George Miller Was Thinking About a Female Mad Max Back in 1985

Imperator Furiosa was the break-out character in Mad Max: Fury Road, with Max himself at times taking a back-seat to Charlize Theron’s one-armed warrior. And in a 30-year-old interview that has been published for the first time today, it seems writer-director George Miller was trying to figure out how to work such a character into the universe back in 1985.

Speaking to Anne Bilson for a feature that was due to run in Time Out before being bumped in favour of an article about Orson Welles' death, Miller is asked if there could ever be a female version of Mad Max. His answer is long, complex, and enlightening:

“I thought a lot about that. I think there’s no question about it. I still can’t figure out sexuality; I mean it’s such a big mystery to us all. It’s like violence and aggression, it’s something we try to understand with our heads, our intellect, but they’re really to do much more with the instinctual side of us. It’s old brain versus new brain, you know?

I thought a lot about that. I think there’s no question about it."

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“So dealing with something like sexuality and women… If you’re talking about it in conventional mythology, being nothing fancy, just simple storytelling, if you look at stories like Beauty and the Beast, which is a myth that was very common – you know, King Kong, right up to the '50s – and then I guess they invented the pill and abortion and a freer sexuality, and a certain liberation of women, which most of us agree was long overdue.

“The Beauty and the Beast story is no longer a viable one in society, because women aren’t as mystified – they’re much more people than they are mystical. Yet women are still sex objects, yet they’re not demystified sex objects. And yet we have more women artists, women this and there are women that, so it seems clear that you can have a female hero. [But] historically there haven’t been very many.

"If you go back to the theory – this is the mind of Joseph Campbell – that heroes are the agents of evolution, the means by which one world is shattered and the new world is created, they’re not for their own sake, their purpose, like Mad Max at the end of Mad Max 3, is over. Once the kids are free, they’re going to go off and start something new [and] he can’t be part of that. He’s too fixed in his ways. At least that’s his function. He recognises that he’s not so important, just a chance of a renewal is much more important than an individual.

“If you agree that heroes are the agents of revolution, there have been very few women heroes in society. I don’t think there’s any reason why there can’t be a female version, in fact the Tina Turner [character] in the subtext of Mad Max 3, before the story started, probably followed a very classic hero story – the story of how she built Bartertown would be a very interesting story. And – in the way we discussed her back story, she would pretty well follow the hero story – she would have to. So a short answer is yes, I think there can be a female hero in the same way. How we would respond collectively as audiences, I don’t know. I suspect that we would respond very well, if the story was well told.”

And respond well audiences have, with Theron’s character a huge hit with critics and audiences alike. To read more of the interview – in which Miller talks about not wanting to make a sequel (which he eventually did) and trying to fit rock n roll music into the series (which he managed via Coma-Doof Warrior) head here for the full transcript.

Chris Tilly is the Entertainment Editor for IGN in the UK and wants George Miller to direct all of next summer's movies. He can be found talking nonsense on The Superhero Show and Twitter.