When George Miller reintroduced us to the singular wasteland of Mad Max with the exceptional Fury Road in 2015, one of its key attributes was Tom Holkenborg’s thunderous score. The powerful percussion and stirring string and brass work led to memorable tracks like ‘Brothers in Arms’ and ‘Many Mothers’, which synched up perfectly with the incredible action on screen.
For Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga – a prequel to Fury Road that gives us an origin story for the titular heroine, this time played by Anya Taylor-Joy – Miller has again called on Holkenborg’s services, and the composer has responded with a score that cleverly references his work on the 2015 film while also being its own beast.
Here, Holkenborg chats about that rare composing challenge, why he wanted to be more involved in Furiosa’s sound mixing and much more.
This interview contains heavy spoilers for Furiosa.
Amon Warmann: How much different or similar was your experience on Furiosa compared to Fury Road?
TOM HOLKENBORG: For many different reasons, the experience was the same, which means working with George, and knowing how he wants to discuss every little detail. But it was also very different, because the movie is very different. Fury Road was just massive action over 48 hours, with so many different characters and bizarre situations. George and I would always say this is a movie from a third-person perspective, as if the composer is sitting right next to you in the theatre. And we just wanted to create this over-the-top rock opera.
In Furiosa, the story, the editing, the acting and the music is all through the eyes of the character. So it’s a first-person perspective, which means that the score is completely different. It’s quieter in the beginning, more minimal, and it slowly goes to a crazy adventure score towards the end. That also means that you make very distinct choices. If Furiosa sees her mom being slaughtered as a child, a six-year-old is simply not hearing a string orchestra in her head. And in a wasteland, they don’t even know what a string orchestra is to begin with. So, if you score something from a first-person perspective, what is a six-year-old feeling when she sees that? Well, her heart is pumping out of her chest, and there’s panic in her head, so that’s why certain concepts came up for the music.
Lastly, this movie is very different because, for the first time, I was responsible for the final mix of this film. I worked with a very experienced sound-design mixer Rob Mackenzie, he won an Oscar for Hacksaw Ridge [2016]. We were able to create the sonic sample palettes completely, and we finished about four weeks ago. So what you’re hearing is what we heard four weeks ago in Sydney.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)
AW: Is being present in the mixing stage something you’re going to be pushing to do in more projects going forward?
TH: I really want to save this for pet projects. If you would ask me, ‘Of all the film scores that you’ve done, which is not 90% or 95%, but 100% Tom?’ It’s Fury Road and Furiosa. So that’s why, with this movie, I was like, I would really love to do this. But it takes roughly eight weeks, and you’re sitting with it every day – including weekends – for 12 to 14 hours. I’m sitting at that godforsaken volume in a massive theatre with no seats on it that’s filled with equipment. You’re listening to the film, at a really, really high level, at IMAX or Dolby surrounds. By the time you’re done, your ears are ringing like no tomorrow, and you need a little break. So I’m definitely not looking to do this on every movie, but it’s just really a fantastic ride to be there from the beginning till the very, very end.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)
AW: Did you know about Furiosa when you were working on Fury Road?
TH: I got hired for Fury Road in early 2013, and the movie came out in May 2015, so it was roughly two years. When I met George for the first time, I already knew that he had a script for Furiosa – I think he wrote it before Fury Road. Obviously, if a movie is not successful, there’s never going to be another one. We all know that. But if you work on a movie, you have to keep it in your head. It’s like, ‘OK, this is potentially a new reboot of the franchise.’ Fury Road needed to completely work on its own and it did. But now that Furiosa is out, you can see that it’s the perfect sister of the perfect brother. When we meet Furiosa, the way that the story develops, but also the acting, the music and the sound design… it creates this perfect handoff to Fury Road. And that was a challenge.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)
AW: This is a prequel to Fury Road, so in a sense you’re working backwards from a score you’ve already crafted. What are the advantages and disadvantages of that?
TH: To give you a good example, if we skip forwards to one hour and 10 minutes into Fury Road, Furiosa is talking to the Vuvulani women. She says, ‘When are we going to the Green Place?’ And she’s told that when you came from the West, you must have passed it. It’s that really dark landscape with the crows, and we just hear a flourish of a duduk and a didgeridoo. The whole point was that we do this here as a reminder that the Green Place is no longer there. Because Furiosa begins in the Green Place, we need a lot of the duduk and the didgeridoo in those scenes. There were many things like that.
The way that drums are used in Fury Road – you don’t really hear it at the beginning of Furiosa. But as the music progresses through the movie, the drums become more prominent, setting up the handoff with Fury Road. It’s the same with that panicky, descending string riff. We use it sparingly in Furiosa. But then the last action scene is just hammering at home, to completely set it up for the start of Fury Road.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)
AW: One of the recurring cues in Furiosa is a gnarly moan sound that you’ve referred to as ‘the darkest of gods. The fifth rider of the apocalypse’. That’s actually dialogue in the movie – did that come from you, or from George?
TH: George was saying that we need something for when Furiosa loses her arm, and the only thing that’s left is hate, revenge and darkness. He already called it, ‘The darkest of gods’, then eventually for the movie he decided to say, ‘The darkest of angels. The fifth rider of the apocalypse.’ He told me we need music that comes from the bottom of hell. I did it on this not so well known synthesiser system called the Buchla 200e modular. It was developed in the Sixties, and it was so modern, mathematic, scientific and forward-thinking in its nature that, for many synthesiser people, it was too much to take in. Some people were raving about it, but it didn’t become as successful as some of the other brands. I acquired it a few years back, and started playing around with it, and realised it gave me a really unique character of sounds. I called George to say, ‘I think we have the synthesiser system for Furiosa.’
I started sending him the heartbeats that are constantly being used in the film – those throbbing low pulses. We hear this particular sound, ‘The darkest of gods’, for the first time in the movie when Furiosa sees Dementus [Chris Hemsworth] slaughter her mother. At that point, it’s Dementus’ theme. But after she loses her arm, she’s the hunter, and Dementus becomes the hunted. She takes that theme from him, because she’s becoming him. It was so funny because during the mix of the movie, George was constantly saying, ‘Tom, can we push it more? Can we make it more aggressive? Can we make it louder?’ I agreed.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)
AW: I rewatched Fury Road before Furiosa. ‘Brothers in Arms’ really holds up, it’s a tremendous piece of work.
TH: I really wanted to use ‘Brothers in Arms’ in Furiosa. I told George that when she is in the bullet farm and she’s the sniper, we should really play ‘Brothers in Arms’ there, because she's working together with another person [Praetorian Jack, played by Tom Burke] like she did with Max in Fury Road. He listened to the version I did and he said, ‘No, I’m sorry Tom, but it’s wrong.’ This is the first time that she will sacrifice herself for another person who will sacrifice himself for her to be able to go back to the Green Place. Because at this point in the story, that is still an option. She still has her arm. That’s why the music needs to be different and that’s why, in this particular scene, you need to play the duduk and the didgeridoo. There’s a minute-and-a-half action sequence where there’s just the duduk playing while we see super fierce action. When I saw the finished version, I was like, ‘OK, that's why he's called George Miller!’
AW: George has already talked about potentially doing a third movie – Mad Max: The Wasteland. Have you had any conversations with him about that?
TH: No comment!
WATCH FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA IN CINEMAS
