The ‘Mad Max’ Franchise Is Ruthless About Replacing Its A-List Leads — And That’s What Keeps It Vital

Hardly anyone watching and rewatching George Miller’s original Mad Max trilogy in the ’80s and ’90s would have guessed that it would become the most star-flexible long-running franchise this side of James Bond. The role of Max Rockatansky – a cop turned post-apocalyptic drifter mourning the loss of his wife, child, and the world as he knew it – was a star-making one for Gibson, bringing him fame, a signature franchise, and a nickname (“Mad Mel”). Now there are two additional entries in the series, including arguably the most-acclaimed of the bunch, and the star turnover is particularly high, especially for a series that has repeatedly repurposed supporting actors in different roles across different movies. Gibson’s Max was replaced by Tom Hardy for Mad Max: Fury Road, which also introduced Charlize Theron’s Furiosa. Now Furiosa has her own eponymous origin-story movie, where she’s played by Anya Taylor-Joy (as well as Alyla Brown, in Furiosa’s younger years).

To some extent, these changes have been governed by practicalities: Fury Road was made 30 years after the previous Mad Max movie, but does not appear to take place 30 years later, which meant that Mel Gibson’s age removes him from contention before you even get to his late-2000s cancellation over repeated instances of abusive behavior. Similarly, Furiosa takes place over the course of 15 years before Fury Road, which makes Charlize Theron an unlikely candidate to reprise the role almost a decade later. On the other hand, it’s hard to tell how much of these movies’ concept required recasting, versus how much recasting may have shaped the movies’ concept. Surely there were ways to involve Gibson and/or Theron in these movies to some extent, if that was truly what the filmmakers desired.

Taking these changes as artistic decisions, rather than necessities, starts to make sense when you revisit the Mad Max movies as a full five-movie series. Bring it all the way back to 1979, and you may discover that Mel Gibson is not exactly electrifying in the original Mad Max. To some extent, that’s by design; Max is, this early in society’s collapse, more a typical movie protagonist who is everything the narrative needs him to be: heroic yet badass yet dedicated to his family yet enough of a daredevil to immediately pull off the crazy vehicular stunts the movie opens with. He’s a little difficult to pin down as a personality, and what’s most striking this many years later is Gibson’s babyfaced appearance, moreso than his hallmarks as a performer.

Yet as the trilogy went on, this not-quite-formed character would become crucial to Gibson’s star persona. The tragedy that unfolds late in Mad Max, where the character loses his wife and child to a nasty biker gang and goes a little crazy as a result, feels like a ur-text for future Gibson roles, despite the relative restraint in his Road Warrior performance compared to, say, various Lethal Weapon sequels. By the time of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, Max and Gibson were both better-known quantities – and though Gibson had yet to score further big hits in the U.S. (Lethal Weapon was still a couple of years away), he’s more visibly “himself” in the third film than in previous installments, and not just because he sports a scragglier version of his late ’80s/early ’90s mane when it opens. This Max talks a little more, makes a few wisecracks of sorts, takes his punches with aplomb, and occasionally does some light reaction-shot mugging; as if foretelling the arc of Gibson’s on-screen persona (especially in Lethal Weapon but also in blockbusters broadly), a haunted character becomes shtickier, more confident, more obviously played by an established star with both the gravity and the eventual invincibility to anchor a big action movie.

Maybe that’s just a product of Thunderdome itself, which is a more traditionally palatable version of the character, and it’s easy to imagine an older version of Gibson playing an older Max whose regrets, anger, and sorrow have all festered with time. But would that perhaps carry too much of Gibson’s personal baggage? His most complicated and skillful later-period roles still tend to radiate cranky grievances that don’t feel quite right for Max, at least not as he’s conceived in Fury Road. Recasting him as Tom Hardy gives the character a somewhat disembodied quality – not that Hardy seems uncommitted to the role, or unwilling to throw his full body into the performance. But the image of Hardy’s Max serving as a War Boy’s “blood bag,” stuck at the front of a vehicle like a figurehead at a ship’s bow, has a particularly clenched power that it’s difficult to picture emanating from Gibson. This Max exists within the movie’s action, of course, but keeps getting pulled out of it, whether through his split-second visions of people he failed to save, by his stint as a mobile blood donor, or his by-design sometime narrative subservice to Theron’s Furiosa, who shares top billing with him in Fury Road.

Furiosa, the commander who breaks from employer Immortan Joe — another role that will eventually change actors — by escaping with a rig full of young, enslaved women earmarked for breeding, came later to Theron’s career than Max came to Gibson’s; it’s more a culmination than a crystallization. Aeon Flux and Hancock made Theron seem like a badass, albeit one thwarted by oddball movies; Fury Road brought her talent for serious anguish together with her physical strength, and Furiosa became an instant icon – to the degree that immediately recasting her feels like a pretty fraught exercise in messing with perfection.

That goes doubly true for Anya Taylor-Joy, who has, at this point in her career, established a much more specific vibe than Theron had going as an emerging starlet: the watchful, witchy young woman with an otherworldly aloofness. At very least, it seems like a lot of work to explain how Furiosa’s eyes became less outsized by the time of Fury Road (especially given that visual effects workers were actually tasked with reconciling Taylor-Joy’s distinctive features with the young Alyla Brown’s face at different points earlier in the film).

As it turns out, though, Furiosa the movie makes it work, because Furiosa the character really is a different person. It’s not that we see a complete transformation from one type of person to another; as a kid, Furiosa seems daring, resourceful, and tough from the kump. Rather, Furiosa chronicles a kind of build up and release that then eventually allows Fury Road – a movie whose main plot is driven, literally, by this character – to happen in the first place. Taylor-Joy’s alien-observer qualities are perfect for a young woman who spends a lot of this movie absorbing knowledge about how to make her way through such a pitiless, dangerous, cruel world. Were she already played by Charlize Theron, or even just a ringer for her, there might be less visible determination, less work for the movie to do. That’s usually framed as a good thing, but as a prequel, Furiosa needs to show and justify its work, because most people watching it will know where it ends up ahead of time.

The casting also lends that ending some additional power, with the knowledge that no matter how fun she is to watch – and Taylor-Joy has an expressive and undeniable star quality – this Furiosa is gone when the movie ends. There may be more Mad Max movies (Miller himself has said as much), but most likely, no one in them will be as we remember them, fondly or not, from other versions. That may be why Beyond Thunderdome, good as it is, doesn’t have quite the same reputation as some of the other films: It gets a little complacent with its star and character, allowing comforts that the wasteland shouldn’t accommodate. Maybe a truly successful Mad Max movie has to let you know, on some level, that the world you knew isn’t coming back.

Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.