THE ULTIMATE WARRIOR

SHE EXPLODED INTO THE ACTION MOVIE HALL OF FAME IN FURY ROAD. NOW, A PRE-IMPERATOR FURIOSA IS SEIZING THE WHEEL OF THE MAD MAX SAGA FOR A 16-YEAR ODYSSEY THROUGH THE WASTELAND. TOTAL FILM HITS THE ROAD WITH THE NEW, GREASE-PAINTED FACE OF STUDIO OZPLOITATION ANYA TAYLOR-JOY, CO-STAR CHRIS HEMSWORTH AND MAD GENIUS GEORGE MILLER FOR A GASOLINE AND RAGE-FUELLED PREQUEL ABOUT TO RIDE ETERNAL…

There are some films no one forgets watching for the first time: Jaws, Star Wars, Citizen Kane. 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road is an inarguable addition to that list. A lunatic symphony conducted with euphoric precision, Fury Road didn’t just raise the bar for vehicular carnage – it set the standard so high, even a careening Pole Cat couldn’t hope to clear it. Speaking in 2017, Steven Soderbergh put the achievement of director George Miller and his creative team best: ‘I don’t understand how they’re not still shooting that film and I don’t understand how hundreds of people aren’t dead.’

A similarly awestruck Chris Hemsworth can still recall the details of watching Fury Road for the first time. ‘I remember, I was at the Electric Cinema on Portobello Road,’ the action veteran tells Total Film over Zoom, smile widening. ‘I’d been in the industry for a number of years at that point and it was becoming harder and harder to be surprised. I came out, called my agent, and said, “I have to work with George Miller in any way, shape, or form.”’

Anya Taylor-Joy, the 28-year-old star with the unenviable task of stepping into Charlize Theron’s skull-crusher boots as Furiosa, was filming the sci-fi horror film Morgan in Belfast when Miller’s action opus smashed into cinemas. ‘As a cast bonding experience, we all went to see Fury Road,’ says Taylor-Joy, in LA for Oscars weekend as we speak. ‘I was riveted. And when it finished, I remember having the feeling of: “That is one of the best films I’ve ever seen.”’

Two things are universally known about Fury Road: it kicks ass to an unprecedented level, and it was absolute hell to make. The road to reviving Mad Max – dormant for three decades following 1985’s Beyond Thunderdome – was so long and arduous that during development Miller and co-writer Nick Lathouris didn’t just write Fury Road, they dreamed up two further entries. A sequel, The Wasteland, would continue Max Rockatansky’s peripatetic journey across the ecologically ravaged Earth, while a prequel, Furiosa, would recount the brutal backstory of Fury Road’s most important new addition.

‘We had finished the script of Furiosa before we shot Fury Road,’ Miller confirms over Zoom from Sydney, sitting in front of a phalanx of storyboards for his latest entry in a 45-year-old saga. That Furiosa emerged from the same creative maelstrom as Fury Road can only be a good thing. ‘We already knew the backstories. We had to, in order to tell Fury Road. What happened to Max the year before this? How come he found his way in the Wasteland? All that sort of thing. And how did Furiosa get there? Why did she become a Praetorian in service of Immortan Joe?’

For a brief time, Furiosa was even developed as an anime spin-off – then called The Peach – which Mahiro Maeda (Neon Genesis Evangelion, Kill Bill Vol. 1) was set to direct. ‘So Furiosa was ready, in a story sense, 15 years ago,’ says Doug Mitchell, Miller’s long-serving producing partner. ‘And it’s been percolating, the way things do in George’s brain, ever since.’

Despite the ecstatic reaction to Fury Road, work on Furiosa stalled, reportedly while Miller and studio Warner Bros settled a legal dispute. In the interim, Miller moved to make passion-project Three Thousand Years of Longing, but always kept one eye on Furiosa, evolving the script in response to the successes of Fury Road. ‘The hierarchy of the Wasteland with Immortan Joe, the Citadel, Gastown and Bullet Farm, which are all alluded to or seen in Fury Road – these were developed a bit more,’ Miller says.

‘IT WAS ONE OF THE BEST SCRIPT-READING EXPERIENCES I’VE HAD… FILLED WITH IMAGERY’

CHRIS HEMSWORTH

Eventually, the script reached a gargantuan 250 pages, as opposed to a more traditional 120-page Hollywood script. But this was no ordinary screenplay. ‘It was one of the best script-reading experiences I’ve had because the script itself was filled with storyboards and imagery and long passages of information like you’d see in a novel,’ Hemsworth explains. ‘It was the most detailed document that I’d ever seen. I was like, “Why isn’t every script like this?” And I realised, “Well, George Miller didn’t write the others.”’

DRIVE TO SURVIVE

For all its intricately detailed world-building, compelling character dynamics, thematic complexity and thrilling lack of restraint, Fury Road’s story is as simple as they come – a pure A to B (and back to A) chase movie set over two days and three nights. In contrast, Miller describes Furiosa’s story, which takes place over 16-odd years, as an ‘odyssey’ that puts its eponymous character on a crash course with rival warlords Dementus (Hemsworth) and Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme, stepping in for Hugh Keays-Byrne, who died in 2020). ‘We follow Furiosa from the age of 10 all the way through to her mid-to-late 20s. It runs straight into Fury Road, virtually. So that just naturally is a saga,’ says Miller.

Though told largely on the move, amid outrageous automobile mayhem, much of Furiosa’s backstory is conveyed in Fury Road, including her abduction as a child from the Green Place. According to Taylor-Joy, that doesn’t undercut the power of, ahem, witnessing it first ‐hand in Furiosa. ‘I think you can hear about the horror, but seeing it is an entirely different thing,’ she teases. ‘I have a very different relationship to it – my characters feel like real people to me – but I cry immediately when I see the things that this girl was confronted with. It’s pretty harrowing.’

Miller – who often compares his role as a filmmaker to that of a composer – notes that Furiosa possesses ‘a different cadence and a different rhythm’ to Fury Road; something Hemsworth was also struck by upon reading the script. ‘There was a great sense of continuity to what had been done before. But what was exciting was, with a lot of the dialogue, there was a sort of Shakespearean tone to it,’ he says. ‘It’s an epic tale. You see a real growth and change in the characters, or the demise in others. You see the environments they inhabit break down.’ He pauses, and grins. ‘But it has some insane action in it, as well.’

English actor Tom Burke, who plays War Rig driver Praetorian Jack, describes the film as a ‘companion piece’ to Fury Road, with ‘a different tempo to the whole thing’. For better or worse, Miller has never rested on his laurels with the series, each largely standalone entry upending expectations of what a Mad Max movie can be. Furiosa might just be Miller’s biggest swing yet – a structurally radical prequel with direct narrative connections to its predecessor that doesn’t even feature the iconic character the series is named for. An even bigger swing: recasting Furiosa.

TAYLOR MADE

Talking of iconic characters, few would dispute that Furiosa deserves the same label. Played with ferocious tenacity, intimidating physicality and heartbreaking vulnerability by Charlize Theron, Furiosa shined so bright that she eclipsed Max in his own movie. ‘I fell in love with Furiosa through Charlize’s interpretation of it,’ Taylor-Joy smiles. ‘Her performance left an indelible mark on me. [Charlize has] been so classy, and kind, and generous with me. I just feel very lucky.’

The idea of digitally de-aging Theron was explored but quickly dismissed (‘Even in the hands of really masterful filmmakers like Martin Scorsese and Ang Lee, it just wasn’t working,’ Miller notes), and it was a pre-pandemic sneak peek at Last Night in Soho, and Edgar Wright’s subsequent endorsement of Taylor-Joy, that put the actor in Miller’s mind for his Furiosa prequel. ‘When I think about it, I’m like, “What about me swanning down a bunch of steps, and singing Downtown was like, ‘Yes, that’s my Furiosa’?”’ Taylor-Joy says with a chuckle. ‘I think I recognised in Anya that she has the same resolute quality that Charlize has as an actor and as a person,’ explains Miller, who was also drawn to the fact that Taylor-Joy, like Theron, trained in ballet. ‘They’re both very physically precise and adept, as they are emotionally precise. There was a certain overlap between the two of them.’

Describing an ‘extreme protectiveness’ over Furiosa as a fan, Taylor-Joy nevertheless considered her responsibility, ‘first and foremost’, to the script and its depiction of a nascent Furiosa still being forged in a crucible of fire and blood. ‘It was a really big conversation that George and I had,’ Taylor-Joy says. ‘The Furiosa you meet in Fury Road, she’s the lead driver of the War Rig, so she’s had access to a lot of resources, to protein, to this, to that. I didn’t want her to look like a superhero, because that is the beauty of these films: they’re not superhero movies; they’re what happens to the human mind and body when you are pushed to that kind of extreme.’

‘I THINK I RECOGNISED IN ANYA THAT SHE HAS THE SAME RESOLUTE QUALITY THAT CHARLIZE HAS AS AN ACTOR AND A PERSON’

GEORGE MILLER

Subject to four-and-a-half-hour sessions in the make-up chair to become the full, bionic-armed Imperator, Taylor-Joy claims the decision to don a bald cap in the film, rather than a real buzzcut, was at the request of her director. ‘I was so ready to shave my head,’ Taylor-Joy exclaims. ‘I was really excited to do it! Then George, in his absolute gentleness, saw me, and touched my hair, and went, “No.” [laughs].’ Taylor-Joy also surprised Miller with the lengths she was willing to go to in other ways. ‘I will say, my background in horror, and my deep love for the extreme, did actually result in, a few times, out-crazy-ing George. I felt very proud of those moments where he’s like, “That’s quite depraved, Anya!”’

THE WILD ONE

Depravity and insanity are par for the course in the world of Furiosa, and Dementus might be the most deranged denizen of the Wasteland to date. ‘I certainly understood the beautiful madness that I was going to be a part of,’ says Hemsworth, who makes a rare departure from (super)heroics to play a true rotter. The leader of the biker horde, Dementus is ‘a variation of a theme that we’ve seen over and over again, right through our history – a tyrannical figure who has the charisma to bring people along with him,’ explains Miller.

‘We discussed a lot of historic dictators that expressed power and dominance through violence and fear,’ adds Hemsworth, who developed the character with Miller over the course of three years (see boxout, p34). ‘He gave people’s fear a face and presented himself as the one person that was going to free them from their current suffering.’ Dementus’ caricatured appearance and way of speaking also evolved from this historical grounding. ‘There is a familiar attempt to be larger than life and all-knowing. Even the profile of Dementus, with the prosthetic nose – there was something historic about that shape.’

According to Hemsworth, that prosthetic schnozz was Miller’s idea, but one he embraced wholeheartedly. ‘I got pretty excited, and went right into it looking like a hobbit. I was like, “Bigger! More! Larger!”

I was turning myself into a Halloween costume, and George was like, “It’s got to be grounded in some truth.” So he pulled me back a bit!’ Like Taylor-Joy, Hemsworth spent ‘three to four hours’ in make-up every morning, having both a prosthetic nose and a coarse yak-hair beard painstakingly applied. ‘It was a torturous process,’ he admits. ‘I started at about 3am. So by the time I got to set, I had an appropriate amount of frustration and irritation that then echoed through my performance.’

Responsible for abducting Furiosa from the Vuvalini and seemingly murdering her mother, Dementus perversely sees himself as a ‘paternal’ figure to Furiosa who ‘protected her from the dangers of this life, and prepared her for the violent world that she is about to grow up in’, according to Hemsworth. Taylor-Joy sees their dynamic somewhat differently. ‘My inner Furiosa wants to rip Chris’ face off!’ she says with a laugh. ‘For her, he becomes a very easy arrow point of all of the hurt that she has experienced in her life. George spoke often about creating a worthy opponent for Furiosa, and the film is gearing up towards a fever pitch of when these two people are going to make contact.’

Though not Furiosa’s main antagonist – yet, anyway – Immortan Joe is a major roadblock for Dementus. ‘[Coming face to face with Immortan Joe] was probably the biggest “pinch myself” moment I’ve ever had,’ Hemsworth beams. ‘That outfit, the wig – that image is so iconic. I don’t think we’ve ever seen Immortan being manipulated like we see in this.’ For Taylor-Joy, the parallels between Immortan Joe, who Furiosa serves as a means for vengeance, and Dementus are clear. ‘When I zoom out of her story, I see it as this woman with impossible hope, attempting to make her own course in life. And the course she’s having to take is absolutely destroyed by these two men.’

DESERT STORM

Destruction is the apposite word in the world of Mad Max. Celebrated by audiences and revered by filmmakers, Fury Road’s largely practical action set-pieces remain an unqualified movie-making wonder, which is why Miller getting the band back together (literally, if you include the returning Doof Warrior) behind the scenes of Furiosa – including Second Unit Director Guy Norris, editor Margaret Sixel and visual effects supervisor Colin Gibson – is a gleefully tantalising prospect.

The film was shot predominantly at Broken Hill (where Miller filmed Mad Max 2 in 1981 and was due to shoot Fury Road before unprecedented rainfall forced a move to Namibia) and the sand dunes of Sydney; over 1,000 people worked across Furiosa’s two main units, which shot for 109 and 130 days each, all under Miller’s watchful eye. ‘Now, that’s like nothing anybody really does,’ says Mitchell, who adds that a ‘backup’ team of editors created a near-instant ‘assembly edit’ of the film as they were shooting, so Miller was constantly aware of what he did and didn’t have.

All the innovative ‘tools’ that Miller and Sixel developed on Fury Road – shooting and cutting with ‘flow’ in mind, placing the focal point of the action in the centre of the frame during fast-paced sequences – were applied to Furiosa. Miller describes his filmmaking style as a ‘mosaic art’. This process of short takes – some seconds long, capturing precisely what he needs and nothing more – flummoxed Theron and, particularly, Tom Hardy on Fury Road, causing the latter to ‘panic’ and bringing out ‘erratic behaviours’ that, says Miller, contributed to that film’s chaotic production. But the cast of Furiosa had the benefit of knowing that such a process can result in, well, Fury Road.

‘These movies are big, colossal beasts, and it’s a type of filmmaking where it’s all stitched together so surgically that you can feel a bit lost in it,’ admits Taylor-Joy, who was given two words of advice by Nux actor Nicholas Hoult while they filmed The Menu together: trust George. ‘I would watch the first 10 minutes of Fury Road over and over again, just to understand how all of it worked.’

‘HE GAVE PEOPLE’S FEAR A FACE AND PRESENTED HIMSELF AS THE ONE PERSON THAT WAS GOING TO FREE THEM’

CHRIS HEMSWORTH

As for the all-important set-pieces, while no one is claiming the film will out-muscle Fury Road (what possibly could?), Mitchell points out that Furiosa ‘has one 15-minute sequence which took us 78 days to shoot’, with close to 200 stunt people working on it daily. Known during production as ‘Stairway to Nowhere’, the sequence marks a turning point for Furiosa. ‘George and I would have these big conversations about why this particular set-piece was so long,’ says Taylor-Joy, who still doesn’t have a driver’s licence, despite learning to do a J-turn on her first day of stunt school. ‘It’s because you see an accumulation of skills over the course of a battle, and that’s very important for understanding how resourceful Furiosa is, but also her grit. It’s the longest sequence any of us have ever shot. On the day we finished, everybody got a “Stairway To Nowhere” wine!’

While Taylor-Joy spent weeks clambering over, under and around a War Rig, Burke as the Rig’s go-to pilot had a comfortable view of the mayhem from behind the wheel. ‘There’s so much going on; that’s what was so thrilling about it,’ he says. ‘You could see stunts happening ahead of you, in one’s periphery. It’s exactly as you might imagine watching it: everything is happening in widescreen.’

For Hemsworth, the experience of riding atop the suitably OTT vehicles was even more overwhelming. ‘I felt incredibly small propped up on top of the Monster Truck, just hanging on as someone’s doing big donuts in the sand – that was a lot of fun!’ he says. As for the threebike chariot, Hemsworth describes it as ‘uncomfortable, loud, not really very practical… but it looks cool as hell!’ He notes: ‘It’s actually in my house at the moment. It’s next to a couple of Mjolnirs and Stormbreakers...’

Both vehicles were built for real, naturally, and despite concerns about the amount of CGI in Furiosa’s trailers, Miller claims he’s using VFX no more liberally here than he did on Fury Road, and primarily for practical and safety considerations. ‘You need something in the frame to be real, and preferably the thing the majority of eyes will be scanning, when the shot appears,’ he explains. ‘The visual effects supervisor, Andrew Jackson, is somebody who started off with real effects and props, and has carried it into his work. And it fits very well with how I believe things should be done, and how the Mad Max world requires that to be the case.’

MASTER OF CEREMONIES

Speaking to Miller is something of a surreal experience. Despite being the maestro behind several of the most crazed movies of the past 45 years (including Babe: Pig in the City), he’s an unfailingly avuncular presence, on and off set. ‘How does this chaotic space come from his imagination?’ Hemsworth wonders to this day. ‘I think it’s why it works. You could be doing something so violent and dangerous and chaotic, but you can surrender to it, because he is the eyes and ears to all of it.’

Taylor-Joy echoes that, adding: ‘George, more than any other director that I’ve worked with, really paints his scenes. You can do eight takes of something on second unit, and then you’ll get a call in from George, who’s seen it, and he’s like, “Anya’s helmet has to be one centimetre further up on her head.” And it’s like, “Right, bin those. Go again.” Because he’s very precise about exactly what it is he wants to see.’

‘GEORGE, MORE THAN ANY OTHER DIRECTOR THAT I’VE WORKED WITH, REALLY PAINTS HIS SCENES… HE’S VERY PRECISE’

ANYA TAYLOR-JOY

Miller’s control over the frame even extends to the screening process, with the film only shown to cast and crew in black and white (or should that be black and chrome?) until work is complete. ‘He doesn’t show you the film in colour until the premiere, basically, because he doesn’t want you to look at all the unfinished VFX shots and be distracted by that,’ Hemsworth explains. ‘He just wants a pure reaction to the story, which I think is quite beneficial.’

Due to a combination of the actors’ strike and his previously announced time off from acting, Hemsworth hasn’t shot anything since filming wrapped on Furiosa way back in October 2022. ‘And as I search for what I’m going to do next, the bar has been raised so high that I don’t know if I’m ever going to have an experience like it again, unfortunately,’ he says with candour. ‘To have a script that is so incredible you want to do it justice, and every ounce of your being is committed to making it work – I don’t know that I’ll ever top it.’

‘I feel such a kinship to anybody who has made a film like this, because it’s the definition of: unless you’ve experienced it, you just don’t know what it’s like,’ adds Taylor-Joy. ‘You can prepare, but it’s like being melded in fire. It gave me such an incredible sense of satisfaction. I think we’re all addicted to a bit of chaos, and a bit of the impossible now.’ One thing’s for sure: no one will forget Furiosa in a hurry.

FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA OPENS IN CINEMAS ON 24 MAY.