George Miller is simply limited by the technology of his time.

Image credit: Warner Bros. Pictures

While the Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga trailer has become one of the biggest stories coming out of CCXP this year, one question thing has always lingered in the minds of fans ever since the film was first announced. After creating such an unforgettable character in Mad Max: Fury Road, why wasn’t Charlize Theron brought back to play the character again in the prequel?

Theron has gone on to say that not getting asked back to play Furiosa was “a tough one to swallow”, but the reason didn’t have anything to do with her performance or her relationship with director George Miller. Instead, it was due to technical limitations. Miller explained in an interview with the New York Times back in 2020 that he “thought we could just use CG de-aging on Charlize” for much of pre-production. However, he was later forced to admit that he doesn’t think the technology is there quite yet.

“Despite the valiant attempts on The Irishman, I think there’s still an uncanny valley,” Miller concluded. We can certainly see where he is coming from. Though Samuel L. Jackson’s de-aged performance in Captain Marvel was one of the better implementations of the technology, it still left him looking slightly out of place next to his co-stars who didn’t look like they had their beauty filter turned up too high.
So that is why we’re getting Anya Taylor-Joy’s rendition of Furiosa instead of a reprisal of Charlize Theron. However, if a sequel to Fury Road does go into production, which has been rumored almost since the movie hit cinemas in 2015, we expect Theron to jump back behind the wheel for another chase through the Wastes.