Director: George Miller Starring: Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Burke, Alyla Browne Running Time: 148 minutes
We are told that Hope and Hate live in separate places. That the Fury Road can’t possibly lead to reconciliation. I say ‘we’, but women are told this most of all, the bad faith argument that emancipation from the enraging only comes by not being mad about it. But what if the world has already gone mad? And what hope burns brighter than the thirst for vengeance?
The hard task of George Miller and company in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is not only in following up one of the greatest films of the 21st century and the best action movie of the last twenty years, but in living up to the legacy of its greatest character. Charlize Theron’s impressive Imperator was an instant movie icon, an avenging angel for the exploited, an action all-timer, a thousand tattoos waiting to happen. And she emerged unlikely from a troubled production, a feud with Theron’s co-star Tom Hardy, and the rise of the culture wars.
Furiosa was a character fully formed, we don’t need an explanation of her backstory, of where her arm went, of why she shaves her head. But the Mad Max Saga we have, written even before Fury Road and years in the making, is no cash grab or IP extension. For Miller it’s a compendium piece, and for audiences it’s time well-spent marinating in the madness, seeing the destroyed world through the eyes of an icon furious enough to try fixing it.
It helps that it never feels like Furiosa is trying to ‘top’ Fury Road, being structured very differently. Split into chapters across many years, we see Furiosa’s life from her stolen childhood up until the very moment she runs off with Immortan Joe’s wives. It’s slower, steadier – the action scenes aren’t a relentless onslaught but powerful punctuations.
Some viewers may be frustrated by the pace, but it builds strongly to an understated but impactful climax: explaining who Furiosa is not through the shallow details we usually see in prequels, but by showing what she’s experienced, and how that informs what she’s done, and how that informs how she thinks. By the time you’re finished watching, you’re ready to watch Fury Road next, to keep the story going and keep the entertainment and excitement lit.
We see young Furiosa (Alyla Browne) torn away from the Green Place, a land of plenty cared for by the Many Mothers, including her actual mother (Charlee Fraser), a fierce and relentless template for the woman Furiosa will become. The location of this safe haven must be protected at all costs from the warring tribes of the wasteland. A gang of scavengers kidnaps Furiosa as proof of the place, hoping to curry favour with biker king Dementus (Chris Hemsworth), who commands a legion of the mad, just as violent and greedy as Immortan Joe, but more erratic and egomaniacal. He takes away her mother and keeps Furiosa in a cage, his adopted prisoner, until trading her off to Joe in a power play. As Joe and Dementus’ vie for control of the wasteland strongholds, Gas Town, the Bullet Farm, and The Citadel, Furiosa shifts into the shadows, grows into Anya Taylor-Joy, silently seethes and plots her escape, and revenge.
We don’t see the Argentine superstar for about an hour, with a focus on Furiosa’s extended stolen childhood. Her mother’s doomed attempt to save her, sniping scavengers and sneaking through sandstorms, is the kind of meticulous, extended sequence at which Miller excels, and its under-reliance on dialogue extends throughout every chapter. Browne, and later Taylor-Joy, mostly convey character through big-eyed glares, swift and decisive movements, and the occasional visceral yell of rage. It’s a challenge for Taylor-Joy, but her sleight frame and action inexperience adds to Furiosa’s journey, as we see her get hardened in real time. Her sparse dialogue sounds very like Theron, and her brief alliance with Immortan Joe’s war rig driver Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke) provides glimpses of the fire-forged bond to come between Furiosa and Max.
We don’t see the Argentine superstar for about an hour, with a focus on Furiosa’s extended stolen childhood. Her mother’s doomed attempt to save her, sniping scavengers and sneaking through sandstorms, is the kind of meticulous, extended sequence at which Miller excels, and its under-reliance on dialogue extends throughout every chapter. Browne, and later Taylor-Joy, mostly convey character through big-eyed glares, swift and decisive movements, and the occasional visceral yell of rage. It’s a challenge for Taylor-Joy, but her sleight frame and action inexperience adds to Furiosa’s journey, as we see her get hardened in real time. Her sparse dialogue sounds very like Theron, and her brief alliance with Immortan Joe’s war rig driver Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke) provides glimpses of the fire-forged bond to come between Furiosa and Max.
It’s Hemsworth with the showier role as Dementus, an Antipodean Napoleon by way of Yosemite Sam; clownishly covetous, reveling in his cult of personality. It’s a broad whirlwind that lets Hemsworth go big, where he’s happiest – but the Looney Tunes stylings occasionally give way to the kind of quiet cruelty Hemsworth previously showed a skill for, playing a similar part as a Manson-esque cult leader in Bad Times at the El Royale. He’s a closer look at the kind of men who killed the world, and the hints at his own past add interesting shading – not because of the tragedy of what he’s lost, but in the perverseness of how much more he’s enjoying what he know has. Men like him are quite content with an empire of dirt as long as they’re standing on top of it.
Not racing through it at Fury Road’s breakneck speed, here Miller indulges in exploring the world of the wasteland, with meticulous production design and world building that actually builds, from the miragetic lushness of the Green Place, to bleak underground maggot farms, from bikes held together by junk to the carefully constructed war rig. The grim existence of Immortan Joe’s bridestock is expanded, no more so than in the bleak implications of Furiosa being added to it. The politics of the wasteland strongholds is explored, the better to explain their inevitable conclusion: brutal, pointless, mad war. We build up the world that made Furiosa, the more to want to see it destroyed and recreated by her hand. If Fury Road was a delicious meal prepared by a master chef, Furiosa is the fascinating and enticing process of watching its preparation.
And the action is still fucking sick, don’t worry. Furiosa’s mother’s pursuit, her own attempts at escape, the epically empty war in the wasteland, all are presented with Miller’s patient purpose, every movement and action taken necessary, clearly visually shown, impactfully pushed into the centre of the screen. The Stowaway sequence will live in infamy, the kind of scene that thinking about will make you want to go back and watch the whole movie over again. An escalation of Fury Road’s visual maximalism, it adds flying bikers and fire stunts to a simple sequence of Furiosa clinging to a rig undercarriage, creating breathtaking action that sells a story, her connection with Jack, wildly, wordlessly, wonderfully. The world is brutal and so is the violence, and though there’s undoubtedly more CGI than before, we still feel the impact of stuntmen and sets.
Where it takes us is a different place than its successor, but still satisfying, a journey that doesn’t have you wishing you’d watched the sequel but rather has you cheering for it to start. Visceral, visually rich and full of Miller’s mad mythmaking, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is an odyssey through oddities, dragging Furiosa along until it turns out that she’s the one holding the chain. In a robot arm. It takes us to fascinating places, it’s exploration of vengeance neither an empty-headed rampage nor a tutting morality tale, biblical in its brutality, showing Fury as the seed through which Furiosa’s Hope can grow. The Green Place is where you grow it, and amidst IP exercises and pretentious pretenders, the old master Miller shows that there’s still fertile ground out in the arid desert.
(4 / 5)