Chapter 712: Capital and Interests

The year finally rolled into 2009. An extraordinarily massive film crew remained entrenched in the gypsum desert of New Mexico, far from any tourist areas. Out in this desolate wasteland, Duke directed a bustling team of over a thousand people.

The location featured the solitary smoke of the desert, vehicular gunfights, long-range sniping, and visceral close-quarters combat. It had heavy metal rock, colors so saturated they bled off the screen, and framing that struck the perfect golden ratio.

But Duke knew very well that Fury Road was, at its core, a traditional hero film.

He kept that in mind throughout the entire shoot.

Over the next two and a half weeks, Duke filmed continuously. He used IMAX Cameras and various digital cameras to capture the stunt performers' breathtaking action sequences and high-speed car chases from every angle.

By now, the crew had amassed nearly a hundred and sixty hours of footage—enough material to take a full sleepless week to watch.

Yet the shoot was only two-thirds complete.

Out in the desolate desert, the War Machine sat in silence. Charlize Theron, wrapped in a filthy, tattered blanket, turned her back to the others and walked to the edge of a dune. She raised her head and gazed into the distance. Though her eyes carried a hint of disappointment at losing the Oasis, they remained overwhelmingly resolute—just as resolute as when she firmly led the five breeders onto this fury road.

Where did the future of this apocalyptic world lie? No one could say for sure.

Sitting behind an IMAX Camera, Duke operated the rig himself, his lens trained squarely on Tom Cruise.

Without a doubt, Tom Cruise's protagonist, Tom, was an exceptionally taciturn character. Watching Charlize Theron's tall, athletic back, he stood up and approached her.

This was also the most dialogue-heavy shot between the male and female leads in the entire script.

The IMAX Camera glided smoothly along its track, swinging around to capture Charlize Theron and Tom Cruise from the front. Through the lens, Duke caught every expression on their faces.

The large boom microphone used for live audio recording was slowly lowered directly over Charlize Theron and Tom Cruise's heads.

"I've already spoken with the others," Charlize Theron said, not looking back at Tom Cruise. "This is our best chance to cross the desert. If we leave the truck here and load up the motorcycles, we can ride for at least a hundred and sixty days..."

She turned back to look at the expressionless Tom Cruise standing with his hands on his hips. "We left one for you, fully gassed up."

Charlize withdrew her gaze and looked down at the ground, her voice remaining low. "You are more than welcome to join us."

Tom Cruise maintained his stony expression, shaking his head in flat refusal. "No, no... I'll make my own way."

Raising her head, Charlize Theron revealed a flicker of disappointment, but she didn't push the issue. Turning around, she strode back toward the women without a second's hesitation.

"You know," Tom Cruise spoke up again, "clinging to hope is a mistake in itself."

Hearing this, Charlize stopped and looked back, just as Tom Cruise turned to face her. Their eyes met for a brief moment before Tom Cruise turned back around and said, "If you can't change the circumstances, you will only be crushed by reality."

Duke operated the camera, grabbing a close-up of both their faces, then stood up. "Cut! That's a print!"

Before the crew could even catch their breath, Duke shouted, "Moving on! We shoot the next shot in fifteen minutes."

The next shot involved the male lead changing his mind and chasing after the heroine's group.

The previous shot took place at night, while the next one was set during the day. This was incredibly common on a Hollywood set. Unless absolutely necessary, Duke shot almost all of his night scenes during the day, relying on post-production to adjust the background later.

The entire crew worked with practiced synergy. Exactly fifteen minutes later, Duke called for action.

It was a close-up shot. Tom Cruise stood between the motorcycle and the War Machine, staring out at the dust kicked up by the departing bikes in the distance, before finally changing his mind.

Similarly, there were no hallucinations of a little girl here. In Duke's hands, Fury Road was an entirely independent film. Tom Cruise's character was simply a man of few words struggling to survive, someone whose inner conscience hadn't been completely extinguished.

After filming the sequence where he caught up with Charlize Theron and the others, the crew finally left the hellish desert and returned to the vicinity of the Devil's Ranch. While it was still a desolate wasteland, compared to the deep desert, it felt like absolute paradise.

The scenes here were almost entirely action-based. Aside from a very small number of shots that required compositing, the vast majority of the sequences demanded practical effects. The stunt performers pulled off acrobatic feats every single day. Collisions, vehicle flips, and explosions happened endlessly, and naturally, injuries were inevitable.

Fortunately, the crew's safety measures were incredibly thorough. Almost all the injuries were minor bumps and scrapes.

Charlize Theron experienced a mishap of her own. While filming the scene where she climbed onto the Gigahorse to kill Immortan Joe, she accidentally fell off the vehicle.

Naturally, the vehicle was completely stationary for a shot like this, and the ground was lined with ample padding. However, the Gigahorse was exceptionally tall. When Charlize Theron fell, her knee unfortunately struck the mat first.

For an ordinary person, it wouldn't have been a big deal, but Charlize Theron's knee had suffered a severe injury in her early years—the very reason she had left ballet school. The pain was so intense that cold sweat rolled down her forehead.

Duke hurriedly had her sent to a hospital in Santa Fe. Only after a thorough examination did everyone breathe a sigh of relief; the situation wasn't too serious.

With the shooting schedule pressing down on him, Duke left dedicated staff to take care of Charlize Theron while he returned to the Devil's Ranch to continue his work. He was planning to adjust the remaining shooting schedule, but to his surprise, Charlize Theron returned to the set a mere two days later.

"I told you to rest."

Looking at Charlize sitting across from him, Duke's expression was a bit dark. "Don't forget, your leg suffered a severe injury years ago."

"The film has to make it to the Cannes Film Festival..." Charlize Theron didn't even look at Duke, her gaze shifting toward the set where Anna Printz was directing. "I don't want my issues to delay your plans. Besides, all my action scenes are finished. The remaining dramatic scenes don't require any leg strength."

Duke thought for a few seconds before slowly nodding. "Take care of yourself."

With that, he stood up, gave Charlize Theron one last glance, and strode toward the set without looking back.

Charlize Theron remained seated in her chair. She didn't look back either, only letting out a soft sigh.

She knew very well that given her and Duke's personalities, the past was the past. It could never come back.

When she was young, she had believed that fame and her career were more important than anything else, and she was willing to disregard everything else for them. As she grew older, she slowly realized that while her career was undeniably important, the things that had slipped through her fingers were equally precious.

Since she had made her choice back then, Charlize Theron wouldn't regret it. Furthermore, she knew that regret served absolutely no purpose.

After all, he was a man with a resolute will and a heart of stone.

Charlize Theron had observed Ivanka Trump with a cool, detached eye. From the very beginning, she hadn't been optimistic about Duke and Ivanka Trump.

Though they hadn't met many times, she had heard about the kind of person Donald Trump was, and she had seen him repeatedly cross Duke's bottom line. Given Duke's temperament and his principles, how could he possibly tolerate that indefinitely? Then there was Instant Sharing—the conflicts of interest involved there were simply too numerous...

Having fought her way through Hollywood for so many years—a place that infinitely magnified struggles for fame and fortune—Charlize saw it all very clearly. Having reached his current status, Duke had to factor in the financial interests whenever he made a decision. He didn't just represent himself anymore; he represented the interests of an entire team.

Smart as she was, Charlize could naturally see that the core issue between Duke and Ivanka Trump was actually a conflict between two different capital groups fighting over interests. This kind of contradiction was fundamentally irreconcilable, unless one side was willing to voluntarily back down.

But asking capital to give up its pursuit of profit—was that even possible?

Just look at the subsequent moves Duke had made, perfectly demonstrating the ruthless nature of capital. He had swapped his equity in Instant Sharing for shares in Google. It was universally acknowledged as a brilliantly successful deal. And after Google secured the majority voting shares of Instant Sharing, they hadn't hesitated to oust Ivanka Trump from her position as company chairwoman during the latest shareholder meeting, completing their takeover of Instant Sharing.

If anyone claimed Duke hadn't foreseen this when he sold his shares to Google, Charlize wouldn't believe a word of it.

She had been keeping a close eye on the situation. Due to the economic downturn, the Trump Family's real estate business had encountered a severe crisis. Donald Trump was being hounded by numerous creditors, and the entire Trump Group was facing a bankruptcy crisis. Rumor had it that Ivanka Trump was preparing to sell her equity in Instant Sharing to save the entire Trump Group.

Charlize Theron turned her head back, looking at Duke sitting behind the director's monitors. Was he pulling strings behind the scenes? Who could really say for sure?

Based on her understanding of Duke, there was absolutely no way he would just sit back as a spectator.

Ruthless and unrelenting toward his enemies, seizing every possible opportunity to launch the most fatal strike—that had always been his style.

"Boom..."

A massive explosion erupted, and a modified vehicle on the set was blasted high into the sky. Charlize didn't react at all. She had long grown accustomed to working in environments like this. During the filming of The Matrix and her subsequent set visits, she had seen countless explosions just like it.

She withdrew her gaze from the set. For some unknown reason, she suddenly thought of David Ellison. She had heard Tina Fey mention that his new film in collaboration with Spielberg seemed intended to clash head-on with Fury Road...