George Miller is returning to the Wasteland once more with his Mad Max: Fury Road prequel Furiosa. Only this time, Anya Taylor-Joy will be behind the wheel. She’s playing the young Imperator first brought to the screen by Charlize Theron. But while Furiosa is getting her own movie, she won’t have a lot to say. Miller says the role doesn’t involve very much talking. It turns out that Anya-Taylor Joy will only have 30 lines in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. Instead, the desert warrior’s actions will do most of the talking for her onscreen, in a part Miller says follows the path of “pure cinema” ideals practiced by Hollywood royalty like Alfred Hitchcock.
In an interview with The Telegraph (which we first heard about at CBR), Miller addressed a topic he’s sure will come up once people see Furiosa. Despite being the lead character in the Furiosa movie, Taylor-Joy’s Furiosa will only have about 30 lines of dialogue. That’s not a lot for a lead in a two-and-a-half hour film. Especially when it covers 15 years of her life, from her abduction as a child to becoming Immortan Joe’s Imperator.
That shouldn’t matter, but it almost certainly will. Margot Robbie’s role in Once Upon A Time… in Hollywood led to some very frustrating discussion and debate after the movie came to theaters. Miller seems to be getting ahead of a similar one by explaining himself before anyone misconstrues his intentions.
Furiosa’s dearth of lines has nothing to do with the character. It has nothing to do with Taylor-Joy, either. Miller’s decision to give her so little dialogue because he’s using the type of visual cinematic storytelling employed by silent era greats like Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. He’s also taking inspiration from maybe the greatest director ever, Alfred Hitchcock.
“Hitchcock defined as movies where they don’t have to read the subtitles when they’re screened in Japan,” said Miller. He also said he believes dialogue slows down stories in a medium that excels when it keeps moving. For films like Furiosa and Fury Road (which also had few lines), that would be literally true.
Will some people still have a problem with Anya Taylor-Joy’s Furiosa only speaking 30 times in her own movie? Maybe, maybe not. If it’s nearly as good as Mad Max: Fury Road, the character will still say plenty even when she doesn’t speak.
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