Mad Max: Fury Road , George Miller’s relentless, raging post-apocalyptic epic from 2015 was that rare thing – a blockbuster which made almost $400 million, won six Oscars from its 10 nominations, and provided as many truly jaw-dropping stunts and set pieces as it did moments of genuine heartbreak and anguish. There was also something delightfully tongue-in-cheek about its title: while the film opens with Tom Hardy’s tormented road warrior, Max, as the story goes on, he eventually takes something of a backseat to the women he finds himself travelling with, the wives of the monstrous Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) as played by Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Zoë Kravitz, Riley Keough, Abbey Lee and Courtney Eaton, but especially Charlize Theron’s Furiosa, their buzz cut-sporting, grease-smeared , laconic protector. In the final shots of Fury Road , it’s they who are proclaimed the victors, they who stand above the masses while Max, having aided them, simply nods and disappears into the crowd.
Over the course of the film’s two-hour runtime, Furiosa says very little, but she speaks volumes in the clenching of her jaw, the furrow of her brow, and with her eyes, which overflow with grief, fear, regret and longing mingled with steely determination . This is a woman who’s endured the unimaginable, wrenched from her lush, idyllic homeland as a child and forced to grow up in the barren wasteland, serving a tyrannical warlord. For her, driving these women away from their opp.