If you saw Mad Max: Fury Road in theaters this weekend, you're probably still recuperating from everything that you saw during those high-octane couple of hours. Cars! Imperator Furiosa! War Boys!
However, even amid all of that, the visual that probably still stands out the most to you is the Doof Warrior, that white, blind, masked character in a red onesie that shreds a flame-throwing electric guitar on a vehicle made made out of amps and speakers like he was a part of some Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade from Hell. The Doof Warrior provides the battle hymn throughout the movie, never ceasing to let it rip even when there are cars crashing and explosions all around him.
The craziest thing about all of this is that it was actually real. iOTA, the Australian singer and performer behind the Doof Warrior, was really strapped onto an eight-wheel drive, ex-military rocket launching track with a bungee cord as he wailed on a guitar that also doubled as a flamethrower. As if that wasn't enough, there was also a slew of drummers strapped onto the back of this thing whose drums reverberated through old air conditioning duct steel.
"George — unfortunately — doesn't like things that don't work. I have in the past built him props that I thought were just supposed to be props, and then he goes, 'Okay, plug it in now,' Mad Max: Fury Road's production designer Colin Gibson recently told MTV News about the film's writer-director George Miller. "And yes, the flame throwing guitar did have to operate, did have to play, the PA system did have to work and the drummers."
The guitar, which weighed in at about 60 kilograms or roughly 132 pounds, was also so heavy that it had to be secured to the vehicle with bungee cords, according to BuzzFeed News.
You may be wondering what the deal was with the Doof Warrior anyway. Why was there a guy just strumming some heavy metal licks on a guitar while there was a war going on all around him? Well, every character in Miller's world has a purpose, and the Doof Warrior's is to be "the biggest little drummer boy in the world," providing the soundtrack to the battle as any army would have, Gibson told MTV News.
"His reason for existing was that he could play the guitar — and there was sort of a theory of what the social hierarchy and everything was: you were either available to do battle, as a war boy; or you had a higher status than anyone else; or you had a particular skill," Gibson told MTV News. "Obviously mechanical was the strongest of those [skills], but this was one, too. And though he was born blind, and ordinarily that would of meant you had nothing, and [they would] break his legs and leave him on the hill, Spartan style. But he had this talent to play the guitar — so he certainly had earned his place in the pantheon."
Head over to MTV News to read the full interview with Gibson.
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