Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga [Review]
George Miller’s latest opus is an action packed apocalyptic thriller with operatic scope.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is a prequel to George Miller’s masterpiece Mad Max: Fury Road and the fifth film in the franchise, now over 40 years old. You don’t need to have seen any of the previous movies, but you’ll probably have more fun if you’ve seen Fury Road. While the movies obviously share DNA, they both feel very different. Like the previous film, Furiosa is a spectacle to be seen on the big screen. It’s a revenge story of epic scale.
Furiosa is 10 years old when the movie begins. She’s snatched by bikers from her home, the Green Place of Many Mothers, a secret oasis in the wasteland, and taken to Biker Horde warlord Dementus. She’s soontraded to Immortan Joe, villain of Fury Road, as part of a peace between the two tyrants. She grows up in Joe’s Citadel, blending in to survive, and eventually rises up the ranks as she seeks a way to escape back to her home. Her plan is soon complicated by a war between the Citadel and the Biker Horde, but it gives her an opportunity to exact her revenge on Dementus. Through Furiosa’s trials, we’ll learn about everything that led up to the situation in Fury Road.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures
The first act of the film was a bit uneven, focusing entirely on young Furiosa, but things quickly pick up, hitting an especially great rhythm after a centerpiece War Rig action sequence that shows us how Furiosa began to earn her spot as a Praetorian—a war driver—by building a friendship with Jack, Immortan Joe’s best driver and seemingly the only decent guy in the Wasteland. It’s a thrilling sequence that begins with her holding on to the underside of the Rig, a stowaway making her way to the cab in order to hijack it, when marauders attack and she’s forced to help Jack and his War Boys defend the massive truck.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures
Furiosa is narratively more ambitious than Fury Road, daring for its operatic scope. While Fury Road takes place over a brief few days and is all action and ultimately one long chase sequence, Furiosa’s plot spans 16 years, following the title character from childhood to adulthood. The movie thematically examines the relationship between children and fathers, as Furiosa is taken from her mother as a young girl and then grows into a woman under the influence of a series of three father figures, who each treat her differently and model different models of masculinity and existence in the world. Dementus is an emotionally abusive, violent, narcissistic father figure. Immortan Joe is distant, and forces Furiosa to take on a masculine identity in order to even notice her. Jack is nurturing and supportive of her being who she wants to be. The movie builds to a final confrontation between Furiosa and the most traumatic of these father figures.
While like Fury Road, Miller’s phenomenal character-driven action is the highlight, Furiosa is elevated by stellar performances from its cast. Alyla Browne as young Furiosa and Anya Taylor-Joy as Furiosa grown up are both ferocious yet vulnerable, both of them communicating everything they need to even with minimal dialogue. Chris Hemsworth disappears into his role as Dementus; he uses his swagger and charm to embody the evil yet charismatic scumbag, while giving him a convincing undercurrent of sadness that betrays his lost past and humanity. Tom Burke is excellent as the sympathetic, Max-like Praetorian Jack.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures
Lachy Hulme does a fine job filling the shoes of original Immortan Joe actor Hugh Keays-Byrne, who unfortunately passed away before the making of this film; Keays-Byrne wasn’t just the original Immortan, he also played first Mad Max baddie Toecutter. Like Hulme, the rest of the brilliant supporting cast of character actors fills in the color of the of the movie’s canvas, with performances befitting the incredible names of their characters—The History Man, Rictus Erectus, Scabrous Scrotus, and The People Eater, among others.
Remarkably, the film’s script was written by Miller and his co-writer Nico Lathouris even before Fury Road was shot, as a means to flesh out Charlize Theron’s version of Furiosa in that film. There are definitely more stories to tell in this version of the Wasteland, and I’m curious what George Miller would cook up next if he decides to make another film in this cycle. In the meantime, go see Furiosa at your local theater and vote with your dollar so that more movies like this get made.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is in theaters now.
