8 Movie Heroes You Didn’t Realise Were Actually The Sidekicks

While most of the world seems to agree that Mad Max: Fury Road is the best thing that’s happened since the discovery of fire, that didn’t stop a small section of people complaining about it. It was too “feminist” in their minds, with Charlize Theron being the real protagonist while Tom Hardy’s Max spends most of his time helping her out. 

Fury Road is totally Furiosa’s story, as she tries to rescue the “brides” of a horrible warlord and return to the childhood home she was kidnapped from. The complaint about Max being sidelined ignores the fact he played a similar function in the previous two instalments; that of an outsider who reluctantly helps a group of desperate people. 

As a character he was always designed to be like a mythical western hero or samurai, a near mute loner who wanders into a corrupt town or village and helps clean it up. He’s a vessel for the audience to explore this violent wasteland, so his role here shouldn’t be controversial. And even though he is technically the sidekick, he and Furiosa make a great team and he still gets plenty of cool things to do.