George [Miller] decided that he was kind of a wolf. A wild dog. There’s a transition for Max - he starts out as a beast, in the wilderness. Monosyllabic. Can’t talk. Doesn’t know his own voice. Hasn’t spoken for ages - apart from the voices in his head. He’s a creature. As he’s chased down, he’s feral. He then, on escaping his situation, and meeting Furiosa, slowly finds his voice.
Max is all about, from a character point of view, a man who has got a tremendous amount of trauma and horror in his life. Who just wants to be left alone. Who gets snatched up by somebody who makes him a part of their livestock. And all he wants to do is go home. But he doesn’t have a home.
Whatever he touches turns to death and sadness and just misery. So, in meeting the girls and meeting Furiosa, he just knows it can’t end well. Nothing is good and everything hurts out there, you know? And that’s exactly what Furiosa says, everything is painful. They’re very similar characters.
So of course they meet, of course there’s a relationship, an unspoken understanding. A recognition.
Tom Hardy, on the evolution of Mad Max and his relationship with Imperator Furiosa (x)
Tom hits on what is, to me, the most powerful thing about this movie—that it’s not just an ideology of overthrowing power. It’s about an ideology that empowers everyone. Men like Max have been ruined by a top-town patriarchy. They aren’t de-empowered by strong women; they’re upheld and embraced and allowed to be vulnerable, they’re recognized and treated as human beings.
Max finds his voice. He finds his voice! SOMEONE HOLD ME
(via bookshop)
This seems like an apt spot to drop a link to this article on The Heroic Masculinity of Mad Max, because YEAH