Like director George Miller’s other collaborators, composer Tom Holkenborg knew all about Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga prior to the making of Fury Road, all those years ago. Everything except “if Warner Bros. would greenlight this movie,” he tells Consequence. “That’s a business decision. But I knew what was in [Miller’s] head. So I knew when we were working on Mad Max: Fury Road that if there were a prequel coming after that, everything needed to be set up in such a way that it would be the perfect handoff.”
The result is one of the year’s most acclaimed films so far, an epic adventure that reveals how its titular heroine (played as an adult by Anya Taylor-Joy) survived the Wasteland as a child, and found herself in the position to change the balance of power there for good.
Holkenborg, also known as Junkie XL, knows he writes a very specific style of music, “a specific choice for types of melodies I like and harmonies that I like when it comes to an orchestral-type score, like a Black Mass for instance, or even, for that matter, Sonic the Hedgehog. To me, they’re all different movies, but they’re all the same. Sonic is an alien on Earth, and he wants recognition for who he is. He wants a family, he wants people who love him and respect him. It’s the same with Furiosa.”
It’s a pattern Holkenborg sees extending throughout Miller’s work in particular. “If you go to Happy Feet, the little penguins — exactly the same thing. Babe: Pig in the City, The Witches of Eastwick — it’s the same story, but told differently. And that’s what I’m trying to do musically as well.”
Prior to working on his score for Furiosa, Holkenborg didn’t need to revisit his work on Fury Road because “it’s all here,” he says while tapping his noggin. “Welcome to the brains of musicians. We remember the first song that we played on the guitar. We remember what we wrote on the piano 25, 30 years ago. It’s like muscle memory that certain athletes have.”
Being aware of what had come in Fury Road was essential to making Furiosa on every level. For example, Holkenborg knew from Miller that when his score for the first movie included a flourish meant to invoke Furiosa’s memories of “the green place,” “it would have complications for what we would do on Furiosa.”
Behind the scenes of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (courtesy of Warner Bros.)