The more I read about George Miller's involvement with MM movies the more of an interesting image of Miller seems to emerge.
It really looks like George Miller's main focus are visuals, first and foremost. Whereas all the background stuff is usually sent over to the writers. Just to give you a quick example:
I've spoken to a few production members about MM and they told me that the whole 'rotoraider attack' scene that was ditched from Fury Road was mainly based on Miller's visual preference. Basically he only had a vision of a light emerging from the fog with a twist in that the oncoming light would turn out not to be a bike but a flying machine and it would fly over the War Rig. That was what he wanted and all the script writers, probably even including Miller himself had problems fitting it into the movie. This idea survived long enough to make it onto some early sketches and was ultimately ditched but still a piece of it remains in the movie where Max emerges from the fog after killing the Bullet Farmer.
Another instance, from an interview with Terry Hayes in 1985 in Fangoria:
"George says that I'm not allowed to join the visual club" Hayes laughs, "that I deal in words by nature. There's a lot of truth in that. George will go for whatever a terrific image will be, whereas I'm the one who will be ruthlessly logical. I hate it when people do things out of character or when something looks contrived (...) George pours an enormous amount of energy into visuals and sometimes falls down in the area of logic. So I think between the two of us we cover a fair view of the bases".
From my other conversations with the crew I was told that Miller was obsessed with WETA's (NZ design studio) imagery, which is why he insisted on incorporating their ideas into the movie, to a sold disapproval of Colin Gibson and other people responsible for designs.
Having said all that and taking into consideration the sheer process of making Fury Road, the way it turned out to be, Miller's preference of black and white mute versions of Mad Max, the 3500 storyboard panels, countless artwork, it pretty much tells that Miller is focused on the visuals first and foremost with Fury Road being the prime exercise in visual storytelling on the move. After all George Miller is only the director, and the future of Mad Max movies actually largely depends on the people who keep him from 'embarrasing himself' (this is an actual quote by Margaret Sixel and Brendan McCarthy). I'm not trying to downplay Miller's involvement but I'm starting to think that if he had his way with Mad Max movies we would stray away from the source material even further into the fantasy land and pretty images.
