Anya Taylor-Joy is set to replace Charlize Theron as Furiosa in the upcoming Mad Max spinoff, but how did her earlier movie roles prepare her for the character’s story? When the original Mad Max first arrived in theatres way back in 1979, few critics could have guessed the effect that director George Miller’s seminal sci-fi action movie would have on cinema history. In the decades since its release, Mad Max has not only spawned a string of lucrative sequels, but the franchise has also defined the aesthetic of most dystopian post-apocalyptic cinema since its release.
However, viewers new to the series may be surprised to learn that Mad Max had such an outsized effect on the sci-fi genre when watching the movie today. The original movie barely features any sci-fi elements, as Mad Max was only set in the future to save on production costs. Despite this, though, the movie’s sequel The Road Warrior leaned into the more over-the-top elements of sci-fi with aplomb, taking place after an offscreen apocalypse and featuring more fast-paced action, inventive villains, and surreal futuristic flourishes.
It is The Road Warrior’s aesthetic that still defines the Mad Max franchise in the collective cultural consciousness, and it was the second movie in the series that most viewers were reminded of when Mad Max returned to cinemas with 2015’s long-awaited sequel Fury Road. Starring Tom Hardy as the recast Max, Fury Road saw the eponymous hero join Imperator Furiosa to save hostages from a warlord named Immortan Joe. However, despite the movie’s title, Mad Max: Fury Road was largely Furiosa’s story, with most of Max’s dialogue taking place in the movie’s brief voiceover intro. The tough but humane Furiosa was a protagonist who viewers immediately wanted to see more of, resulting in Miller announcing a spinoff movie for the character. This upcoming release will feature a story that spans decades, and may finally explain the offscreen apocalypse that viewers missed out on between the first two movies. However, Furiosa’s age meant that the Mad Max spinoff recast her original actor Charlize Theron with Anya Taylor-Joy, whose starring roles have prepared her perfectly for the part.
The Witch
2015’s indie horror The Witch proved Anya Taylor-Joy could take a less-than-heroic protagonist trapped in an unimaginable ordeal and make her journey to the dark side believable and easy to empathize with. As the star of the poignant Aileen Wuornos biopic Monster, Charlize Theron also had plenty of experience making seemingly inhuman characters deeply sympathetic well before she took on the role of Furiosa. Thus, Miller’s decision to recast Theron for the spinoff was met with frustration by some fans, but The Witch proves that Taylor-Joy has as impressive a pedigree when it comes to getting inside the head of morally compromised antiheroes. The Witch, like the original Mad Max, stranded Taylor-Joy’s protagonist in an inhospitable setting unfamiliar to most viewers and immediately ensured that both movie’s milieu and her character’s reaction to it were believable and tragic, leaving viewers able to understand how she turns to the devil by the end.
Furiosa’s spinoff may be substituting the hardship of life on a Puritan farm in the 1600s with surviving the parched, post-apocalyptic wasteland of the Mad Max movies, but both stories aim to make an impossible decision believable and a descent into evil understandable. Furiosa’s spinoff should not focus too much on Fury Road villain Immortan Joe for fear of overshadowing her journey, but The Witch proved that Taylor-Joy can make a character’s internal breakdown compelling even when there are few external villains for them to interact with.
New Mutants
As New Mutants’ Magik, Taylor-Joy was the standout in director Josh Boone’s ultimately flawed movie, and becoming the breakout character whose story audiences were unexpectedly invested in is what led Furiosa to get a spinoff in the first place. Fury Road was smart enough to sideline Max while New Mutants made the mistake of under-using Taylor-Joy, but her toughened and ultimately surprisingly vulnerable antiheroine bore a striking similarity to the initially uncompromising Furiosa. With a tragic past that she had no interest in divulging, Magik boasted the same bravado and hidden depths that made Furiosa a compelling anti-heroine. New Mutants deserved its bad reviews, but Taylor-Joy’s turn still shows that Furiosa’s mean streak is in good hands.
The Queen’s Gambit
The ruthlessness of Beth Harmon, as well as her conflicted internal life, make the heroine one who shuts herself off from the world in the pursuit of perfection in the Netflix hit The Queen’s Gambit. It is similar to Furiosa’s pre-Fury Road unwillingness to face the reality of the Citadel’s horrors, and Beth’s ability to overcome her struggles mirrors Furiosa’s fearless break for freedom. The big difference between the two is that Beth learns to be less of a lone wolf where Furiosa remains ferociously independent, but this starring role still proves that Taylor-Joy can nail the perfectionist loner element of Furiosa’s character.
Split
Viewers aren’t privy to Furiosa’s backstory, and the only canon one for the character comes from a Fury Road tie-in prequel comic that earned deserved criticism for highlighting the abuse of Immortan Joe’s captives at the expense of Furiosa’s growth. However, Split proves that Taylor-Joy can take a potentially distasteful and exploitative character backstory and make the plot work for her character by depicting both their resilience and struggle to come to terms with their past. Arguably her most similar role to Furiosa, Split’s breakout part for Taylor-Joy saw the actor play a heroine who is pushed to the psychological brink by an unendurable ordeal that soon sees her tap into unrealized powers and becoming an unstoppable force of violence by the movie’s close. If the Furiosa spinoff copies the original Mad Max and explains the character’s toughened persona by illustrating the traumas that have made her numb to the wasteland’s brutality, the movie will likely draw from the same well of tortured internal anguish that Taylor-Joy tapped into in Split. As a result, viewers may not know much about the story of Mad Max’s upcoming Furiosa spinoff, but can rest assured that the title character is in the right hands.