With Reporting by Josh Horowitz

Nicholas Hoult knows a thing or two about post-apocalyptic landscapes. He's the star of "Young Ones," a new movie in theaters now about a young man who lives in a near-future world where water is hard to come by, thanks to global warming. He also starred as Beast in "X-Men: Days of Future Past," working alongside fellow mutants to stop a horrible future from ever coming to pass.

But Holt's craziest, most insane apocalyptic experience remains ahead of him in the form of "Mad Max: Fury Road." The fourth film in the "Mad Max" franchise, directed by the legendary George Miller, "Fury Road" has been described as one gigantic chase sequence featuring Tom Hardy as the titular Max, with other visually dazzling characters played by Charlize Theron, among others.

Hoult is one of those dazzling characters, delivering a virtually unrecognizable turn as a war-mongering maniac named Nux. He's bald, with jagged lips, and an insatiable thirst for adrenaline written all over his face. Watching Hoult in this new role should certainly be a shock for fans — just as it was for Hoult himself.

"I've seen a rough cut," Hoult told MTV News. "I was just sitting there, going like, 'Whoa.' "

Hoult confirmed that there's very little dialogue in "Fury Road," and that when he sat down to read the script for the first time, it was more like reading, "a 300-page comic book, technically."

"You have the odd word, but the dialogue, it's strange, the words they used," he said. "They didn't speak like I would speak, or like anybody would speak nowadays."

And for Hoult, that's all part of the appeal — participating in an unrecognizable world, so fully realized by a visionary like George Miller.

"He's so smart," Hoult said of the writer-director. "The world he's created, it just looks stunning."

"Mad Max: Fury Road" hits theaters on May 15, 2015.