One of the big things that had happened with Mad Max is that the story that you've seen in Fury Road was the story that was written with me and George and Nico 15 years ago. The story hasn't changed at all from the version that I wrote with him. But the big change was that Mel Gibson was going to be Mad Max. It was going to be the 4th Mad Max in this Mel Gibson series. Now, due to all sorts of things, Mel's meltdown and the film being up and running and then collapsing three times - Mel had to drop out as he got older. And then they looked around for the new Mad Max and Heath Ledger was pretty much going to play Mad Max and he died. And finally Tom Hardy appeared.(...) We realized that Tom Hardy was the natural choice, but Tom Hardy has a sort of different weight as an actor to Mel Gibson. And Mel Gibson having done three Mad Maxes beforehand brings in history with him. Mel Gibson is Mad Max if you look at the first trilogy. He doesn't have to act as Mad Max, he has to dial himself down but he is Mad Max innately. So Mel Gibson in the role against Charlize Theron as Furiosa is a much weightier Max. When you put Tom Hardy in there, he does his own interpretation of Mad Max - a new Mad Max and he isn't as weighty on that side of the balance. So it feels that she's stronger than him in the film, you know as the kind of presence. That was my understanding why it felt a bit imbalanced in favor of Furiosa.
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I'm also talking about the weight. The perception of the character in the film is that she is weightier than him. If you put Mel Gibson back in there he weighs it back over to Max. And that's a casting thing. So once had lost his main Mad Max, it's like Raiders of the Lost Arc without Harrison Ford or something. Now once you've lost that you've got to then eventually find the right character who's going to bring his own dynamics and you don't quite know who that's going to be because Tom Hardy hadn't played Mad Max ever before.
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I understand the critique that Max is lighter in the film than he should've been. He should've been weightier, maybe more dramatic scenes or whatever. But I think that if you consider... also a lot of the publicity and how the film got picked up in the social media was that the feminist thing got very - I felt overstated in terms of the overall movie. I mean if you just picked up that she's freeing those girls from sex slavery and takes them to an idyllic matriarchal society - if you pick that bit up, that's a a certainly a strong part of the film, but it's not the whole film. So if you consider really, Max is strapped to the front of the vehicle for the first half an hour, he then bests the Warrior Woman in a fight, takes their truck but is persuaded to take them with him. As he goes along he can't wait to get rid of them at some point but gradually becomes invested in what they're about. You see her (Furiosa) go to the Green Place that doesn't exist, so she's failed in her mission and basically she takes those girls to their death. They meet the old ladies and decide that again, the woman - Theron's character, decides to take them all out in the wasteland and find somewhere. But Max who has lived out there knows there is nothing out there and in the end he intervenes and says "Look, the only green place I've seen is back there". And if you notice in the film, the actual only greenery is at the top of The Citadel. So then it's Max who becomes the pivotal... with that turn-around scene which comes at the end of act two where they kind of agree that they're going to go back the green place, and get there ahead of the war lord and defend it. We see the warrior woman's, the Theron's mission end in failure and it's Max who takes it up and then turns it around, thwarts what they're trying to do and gives them a solution. And then puts everything he's got into bringing about - letting their mission if you like be accomplished, and then new society starts to form in their green place that they'd just come from. And he leaves and continues on his wandering.