The Mad Max universe is full of crazy characters. The post-apocalyptic world created by director George Miller may be a hostile and dead landscape, but ironically enough it’s fertile ground for the creation of shocking savages, gross grease monkeys, saintly saviors, and all manner of rocking road warriors. And in the latest film in the series, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Miller explores what can make – and break – such figures. Indeed, sometimes what breaks them is also what makes them in this universe.
With Furiosa, the filmmaker has created an origin story for the title character, played this time around by Anya Taylor-Joy. The film also explores how a bad guy might be born in this harsh future world, via Chris Hemworth’s charismatic crank, Dementus.
Furiosa Begins
While the Furiosa character debuted in Mad Max: Fury Road in 2015, and was played by Charlize Theron in that film, the prequel explores her life from the time that she’s abducted from her family in the Green Place of Many Mothers through her rise to adulthood and eventual ascendance as an Imperator in Immortan Joe’s hierarchy.
But it all starts with the crazed Wasteland cult leader Dementus, who abducts the young girl and treats her as a sort of surrogate daughter.
“I think it's a paternal relationship for him,” Hemsworth tells IGN. “I think he is someone who has suffered. We get a little insight into his backstory that he has lost someone as well at some point. I think he sees a strength in her that is familiar [and reminds him of] his own children. In his eyes, he believes that he is preparing her for the Wasteland. He's trying to ‘toughen her up,’ as he says.”
He even takes to calling her Little D. Taylor-Joy, however, most certainly does not believe that Furiosa shares Dementus’ affectionate feelings.
“Does Furiosa love Dementus?” she says. “Nope.”
But this is one of the tricks to living in the Wasteland. While Dementus seems to need Furiosa, who is a sort of replacement for his lost children, Furiosa actually needs to hate Dementus in order to get through each day. She has nothing to live for but revenge against him – at least at first. That’s how she survives, and that’s what the film is about to a large degree.
“It's about, I think, people trying to exist one day at a time,” says Hemsworth. “They don't have the luxury to think about, ‘What's going to happen next month, or next week, or tomorrow?’ It's like, day by day, and how people react and respond in extreme circumstances. And … agreeing not to excuse any of the horrific things that any of the characters of the film do, but to have some small ounce of humanity and understanding, and then provoking the question from an audience: ‘How would I react in this situation? How would I respond?’ That was what the fun part was.”
The Battle for Hope
Miller has known Furiosa’s backstory for many years now, having developed it as part of the process of making Mad Max: Fury Road. For the director, he couldn’t tell the Fury Road story without knowing how Furiosa had gotten where she was first.
“We had to write the story of Furiosa from the age of 10 when she's taken from the Green Place all the way up to when she becomes a Praetorian Furiosa, the sort of road warrior working for Immortan Joe,” says the director. “And we wrote the screenplay, and we not only did that, but we actually had concept art, not storyboards, but had designed a lot of the movie. … We had decided that if Fury Road worked – I didn't expect it to take this long – but we decided to tell that story next. In fact, before we shot Fury Road, I showed Charlize the screenplay and she said, ‘Oh, gee. Can we shoot this first? Can we shoot this first?’ And I said, ‘Oh, gee, we've been spending so long preparing this film, there's no way we could do it.’”
Nine years later and we finally have the Furiosa movie, with Taylor-Joy taking over the role as the younger version of the character. The actress agrees that Dementus is a key player in creating the Furiosa that we all know from Fury Road, but that evolution from young girl from the Green Place to hardened warrior is the journey this film depicts.
“I think he sees something in her that is extraordinary, and I think he thinks that he has that same thing,” says the actress. “I think sometimes where we can get into problematic areas is, yes, ‘hurt people’ hurt people, but you can use that to explain something, not excuse it. So murdering her mother, stealing her away, all of these different things – probably not the best thing to excuse.”
Hemsworth’s Dementus is interesting in that while he’s a pure villain, his backstory actually seems to mirror that of Furiosa as well as Mad Max himself – at one time he had a family too, which was ripped away from him in the hellscape of the Wasteland just like with those characters. So the question becomes, what differentiates a villain from a hero in this world?
“I think that's the interesting thing about this world, that somehow as fragile as it is, hope… I mean, both Max and Dementus both say there is no hope,” says Miller. “But ultimately the hope is the only thing, the only possible thing that gives someone a kind of incentive to keep going. Otherwise you descend into despair.”
“At the very beginning of filming,” adds Taylor-Joy, “George asked me to basically say why we were making this film. And I think these Mad Max movies exist, yes as entertainment, but also to present you with a world where resources are scarce, empathy is punished, compassion is punished, and people are forced to do anything that they need to do to survive. And so hopefully as you're watching it, you're thinking, ‘Yes, I'm being very entertained,’ but also, ‘I would not like to live in that world, and what can we do today to avoid it?’”
The 78-Day Stunt Sequence
Of course, no Mad Max movie is complete without some insane stunt work, and Taylor-Joy underwent a baptism by fire in that regard. There’s a sequence in Furiosa involving the War Rig, that behemoth of a tanker first seen in Fury Road, that took 42 pages of script and 78 days to shoot, and included 52 characters, 200 stuntmen, and a lot of endurance from the actress. We even get to see how the War Rig was built in this film, but that’s just the start of things.
“She's stowing away on the newly built War Rig,” explains Miller. “[And] she has to have a crash course in being basically a road warrior.”
In the 15-minute sequence, Furiosa and Tom Burke’s Praetorian Jack find themselves under siege in the War Rig.
“We had the stowaway sequence,” recalls Taylor-Joy. “That was shot over 78 days, and that was just very relentless, but also exciting because the way that I broke it up in my own head is, because it all takes place in various places in the rig, that's how I could segment it. It was like, ‘Okay, for the next month, I'm going to be living underneath this vehicle. That's me. Okay. But now I'm on the side. Now I'm on the cowcatcher.’ I finally made it to sitting down.”
I suggest to the actress that it was a good day, and she says it was a “great” day.
“Oh my goodness,” he laughs. “I saw Tom Burke, and he gave me a sandwich. He was like, ‘Well done, mate.’”
Adds Hemsworth: “A sandwich? That was it? Should have been a trophy!”
Are you ready for Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga? Let’s discuss in the comments. And be sure to also check out My Best Shots with George Miller.
