Review: Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)

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When Mad Max: Fury Road debuted in 2015, it hit like a bolt of lightning. Or perhaps like an infusion of nitrous oxide to the system of action cinema, offering a supercharged upgrade to the post-apocalyptic car chase series that returned after 30 years elapsed since Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga arrives without such a large gap since the last film and it maintains a much closer relationship to its direct predecessor, Fury Road, than Fury Road did to earlier Mad Max movies. Whereas Fury Road repeated the motifs and themes of the earlier films while essentially being its own thing, Furiosa is a proper prequel to Fury Road. The film explores the backstory of Imperator Furiosa, now played by Anya Taylor-Joy in the role originated by Charlize Theron in Fury Road. At the same time, it also broadens the canvas of the post-apocalyptic world while delving more deeply into how its particular social and environmental dynamic emerged: a world, as Max described it in the previous film, “reduced to a single instinct: survival.”

You would think after the great success of Fury Road—rave reviews, Oscar nominations, and box office returns—audiences would be eager for more. But I must admit, when I first heard this film was announced, I was uncertain I needed it. Fury Road is such a focused and singular experience (emphasis on experience). How could a sequel or prequel re-bottle that insane energy? The first trailers eased my uncertainty, but seeing the film put any reservations to rest.

One advantage this prequel has is that Mad Max creator George Miller once again returns as writer-director. Apparently, early drafts of the script for Furiosa were written during the shooting of Fury Road, before that film was released. One of the wisest choices that Miller makes here is not to have Furiosa simply be another Fury Road in either structure or experience. Furiosa, as the subtitle “A Mad Max Saga” suggests, leans into the “saga” aspect. While Fury Road is focused and tight, Furiosa expands the movie world in time and space. We finally get to see the fabled “Green Place of Many Mothers” frequently mentioned in the previous film, as well as visit Gastown and the Bullet Farm—the two other fortresses of the Wasteland mentioned but only seen from a distance in Fury Road. There’s always a risk with prequel storytelling: we know where we’re headed, so the ending isn’t a surprise. And like with the prequels of that other George—George Lucas—some will find the exercise unnecessary and a touch too-cute. Also like with the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Furiosa leans further away from pure genre filmmaking and into generating something truly mythic and legendary. The expanded palette and deepened character motivations lend character actions in the leanly characterized Fury Road a greater sense of tragedy and mythopoetic resonance.

Furiosa is divided into a series of numbered chapters, spanning the title character’s life from her childhood, when she is abducted from her home in the Green Place by marauding bikers, until the literal moments before Fury Road begins. Furiosa is played by Alyla Browne in the film’s early chapters, then by star Anya Taylor-Joy. Both Browne and Taylor-Joy share an ability to communicate loads with their eyes. This is important, as Furiosa isn’t a terribly vocal character: like Max in the earlier films, her experiences have left her scarred, both physically and emotionally, and not terribly forthcoming with those around her. These echoes of Max in Furiosa, from their shared tragic backstories to their will to survive, are one way that this film increases the resonance in the relationship between Max and Furiosa in Fury Road. We can see why they are so wary to trust anyone and yet why they would come to understand each other so well.

The Wasteland of post-apocalyptic Australia in which these films are set (this one begins with a zoom down from space into the middle of the Outback) is a place where trust is a dangerous thing. Scarcity of resources and human resentments have led to a world where survival of the fittest is exaggerated to who can be the most brutal and strip their humanity away.

From the haven of the Green Place, Furiosa is abducted by the aforementioned bikers, members of the Biker Horde who take her to the film’s primary antagonist, if not its co-lead: the Great Dementus, played with gusto (and a prosthetic nose) by Australian star Chris Hemsworth. Dementus takes Furiosa on as a surrogate for the family he lost, as well as a bargaining chip: she is a “full-blood,” a healthy untainted human, unlike the mutants and scarred monsters that populate the Wasteland. Dementus attempts to use Furiosa to leverage the monstrous Immortan Joe (this time played by Lachy Hulme), one of several returning faces from Fury Road. The battle for the Wasteland between Dementus and the other warlords, and how Furiosa becomes embroiled and installed in this nasty and brutish society, is the main plot of the film and motivates the film’s numerous epic “road wars.”

However, Dementus is not simply a monster seeking power like Immortan Joe. Hemsworth is fantastic in the role, alternating between hilarious and terrifying. Like Furiosa and Max, Dementus is a man who is trying to survive in the world after losing everything. He rides around on his motorcycle chariot, commanding a great horde of hundreds of bikers, his cape flapping around which clearly recalls Hemsworth’s Thor character (especially once it is stained red), but Dementus has more than a touch of the tragic about him. He wears a small stuffed bear, the last talisman of his lost children, and his humanity, on his waist. Some might wonder why the filmmakers chose to cover Hemsworth’s face in prosthetics that make him nearly unrecognizable, but Hemsworth is far too handsome and recognizable to be truly scary if left without any make-up. Nonetheless, his energy and the very best that the actor has to offer come through clearly. He’s one of the film’s best features.

But rest assured, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga isn’t merely world-building lore and character backstory. It is one of the best blockbuster action films of post-Covid filmmaking. Its action scenes, while not as sustained as those in Fury Road, are equally intense. Few directors are able to utilize the dynamic roving camera of the digital era the way that Miller does, while maintaining a clarity of action and cause-and-effect. When characters deploy parachutes and leap from car to car, the action moves horizontally and vertically, taking full advantage of the film’s IMAX presentation. Along with Dune: Part Two, this year may have given us the two most vivid filmic presentations of science fiction desert action.

Furiosa, like most prequels, alternates between the pull of the familiar and surprises that reveal more than we ever imagined about the storyworld. Furiosa’s larger scale and interest in world-building, in the best sense of the term, means that some might miss the intense focus and relentless action of the earlier film. It’s also 30 minutes longer than Fury Road, but still within the range of most other tentpole films these days; arguably it makes better use of its two and a half hour runtime than most other films of this sort.

Yet, despite the direct connection to Fury Road, many of the film’s elements—such as its willingness to revel in the almost silly baroqueness of its post-apocalyptic world, its mythic elements, and greater breathing room—make Furiosa feel in some ways more of a piece with Miller’s earlier Mad Max films. If anything, Furiosa is the Beyond Thunderdome to Fury Road’s Mad Max 2. Whether that’s an appealing proposition for you might depend on whether you admire Miller’s third film as much as I do. Furiosa is potentially a deeper, more emotionally engaging film than Fury Road, at the same time that it enriches the experience of the previous film. I couldn’t really ask for more from a film of this kind.

9 out of 10

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (Australia/USA)

Directed by George Miller; written by George Miller & Nico Lathouris; starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Burke, Alyla Browne, Lachy Hulme.

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