Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga and all the images you see in this review are owned by Warner Bros Pictures
Directed by George Miller
Mad Max: Fury Road was an important film for a lot of people, but for me, it was my first attempt at reviewing a contemporary movie I saw in the theaters. Sure, I had been reviewing movies on streaming services for a while before then, but there was something about the movie that made me feel I could say something interesting about it. It’s been nine years since then and George Miller has finally made the Furiosa movie he’s been dreaming of, and I’ve written an absurd amount of movie reviews since then, so it’ll be good to reconnect after all this time! Is this a proper follow up to one of the most intense and brilliantly crafted action films of the last decade, or is a Mad Max movie without Mad Max just another post-apocalyptic slog? Let’s find out!!
The post-apocalypse isn’t fun for anyone, but a small group of people have at least managed to pull together a modest and healthy living in an area known as The Green Place of Many Mothers. One of its residents is the young Furiosa (Alyla Browne and Anya Taylor-Joy) who gets kidnapped by minions of the dreaded Lord Dementus (Chris Hemsworth) who may not be able to extract the Green Place’s location from her, but definitely sees something special in the young girl. Through political wheeling and dealing that keeps a modest peace between Dementus and the terrifying Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme), Furiosa ends up in Joe’s kingdom and manages to maneuver herself into a mechanic role building War Rigs to transport supplies between the major outposts in the wasteland. Still, Furiosa has not forgotten everything that Dementus took away from her and the horrors she narrowly avoided while under Joe’s thumb, and with the help of a driver (Tom Burke) she just might have a way to return to her old life and leave nothing but a scorched wasteland in her wake. Well… at least a slightly more scorched wasteland. What trials and tribulations will Furiosa face that led her to the events of Fury Road? Does she have any hope of getting revenge against Lord Dementus without losing everything that matters to her in the process? Things like, oh I don’t know… say your left arm?
If there’s any filmmaker that doesn’t need to prove themselves this late into their career, it’s George Miller, and I doubt that my opinion on his latest will decide his legacy one way or the other. Nevertheless, Miller has once again set the bar extraordinarily high with another masterpiece set in his goofy post-apocalyptic Mario Kart series. It’s a very different film than Fury Road, with a much more contemplative pace and a significantly wider scope. Where that was a movie that focused on a small group of people on a straightforward mission, this has a lot more on its mind, and the world ends up taking far more space in the story than any of the individual characters. It certainly contains enough action to satisfy those who fell in love with Fury Road, though whether they will be subsequently satisfied by the slower paced and operatic world building that occupies the rest of the runtime is a different story. I found it to be a compelling take on the material that was more akin to a great historical epic or even an Arthurian legend than to Miller’s previous efforts in this series, and I think it’s all the better for it. Making another Fury Road that tried to top the action would have been the obvious choice, but one that would have no doubt left film goers disappointed, even if they didn’t realize it in the moment. The slower pace and longer running time may feel a bit languid, but it’s punctuated by some spectacular action set pieces that are all the more exciting because of how story-rich the downtime is, and Miller hasn’t lost his eye for thematic landscapes and peerless production design. Much of this story happens in the presence of Furiosa rather than lead by or aimed at her directly, which puts her in more of the role that Max had in Fury Road, and Anya Taylor Joy does well with what is asked of her. She’s in the thick of it, but always positions herself as an outsider as a way of protecting herself, and yet there is an arc for her character as she ends up driving the plot in the film’s most important scenes. On the other side of the coin, however, is Chris Hemsworth as Lord Dementus who turns in an amazing performance. He’s certainly had an uphill battle crawling out of Thor’s shadow, but with this he truly makes a case for being a phenomenal character actor, and if it weren’t for his ripped physique, he’d be nearly unrecognizable in such a despicable yet zany role. Where Furiosa is quiet and picks her moments to act, Dementus is always putting himself and his goals front and center which drives the plot more directly, but he’s ultimately as powerless as everyone else in the wasteland. There’s a depth to his madness and sadism that Joaquim Phoenix wishes he could tap into with those Joker movies, and his final moments in the movie are genuinely haunting. The villain of this movie is not Dementus or even Imortan Joe, but the environment that created them; the compounding cruelties of humanity that led to the death of this world and the long-suffering survivors just barely clinging to life. The Mad Max movies have always had a strong sense of setting, but this gives it a sense of history in much the same way that stories like Lord of the Rings or Star Wars carry the weight of the generations that came before. If there’s anything that sits poorly with me, it was the callbacks to Fury Road. There’s a blink, and you’ll miss it cameo by someone from that movie, and the ending of the film is very explicit as a lead up to it. It’s expected, I suppose, given that this is selling itself as a prequel, but the movie works so well on its own terms that it’s somewhat of a shame that it’s putting itself even somewhat in the shadow of its predecessor.
George Miller is not getting any younger, and the chances of him making another movie set in this universe seem unlikely. It felt like he was trying to make his definitive statement on the genre he more or less invented. He put everything he could in this movie, which means it does feel a little bloated, but definitely gives it a sense of epic grander. In most cases, I’d rather see a filmmaker’s full creative vision in all its glory rather than something that was fine-tuned in post to smooth out every conceivable flaw, and I feel this film is as much of an insight into its creators as other big swing projects like Brazil or Pain and Gain. This is an easy recommendation for me and will certainly be an even better watch when you can see it and Fury Road as a double feature, though I’m still trying to figure out which one you should watch first…
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