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“There will always be war,” intones an authoritative voice at the end of the second trailer for Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. “But to get home, Furiosa fought the world.”
A narrator isn’t exactly something new to the world of Mad Max, as the 1981 sequel Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior opens and closes with voiceover, as does 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road. But in those cases, the narration served a basic expositional purpose, providing basic information for those who have not seen the previous films — something particularly important for The Road Warrior, as few Americans had the opportunity to watch 1979’s Mad Max.
But as Anya Taylor-Joy steps in for Charlize Theron in Furiosa, the narrator serves a different, more important in-universe purpose.
In a recent interview with EW, Furiosa director George Miller shed some light on this voice from the shadows. “That’s a narrator called the History Man,” Miller revealed. “In this story, we meet the History Man, and because it’s a saga — Fury Road happened over three days and two nights; this movie happens over basically 16 years from when she’s 10 to 26, it goes on a little further when she becomes 28, but it’s basically over those 16 years — and we meet this character, and he is integral to the story. So, he’s the narrator.”
While Miller’s comments seem to downplay the narrator, the fact that he’s a History Man carries a great deal of importance. The concept of History Men and Women were actually introduced in the 2015 Fury Road prequel comics that DC Comics published under its Vertigo label. Based on storyboards and notes that Miller wrote for Fury Road, the comics were scripted by Nico Lathouris and Mark Sexton, and drawn by Riccardo Burchielli, Leandro Fernandez, Andrea Mutti, and Sexton.
The four issues tell the backstories of Nux, Immortan Joe, Furiosa (at least, her decision to free Joe’s wives), and Max. And they all are narrated by a figure who introduces himself as a History Man.
“When the world fell, they burned the books, leaving nothing but a random collection of wordburgers,” explains a bald man with writing tattooed all over his skin. “We History Men and Women preserve these stories, stories by which to navigate the future… and avoid a repetition of the past.”
Even those who haven’t read the comics might recall a tattooed figure who tells the stories of the past. We saw one briefly in Fury Road in the form of Miss Giddy (Jennifer Hagan) the older woman who taught Immortan Joe’s wives that they were not things and helped them escape with Furiosa. That said, it’s never confirmed that she’s meant to be part of the History Men group.
By bringing a History Man into the film, Furiosa makes stronger gestures toward continuity. Thus far, the four Mad Max films have had loose connections to one another. They all feature former police man Max Rockatansky, first played by Mel Gibson and then by Tom Hardy, and Max has a haunted past, a bum leg, and a muscle car. But outside of that, the character has been more mythic than coherent, functioning like Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name.
By introducing the History Men and Women into the film world, Furiosa may start to draw a chronological throughline between the movies. Some viewers may balk at the idea, saying that the franchise never needed strict continuity. But, as with all thing Max, we’ll accept it… if Miller can make it epic.
Furiosa opens in theaters on May 24.
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