Why has starring in a ‘Mad Max’ movie become such an emotionally distressing experience?
The evolution of the Mad Max franchise from a low-budget and gung-ho guerrilla operation to an inordinately expensive blockbuster experience has coincided with some serious emotional distress being inflicted upon its stars, with George Miller inadvertently putting his cast through the wringer.
Of course, it should be noted that neither Fury Road duo Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron nor Furiosa-lead Anya Taylor-Joy has ever had anything less than the kindest words to say about the filmmaker responsible for orchestrating such personal and professional carnage, but it’s curious that the trio ended up being so heavily impacted by their experiences.
Besides the inherent danger of shooting so many dangerous and death-defying stunts, Mel Gibson never emerged from his three-film stint as the title character, reflecting on the lingering emotional trauma inflicted upon him. Then again, on Beyond Thunderdome, he was found in a candid mood behind the scenes when he buried his head in his hands and remarked that “I’ve been out here for ten fucking weeks” when the production still wasn’t close to reaching the finish line.
Thanks to the increased budget, major studio backing, and advances in both visual effects technologies and safety precautions in the four decades since the original, in technical terms making a Mad Max movie has never been safer. However, it’s by no means a walk in the park, as evidenced by the respective nightmares the leading lights of the last two instalments have been made to suffer through.
Theron described Fury Road as “fucking rough” in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, admitting that it’s not something she ever wants to live through again. “Listen, I know, I said, ‘Oh, as an actor, you want to be challenged’, but you don’t want it to be that bad,” she offered. “It was a long, long shoot. I have never done anything that needed that kind of endurance, and I don’t think I ever will.”
Editor J. Houston Yang remembers seeing the dailies and having his first thought be, “Boy fucking howdy, was it clear that those two people hated each other,” which isn’t ideal considering they were forced to be in such close proximity to one another for an arduous production that rumbled on for months.
Due to Hardy’s repeated lateness to set, Theron made it clear that she believed the producers should “fine the fucking cunt a hundred thousand dollars for every minute that he’s held up this crew,” which sounds like quite the tense atmosphere. For his part, Miller copped to feeling at least partially responsible, although hindsight always tends to be 20/20 for a reason.
“There’s no excuse for it,” he was forced to admit. “And I think there’s a tendency in this business to use great performances as an excuse for other disruption that could have been avoided.” And yet, almost the exact same thing happened again on Furiosa, with Taylor-Joy sounding borderline traumatised by the lengths she went to in order to do justice to Miller’s vision.
The prequel’s figurehead acknowledged how she’d “never been more alone than making that movie” and how “everything that I thought was going to be easy was hard.” The actor also claims she “knew I was going to take the two years that it took for the movie to come out to deal with it.” Not only that but when asked to expand on her comments, she flat-out refused and said, “Talk to me in 20 years.”
Cinema is make-believe at the end of the day. However, when Taylor-Joy insinuates that she needs somewhere between two years and two decades to even process whatever she went through on the set of Furiosa, it begs the question as to what exactly is going on during the construction of the post-apocalyptic epics for the performers to be left so openly damaged.
Whether it’s the conditions, the exertion, the exhaustion, or the demands placed on them to do their best work with minimal dialogue while a thousand other cogs in the machine turn around them, it’s ironic that for a locale as dry and barren as the Wasteland, there’s clearly something in the water pushing the actors to the brink.
It has resulted in some truly sensational cinema, to be fair, and Miller presumably has the wherewithal to let his potential stars know that it’s going to be the complete opposite of a cakewalk. Still, it’s concerning that roughly the same thing has happened twice over to three different actors, which means there’s a distinct chance it’ll happen again should a sixth Mad Max come to fruition.
