What a terrible time it must be to be a men’s rights activist. Not only is Donald Trump lagging behind by as much as 17 points in the polls, but the #MeToo movement has changed the landscape of modern culture, and to cap it all, Mad Max has been dumped for a lady.
George Miller’s most recent episode of the post-apocalyptic Aussie sci-fi romp, 2015’s Oscar-winning Fury Road, featured a female character, Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), who was at least as badass as Tom Hardy’s Max, despite having one arm. Having talked up the prospect of a Furiosa spin-off for some time, Miller has now announced that a prequel is entering production.
Theron will not be returning as Immortan Joe’s one-time war captain turned nemesis, the veteran film-maker having chosen instead to cast Anya Taylor-Joy as a younger version of the character. Chris Hemsworth will also join the cast.
The new film will focus on Furiosa’s origins, so perhaps we’ll get to see how she ended up working for masked horror Joe in the first place. On the other hand (and especially given the brutal details of a much-criticised prequel comic book episode about Furiosa’s earlier encounters with the ruthless dictator), it would perhaps be more sensible for Miller to tell an entirely new story. It’s also worth pointing out that we already know the grim endgame for the Citadel’s masked abuser, so why bother including him again?
If one thing is certain about this new episode, it’s that there doesn’t seem to be any place for Mad Max himself this time around. This seems like a genuine turning point for Miller’s longstanding franchise: no longer is Max Rockatansky the prism through which we see the damned Antipodean future, which ought to allow the saga to widen its sandy vistas like never before.
There are, after all, only so many times cinema audiences will pay to see essentially the same movie. For all their respective, if varying, levels of excellence, the last three episodes in the series ploughed pretty much the same dusty furrow: Max turns up at a remote outpost in the Aussie desert, swiftly discovers that any sense of calm is as fragile as gossamer, and winds up heading back out into the sandy wilds having witnessed it all burning down around him in a storm of fire and gasoline.
Furiosa, on the other hand, has a chance to buck this trend. We are never given much of a sign in the Max Max movies of how long it has been since Australia (and presumably the rest of the world) descended into chaos. And yet the original Mad Max from 1979 actually takes place at a time when civilisation still exists, to the extent that there is a functioning police force and legal system, even if the existence of marauding gangs suggests society is beginning to fracture. By the time 1981’s Mad Max 2 rolls around, the world seems to have completely gone to pot – yet we don’t get to see what happens in between.
Perhaps this could be fertile territory for Furiosa. The power of a film where we actually get to see the destruction of civilisation, in a time that seems more pre-apocalyptic than ever, would be palpable. It would also be fascinating to see how the future Imperator survived and thrived in a male-dominated world, despite witnessing the walls of progress tumbling down around her.
