3. Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) - Mad Max: Fury Road
It takes a tough woman to out-badass Tom Hardy, but that's exactly what Charlize Theron's Imperator Furiosa does. Despite being called Mad Max, George Miller's film is really about her, a soldier under Immortan Joe who creates a mutiny in order to free The Five Wives (Joe's concubines). An exceptional, one-armed warrior prone to smearing herself in grease before battle, Furiosa is being hailed as a key feminist figure in recent cinema: part Ripley in Aliens and Alien 3, part Sarah Connor in Terminator 2, and wholly efficient, whether behind the wheel of a seemingly endless rig, or at the trigger of a rifle. There aren't many films in which Tom Hardy needs saving, but save him she does (giving him a beating on the way, too). Far from being a brute, though, Furiosa is instead driven by her desire to protect her fellow females, and her change of heart (she was initially Joe's top imperator and the driver of his behemoth war-rig) occurs mainly because of The Dag's (Abbey Lee) rape and subsequent pregnancy, an act which sets alarm bells ringing to further reinforce the idea of Mad Max as a feminist text, and of Imperator Furiosa as the chief character within it.
