Mel Gibson takes over for Tom Hardy in a new Mad Max: Fury Road DeepFake video. However, it’s actually Mel Gibson from around 25 years ago. The DeepFake craze continues as fans find ways to manipulate footage from different types of sources. Some are better than others and the new Fury Road video is actually pretty well done, even when compared to the recent DeepFakes of Bill Hader as Tom Cruise or Keanu Reeves in Sesame Street. Gibson first starred as “Mad” Max Rockatansky in George Miller’s 1979 original, entitled Mad Max. While the movie was polarizing upon its release, it has gone on to become a classic.
While Tom Hardy did an excellent job in Fury Road, there are still some fans who can only see Mel Gibson in the role. This new DeepFake video, which is labeled part 1, is for those fans. In the video, Max Rockatansky is trying to convince Charlize Theron’s Imperator Furiosa to agree to his plan. While the body language is clearly Hardy’s, the face is all Gibson and it’s kind of eerie to see. With fans being able to do something this good at home, it’s only a matter of time before we see this sort of thing start to really take off in Hollywood.
Related: Charlize Theron Is Ready for a Mad Max Furiosa Prequel
In addition to starring in the original, Mel Gibson returned in two more sequels, The Road Warrior (1981) and Beyond Thunderdome (1985). George Miller was at the helm for all three original movies and then again for 2015’s Fury Road, which was a huge success, both critically and financially. Obviously, there have been talks of a sequel and Miller still maintains that it is happening. At the end of July, Miller said, “There are two stories, both involving Mad Max, and also a Furiosa story. We’re still solving, we’ve got to play out the Warners thing, it seems to be pretty clear that it’s going to happen.”
As far as Mad Max 5 actually happening, that’s a whole other story. “We’re well into pre-production on this one. I’m cautiously optimistic. It’s going well,” said George Miller earlier this summer, though it’s unclear if he was really talking about a sequel to Fury Road. It did take a lot of false starts for Fury Road to happen, so there is still hope, but the longer it goes, the more people start to doubt it will ever really happen on the big screen, despite Miller’s optimism.
While we wait for news on Mad Max 5, there’s this Fury Road DeepFake video starring Mel Gibson to take in and enjoy, or be totally creeped out by. It’s a trip to see Gibson back in the role and interacting with Charlize Theron within the new landscape and one has to wonder what the future holds for the DeepFake technology. You can check out the video below, thanks to the Sham00k YouTube channel.
