The difference between enclosed and open spaces, the scale of the machines and the presence of vulnerable bodies help to organise our attention. Exuberance does not remove the need to orient the viewer. When an image contains many things, it becomes especially important to know which action is changing the situation.
The direction of glances also organises the speed. Knowing who spots an obstacle before the others makes it possible to anticipate a manoeuvre 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 intended 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 recognises a specific cinematic experience. The comparison with Mad Max 2 extends the journey through Miller, but keeps the distinction between what Tarantino declared and what each viewer can discover when returning to the films.
See the selection of filmmakers and actors admired by Tarantino.