Mad Max: Fury Road revived the Mad Max franchise by injecting it with lots of action and a well-told story, as well as interesting characters, among those the mysterious Guitar Guy – and here’s who he is, his origins, and the actor who played him. Thirty years after the release of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, George Miller returned to the post-apocalyptic desert wasteland with Mad Max: Fury Road, now with Tom Hardy as Max Rockatansky and accompanied by Charlize Theron as Imperator Furiosa.
In a world where civilization collapsed years ago, the tyrannical Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) enslaves survivors inside a desert fortress called the Citadel. Imperator Furiosa leads Joe’s wives in a dangerous escape while forging an alliance with Max, a former captive. Together, they try to outrun the warlord and his henchmen, known as War Boys, in a high-speed chase through the Wasteland. Immortan Joe’s War Boys live to serve him, but that comes with a big price as they all suffer from severe health issues, recurring to constant blood transfusions to prolong their lives. Among those is a very peculiar man who caught the attention of the audience as he appears standing on one of Joe’s tanks playing a flame-throwing electric guitar amidst the chase.
Although Guitar Guy isn’t a main character and has no lines throughout the whole movie, he made a big impact with his incredible skills, as it surely wouldn’t be easy to play the guitar while standing on a tank during a high-speed chase. But who is Mad Max: Fury Road’s Guitar Guy and what’s his story?
Mad Max: Fury Road - Guitar Guy’s Origins
Mad Max: Fury Road’s Guitar Guy has a name: Coma-Doof Warrior, also known simply as The Doof Warrior for playing on the Doof Wagon. George Miller shared to Deadline a bit of Coma-Doof Warrior’s backstory, explaining that he was blind from birth (most War Boys end up blind due to their very poor health), and when “things started going a bit crazy”, he and his mother were left in a mining town. Miller added that the only way Coma-Doof Warrior and his mother could survive was by going into a place where there was a “competitive advantage to being blind”, and the solution was to go deep down into a mine shaft. Coma-Doof Warrior then took what was most precious to him, which was most likely a guitar. As for how he ended up as one of Immortan Joe’s henchmen, specifically the one standing on the Doof Wagon and playing a flame-throwing electric guitar, Miller said that Joe’s people heard the music coming out of the aforementioned mine shaft, went down there, and found him. His mother was most likely killed, as she was of no use, and he “ended up as the equivalent of the drummer, the fife player or the bagpiper, in Immortan Joe’s army”.
Who Plays Guitar Guy In Mad Max Fury Road
The Doof Warrior is played by iOTA, a New Zealand-Australian singer. Although he’s best known for his career as a musician, he has also performed on stage in a couple of plays, most notably The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Hedwig and the Angry Inch, where he played Frank-N-Furter and Hedwig, respectively. Before Mad Max: Fury Road, he appeared in Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby as the orchestra leader, and his most recent work is on Netflix’s animated TV series Beat Bugs, where he voiced Walter Walrus (along with Daniel Johns). iOTA not only brought his musical talent and presence to Mad Max: Fury Road but he also added to his character’s backstory, telling Audiences Everywhere in 2015 that, to him, Coma-Doof Warrior was found by Immortan Joe clinging to his mother’s head, then took her face off and made his mask out of it to honor her. If a sequel to Mad Max: Fury Road is to happen, the Coma-Doof Warrior a.k.a. Guitar Guy could come back, as Miller believes he survived.