On 'Fury Road' with Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy

For decades, the name Mad Max has made fans think of one person. Well, two. There's actor Mel Gibson, and the franchise's creator George Miller. But Miller hasn't made any more Mad Max movies since Mel Gibson played him for the third time in "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" 30 years ago. When Miller envisioned a new movie in the series, he cast Tom Hardy in the iconic role.

His character, known only as Mad Max, began life as a police officer in post-apocalyptic Australia in Miller's 1979 indie made for $350,000. That first film went on to become an international sensation, spawning two sequels, "The Road Warrior" and "Thunderdome." The original film made more than $100 million worldwide, making its cost-to-profit ratio the highest of all time until "The Blair Witch Project" eclipsed it in 1999.

Miller, though, went onto other projects, including the more family-oriented "Babe" and the "Happy Feet" series. He never, though, forgot Max and now, 30 years later, he's made Mad Max: Fury Road, with Hardy, who does not take his character's legacy lightly.

Awesome. Furiosa

"I think initially I was daunted because obviously Mad Max is synonymous with Mel Gibson and a much loved character by many people," Hardy said. "Everybody loves Mel as Max and nobody's gonna want me. So it's like being the new boy at school and set up in some way for failure immediately. There was no real pressure to try and fill in anybody's shoes or to be a new Mad Max of any sort whatsoever. Actually, I was inheriting a legacy, that I'd been chosen by George to transmute his vision and his character into today's foray into the Mad Max world. So I don't know if I brought anything new as such, but the fact that I'm just a new actor in I suppose the fourth installment of the legacy which once was Mel's role and still is rightly so. I'm just the new boy and hopefully I'm accepted."

Hardy doesn't head out into the film's desert wilderness alone: "Fury Road" introduces a powerful new character, Imperator Furiosa, played by Oscar-winner Charlize Theron. She makes a striking presence on the film's poster where she's in the foreground (in front of Hardy) with a soot-blackened forehead and a shaved head. In the film, Miller conceives her as a fierce road warrior with a prosthetic arm. That shaved head, though, was Theron's idea.

"I had done a press junket, my hair was really fried and I had a night where I thought, 'You know what? What if we just shave it?'" Theron recalled. "I wasn't fully convinced, so I called George. I probably woke him up at 3 a.m. and I said, 'What do you think about this idea?' And he was just really quiet. Then I could hear him breathe. He took a deep breathe and I took that as a positive. I didn't have buzzers, so my friend Enzo brought me some buzzers. I was going to just let him do it and he was very like, 'No, you should do it.' So 45 minutes later it was off and we sent a selfie to George. He wrote me back and he was like, 'Awesome. Furiosa.'"

A broken man

After making the film Theron grew her hair back, but during the shooting she realized that being bald had its benefits. "Here's the amazing thing: after that (shaving her head), I was 20 minutes early to everything in my life," she said. "It's unbelievable how much time we spend on our hair. Then I think I emptied two garbage bags full of hair products and brushes. There's something very freeing in that for sure. There's always something nice when you take that importance of your femininity and make it about something more than just your hair. But it's also nice to have hair."

Miller's Mad Max has always had it rough. In the first movie, his family is killed by a gang of punks. After "Thunderdome" he's beaten to near death and sent off into the desert. It is there where Max is found at the start of "Fury Road," haunted by his demons (memories of his dead daughter) and taunted by the War Boys, the private army of a clan kingpen known as King Immortan Joe, who rules over his minions with an iron hand. The War Boys capture Max then imprison him, hanging him upside-down in their cave dwelling.

"I think he's supposed to be broken, isn't he, in many ways, a broken-spirited man," Hardy said. "We started off with Max in a sort of hermetic lifestyle at the beginning, trying to be left alone. Then we see him open up throughout the movie and connect with humanity around him, and then be broken again really and then sent off into the wasteland."

A feminist film

While Hardy has his biggest Hollywood role yet as Max, "Fury Road" belongs to the women. Furiosa is rescuing a warlord's imprisoned wives, and Max gets caught up in their chase. "I remember there were these loud whispers going around town that George was going to reimagine this world, that he was going to create this female character and she's going to stand right next to Max," Theron said.

"At first you're always like, 'That's awesome.' And then you become a little skeptical and you're like, 'I've heard that before and then I'm going to be the chick that ends up in the back of the frame with the pushup bra with a wisp of hair in my mouth.' That's why I shaved my head. I was like, 'no wispy hair.'"

Joking aside, Theron found a kindred spirit in Miller's feminist view.

"Then I met George and there was just something about him that I really believed him that he wanted to do something that felt really truthful. I think women are just eager to feel like they're on an equal playing field. Let me speak for myself. I don't want to be put on a pedestal. I don't want to be anything other than what we are. I want to just be a woman, but an authentic woman in this genre or any other genre. In this (kind of) movie (action) you run up against the pushup bra scenario; in dramas you run up against the Madonna/whore complex. You're either a really good hooker or a really good mom. That kind of conflicted nature that's very much a part of being a woman is so missed in film, and also just not celebrated enough in society. So when you come across that rare filmmaker that really wants to embrace that and stick it through, it's really nice."

More strong women

Mad Max: Fury Road" is released only two weeks after "The Avengers: Age of Ultron," which featured fan favorite Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) standing alongside Iron Man, Thor and Captain America. Yet somehow it's still a surprise when a new movie comes out with a powerful woman.

"Should there be more of it? Hell yeah," Theron said. "It's always strange to me when these women come on screen where we all respond to them so positively. They really get a reaction out of us, and it's like then why is that not enough of a reason for us to keep exploring that?"

Strapped to the hood

Max himself does a lot of driving and fighting himself, but much of his action involves being along for the ride. One sequence has him strapped to the front of a car - a human hood ornament for marauding War Boy Nicholas Hoult's vehicle.

"To be fair, actually, I was a little bit strapped to the front of the car for a couple of weeks maybe," Hardy said. "But my stunt double Jacob was strapped to it for a good six weeks doing about 60 kilometers an hour."

The toughest stunt for Hardy involves tall poles that swing from side to side, lifting passengers from one car and dropping them in another. Hardy did many of those stunts himself, which was complicated by his fear of heights (Acrophobia).

"I'm not very good with heights so the scaffolding pole was a bit of a mouthful," Hardy said. "There was only like seven inches on either side of the scaffolding pole to put your feet and then balance up there. And it's quite lonely because when the scaffolding pole goes that way, you naturally fall that way as well. Then when it comes back up to middle, you have to roll around and fall the other way, otherwise your face mallets the side of the scaffolding pole. That really hurts and there's no one up there to complain to. You're sort of drifting to the camera and then drift away again. It lasts as long as it lasts really."

Mad Max: Fury Road in theaters this weekend.