FURIOSA: 12 Things You Probably Never Knew About the MAD MAX Movies
George Miller is back in the driver’s seat for his fifth Mad Max movie, and as Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga races into view, another apocalyptic adventure is here to make its mark on Tinsel Town. With Anya Taylor-Joy stepping into Charlize Theron’s shoes to take over as Furiosa, we’ve come a long way from the intimate affair of 1979’s Mad Max.
After a long-awaited return to form with 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road, Furiosa is an equally long-awaited prequel that hopes to kick the series’ tires once again. Ready your War Boys because here are 12 things you never knew about the Mad Max movies.
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Mad Max Returns
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Long before Tom Hardy was taking on the role of Max Rockatansky, Mel Gibson was slated to return following 1985’s Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. Miller conjured up the idea of having a Mad Max that was one big chase sequence as early as 1987 and soon set about storyboarding the thing.
Pre-production got underway at 20th Century Fox in 2000, with Gibson ready to reprise his role and Sigourney Weaver tipped to become the female lead that would eventually evolve into Furiosa. Unfortunately, the September 11 attacks caused the dollar to crash, and the fourth Mad Max fell into development hell.
Miller had then committed himself to Happy Feet, and by the time he returned to Mad Max 4, he told Time Out how “Mel had all that turbulence in his life.” Agreeing that the story wasn’t about an aged Road Warrior, Miller eventually agreed to recast. The rest is history, and although Fury Road was originally tipped to be an R-rated animated movie inspired by Japanese anime, Miller powered ahead with a live-action outing.
Familiar Faces
Warner Bros.
Aside from Gibson being a staple of the original trilogy, Miller has slipped a few more actors into multiple movies. While you might not have been able to spot him behind the mask of Immortan Joe, Fury Road wasn’t actor Hugh Keays-Byrne’s first rodeo.
Long before he played Immortan Joe, Keays-Byrne was the antagonistic Toecutter in the original Mad Max. Elsewhere, Bruce Spence appeared as the Gyrocaptain in Road Warrior and played a suspiciously similar role as Jedediah the pilot in Beyond Thunderdome.
Hardy isn’t expected to appear in Furiosa, although we know Lachy Hulme is playing a young Immortan Joe. Other actors behind characters, including Rictus Erectus, The Organic Mechanic, and The People Eater, are all reprising their roles for Furiosa.
A Deadly Accident
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Miller and Gibson both refer to 1981’s The Road Warrior as their least favorite entry in the series, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t earned its place in the saga. The Mad Max movies have always included some epic car scene to round things off, but in The Road Warrior, its death-defying final act nearly ended in tragedy.
The final stunt with the tanker roll was deemed so dangerous, the stunt driver wasn’t allowed to eat any food for 12 hours — with the production crew fearing he’d have to be rushed to surgery. However, one crash scene led to stuntman Guy Norris breaking his femur.
The scene involves Norris as a mohawked raider who crashed his buggy, but if you look closely, you’ll see the vehicle make contact with his legs. Thankfully, Miller was a trained doctor and dealt with Norris quickly. Like keeping the scene where Leonardo DiCaprio cuts his hand in Django Unchained in the final cut, you can see the accident in The Road Warrior.
Lord of the Thunderdome
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As a campy classic, Beyond Thunderdome seemed like the perfect way to round out the trilogy. However, it nearly wasn’t a Mad Max movie at all. Despite its cult status, many feel Beyond Thunderdome is a movie of two halves. After the fight in the titular Thunderdome, the movie follows an exiled Max meeting with a tribe of kids.
The irony is that Beyond Thunderdome was originally pitched as an apocalyptic Lord of the Flies movie. It’s easy to see the themes of William Golding’s 1954 novel, with the children developing their own hierarchy in the Australian wasteland. In a 1985 interview, Miller explained how he’d wanted to revisit the story of The Road Warrior’s Feral Kid (Emil Minty), who became the movie’s narrator.
Miller later added Max into the mix as a sort of messiah figure, with things evolving into a full-blown Mad Max threequel. Some Lord of the Flies elements are still there, although Beyond Thunderdome’s pacifist second half is largely critiqued.
A Dog’s Life
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From I Am Legend to Fallout 4, having a canine companion can make your time in the apocalypse a little more bearable. The Mad Max movies have never been too good about fleshing out the story, leaving it to the expanded media and fans themselves to fill in the gaps.
Fan film Mad Max: Renegade brilliantly follows Max from his first outing to The Road Warrior and explains how he came to be with his dog. Starring Liam Fountain as Max, Renegade picks up after Max steals the iconic Pursuit Special at the end of the first movie. Ironically, Fountain later auditioned to play Max in Fury Road but lost out to Hardy.
Miller had originally wanted “Dog” to be a three-legged Blue Heeler called ‘Trike’ but struggled to find a three-legged dog. Over 100 dogs were auditioned, and “Dog” (its name in real life) was due to be put down. Dog apparently had earplugs because it was scared of cars, and although it was killed by one of Lord Humungus’ Marauders in the movie, it got its own happy ending after it was adopted by one of the stunt coordinators.
A Close Shave
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Anya Taylor-Joy can thank Charlize Theron for Furiosa’s signature look. The original idea for it was a long-haired Barbarella-inspired character design, but according to Theron and costume designer Jenny Beavan, Furiosa’s appearance was too impractical. Considering she was working with all this heavy machinery, she would’ve likely been scalped.
In 2020, Theron shared throwback footage of her shaving her head for Fury Road. After Theron gleefully shaved her head, she had to wear a wig for A Million Ways to Die in the West. There’s clearly a lot of love for the role, and in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Theron said she was heartbroken not to be returning for Furiosa.
Theron’s dedication to playing Furiosa paid off, and after something of a slump in a post-Academy Award win for Monster, Fury Road reinvigorated her career. As for Fury Road, Beavan won the Academy Award for Best Costume Design.
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The Many Faces of Max
Warner Bros.
After the success of the original trilogy as sleeper hits, the idea of recasting Max for Fury Road garnered plenty of attention. Gibson was originally due to have a cameo as a drifter to hammer home the idea that The Road Warrior is a mythical figure. He eventually passed when things fell into development hell, but before Hardy landed the part, Gibson had suggested Robert Downey Jr. as his successor.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Jeremy Renner lobbied heavily to play Max, while Channing Tatum, Armie Hammer, and Michael Fassbender were all considered. Other names in the mix were Aliens’ Michael Biehn to stick with the idea of an older Max. The strangest was revealed in an oral history to Vulture, where Lead Storyboard Artist Mark Sexton said Eminem was once thrown around.
When Miller was first considering a fourth movie, Gibson had signed up alongside Heath Ledger for a version that was due to start filming in Namibia in 2003. However, the project was ultimately scrapped due to the impending invasion of Iraq, and when things started moving again, Ledger had tragically passed away.
Made for TV
Warner Bros. has hammered home how it’s trying to focus on its big IPs like The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and DC. Mad Max is another of these there franchises, and although its future remains unclear, we wouldn’t be surprised if it moves to TV.
Way back when, Mad Max was scheduled to land on the small screen. A Variety ad from November 1995 mentioned how Mad Max was going “to blast onto TV screens in the fall of 1996.” While details are sparse, there’s a mention that the series would include vehicular combat instead of human versus human, while Australian actor Jon Blake was possibly going to play Max. Tragically, an accident left Blake disabled, and the TV series vanished.
Miller outlined plans for a sixth movie when making Fury Road, with Hardy originally contracted to three movies. We’re not sure what’s going on with Mad Max: The Wasteland, but today, Miller’s sprawling world seems primed to get the Dune: Prophecy treatment and land in the (aptly named) Max streaming service.
Auntie Entity
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The casting of Tina Turner was a real brainstorm in Beyond Thunderdome, and with Gibson yet to get his big break in Lethal Weapon, she was billed ahead of him in some territories. She was also cast against type, with Miller saying he wanted a positive character instead of a typical “bad guy.”
In a 1985 interview with Time Out, Miller said he wanted Auntie Entity to be a survivor, which takes on a whole new meaning in light of Turner’s abuse at the hands of husband, Ike. The script was written with Turner in mind, although Miller admitted he had no idea if she’d accept.
In some alternate reality, we had an equally formidable Auntie Entity in Jane Fonda. She was in the running to play the no-nonsense overlord of Bartertown, as was The Bionic Woman’s Lindsay Wagner. Although Turner had far less acting experience, she fit the role perfectly,
Putting the “Fury” in Fury Road
Warner Bros.
Fury Road was a notoriously grueling shoot, with no love lost between Hardy and several others. Theron said Hardy and Miller “went at it,” although the former apologized after seeing the move at Cannes. As well as clashing with Miller, there was an infamous feud between Hardy and Theron
New York Times writer Kyle Buchanan details the sorry saga in his book, Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road. Here, Theron said she didn’t want to rehash it but admitted the pair “came to blows.” After one particular row, Theron demanded a female producer be around at all times to mediate.
Speaking to The Telegraph to promote Furiosa, Miller discussed the on-set animosity and said, “There’s no excuse for it.” The likes of Nicholas Hoult and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley have also described the awkward atmosphere during filming. The two leads being at each other’s throats was in contrast to their stunt doubles, Dane Grant and Dayna Porter, who met on the set and later got married.
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Rough and ready
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The Mad Max movies seem to be getting more expensive with every outing, which is a far cry from the 1979 original being made on a shoestring budget of under $400,000 AUD. For decades, it held the Guinness World Record for the most profitable movie ever made (now passed by Paranormal Activity).
Speaking to Australian Screen, Miller explained his “guerrilla” approach to filming. They didn’t get permits for it, and Miller himself would stay behind at night to sweep the roads. Still, as filming continued and the police became more interested, they actually helped close roads and assist with production.
To save money, Miller also employed a gang of real-life bikers as Toecutter’s lackeys. Miller said they couldn’t afford to fly the cast or their bikes, meaning they rode all the way from Melbourne to Sydney. Miller posted an ad in a bike shop window, with the real-life group known as The Vigilantes landing the part.
Rapper’s delight
Tina Turner wasn’t the only musical influence tied to the Mad Max universe, and you might notice how Tupac Shakur’s “California Love” was inspired by Mad Max. It’s odd, considering it came out a full 11 years after the Mad Max trilogy originally bowed out.
In real life, Tupac shot the music video with the actual Thunderdome from the third movie, hence why the vehicles and outfits look like they’re a nod to Miller’s world. Jada Pinkett Smith apparently came up with the idea, although she stepped aside to let Hype Williams direct. There were actually two versions shot, with a clever “to be continued” revealing it was all a dream.
At a time when most music videos were filmed poolside of palatial mansions, “California Love” was having a little more fun. Shakur appears with spiked shoulder pads, there’s a much younger Chris Tucker, and Tony Cox takes on the role of Master. The Mad Max version was later ranked by MTV as the ninth-greatest music video of all time.
RACE TO BUY FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA TIX HERE
Author Bio:
Based in Manchester, UK, Tom Chapman has over seven years’ experience covering everything from dragons to Demogorgons. Starting out with a stint at Movie Pilot in Berlin, Tom has since branched out to indulge his love of all things Star Wars and the MCU at Digital Spy, Den of Geek, IGN, Yahoo! and more. These days, you’ll find Tom channelling his inner Gale Weathers and ranting about how HBO did us dirty with Game of Thrones Season Eight.
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