Furiosa: The smartest move in a Mad Max saga is to put Immortan Joe on the bench

George Miller’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga complements and enhances the impact of his 2015 blockbuster Mad Max: Fury Road in many ways, but there is only one thing that bothers me: how little the new film has to say about Immortan Joe, the iconic arch-villain from the original film.

Sure, Joe’s lack of interaction with Anya Taylor-Joy’s Furiosa could simply be because Hugh Keays-Byrne, the actor who first brought Immortan Joe to the screen, died in 2020. Lachy Hulme takes over the role for Angrybut perhaps George Miller reduced it out of respect for Keays-Byrne, with whom he worked for many years.

But I am skeptical. Joe’s consistent secondary status in Furiosa’s origin story fits with the general themes of Angry too good to be a coincidence: Immortan Joe, the demon from Emperor Furiosa’s last battle, was not her archenemy at all. In fact, he was not her anything.

This is in stark contrast to Fury Roadwhere their beef seems deeply personal. Max Rockatansky wanders into the story of another in Fury Roadhow his stories usually go. This time, those someones are Furiosa (Charlize Theron) and Immortan Joe.

While Fury Road only subtle hints that Furiosa was once one of Joe’s captured harem women and incubators – the white wrappings of Furiosa’s top are reminiscent of the women’s impractical layers – Theron confirmed this part of her backstory in interviews. So Furiosa really does seem to have personal reasons for hating Joe. And his reaction to her betrayal is portrayed as a tremendous rage that, like a mushroom cloud peak, is disproportionate to her ability to resist him.

Without wanting to diminish the role of the Five Women in their escape, Joe sees them as property stolen from him, rather than allies who betrayed him. Furiosa, on the other hand, he sees as a traitor who deserves his personal wrath. And in the end, she is the one who has the honor of finally taking him down, which underlines her place on the same narrative level that he occupies as Fury Road‘s main villain.

That’s why it’s so wild that Angry says quietly and adamantly throughout the running time that Joe isn’t even really a main character in her story. Sure, he believes her, but then he forgets she even exists. He hasn’t taken anything from her that hasn’t already been taken from her, hasn’t taught her anything she hasn’t already learned from someone else, hasn’t given her anything she hasn’t already taken for herself. When they share scenes and even exchange dialogue, there’s no interpersonal anger or affection in either direction. Despite the intensity of their characters, Hulme and Taylor-Joy maintain a neutral emotional distance.

It turns out that Angrythat Furiosa’s life was actually controlled by the very different, utterly pathetic figure of Dementus, the wasteland warlord who tortured her mother to death, sold Furiosa into slavery, killed her best friend, and cost her her right arm. And just as emphatically, Angry says Furiosa had already put her revenge plan behind her years before her first confrontation with Joe.

What you saw in Fury Road, Angry says, was anything but personal for Furiosa. Immortan Joe was never that guy. He was just the guy in the way. And the “type” part is perhaps the most important.

The conversation that immediately revolves around Fury Road was about Immortan Joe as a wasteland illustration of the death cult of capitalism and toxic masculinity. His very recognizable philosophy reduces all non-elites to things – women to wives (sex slaves, forcibly impregnated) or mothers (enslaved to produce breast milk for food) and men to war boys (emphasis on Boys), interchangeable cannon fodder, addicted to the lie that they can find meaning in violence only for the True Leader.

All of this was underlined by the emasculating nature of Furiosa’s rebellion. After all, to paraphrase a country-and-western song, she has hurt him in the most devastating way that can be inflicted on a man, by stealing his wife (wives), his money (water), his car (the implements of war), and perhaps even his dog (Nicholas Hoult’s hapless character Nux, if we want to stretch the metaphor a little).

Immortan Joe is an electrifying villain and Angry doesn’t exactly skimp on him! A scene contrasting Dementus’ shaky appeal to mass self-interest with the unshakeable faith created by Joe’s death cult propaganda is among the film’s scariest. But there’s an eternal risk in presenting such an operatic villain who also represents such a wide-ranging theme. If you’re not careful, there’s also the danger of them seeming powerful and capable enough to claim villain status, and they seem ambitious. You may as well turn around to so that they look cool.

That’s why it’s so damn smart of Angry to put the final nail in the coffin of Joe’s emasculation by stating that Fury Road‘s feeling of personal conflict was entirely directed at Joe – at be Fear and be Vulnerability, not with Furiosa. He is not even important to the woman who castrated him.

In a cliché reversal for the cinema age, Immortan Joe was for Furiosa Tuesday only.