Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)

George Miller | 2hr 28min

Of all George Miller’s additions to his post-apocalyptic world in Mad Max: Fury Road, hardened warrior Imperator Furiosa proved to be the most compelling, speeding and swaggering through the Australian wasteland like a Clint Eastwood-style gunslinger with an unwavering sense of purpose. She was a mystery and was all the more fascinating for it, so the challenge of filling in the more ambiguous parts of her backstory in a prequel that simultaneously preserved her captivating intrigue would require a stroke of genius on Miller’s part.

Even more than the family entertainment of Happy Feet or the fantastical storytelling of Three Thousand Years of Longing, this anarchic dystopia of dictators, marauders, and vehicle chases is clearly where he is most comfortable as a filmmaker. A return to the Mad Max franchise once again turbocharges the Australian director with raw, high-octane vigour, as Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga expands its world to far more expansive proportions than Fury Road’s tightly contained narrative. On one hand, this leads to a plot that doesn’t quite possess the same forward momentum and is more willing to wander off on tangents, though it is no great shame that Furiosa suffers in comparison to its extraordinarily economic predecessor. Quite miraculously, this prequel sticks its landing with dynamic poise, giving us greater reason to admire Imperator Furiosa as a force of undistilled willpower.

Covering fifteen years from Furiosa’s kidnapping as a young girl to her promotion among the upper ranks of the Citadel’s army, this story offers a new nemesis who leads his own ragtag gang against Immortan Joe’s War Boys. Dementus is a Latin title befitting of a warlord who styles himself in the image of Roman emperors, ostentatiously riding atop a chariot led by motorcycles and employing classical battle tactics. He takes sadistic pleasure in torturing those like Furiosa’s mother who fall captive to his biker horde, and he has no qualms sacrificing his own men for the sake of a tactical deception, yet his boisterous charisma is quite distinctive in this barren wasteland.

Perhaps that is to be expected from an actor so frequently typecast as Chris Hemsworth though, snarling his lines with broad, nasally glee as he breaks out from the stock-standard hero and himbo roles that have largely defined his career up until now. His villainous turn here is just as extreme as Anya Taylor-Joy’s shift into the archetype of silent, brooding action hero, sufficiently carrying on Charlize Theron’s legacy from Fury Road even if she doesn’t quite reach the same remarkable heights.

It is worth applauding the cast that Miller gathers beyond these two leads as well, and the hilariously inventive character names given to each. John Howard and Angus Sampson respectively return from Fury Road as the People Eater and the Organic Mechanic, filling out their backstories as Immortan Joe’s associates, while Tom Burke impresses in the role of fleeting love interest Praetorian Jack with a pitch-perfect Australian accent. The appearance of Indigenous actor Quaden Bayles among the War Boys imbues the tribal militia with shades of corrupted innocence, and Miller also makes especially excellent use of David Collins from the Umbilical Brothers as a member of Dementus’ biker horde, drawing on his aptitude for physical comedy.

Quite unexpectedly though, it is George Shevtsov’s tattooed History Man who becomes the closest thing to an audience surrogate in Furiosa, connecting this world’s grotesque degradation back to a pre-apocalyptic past that only survives through his living memory. Miller unfolds some tremendous world building through this character, reflecting on the War of Roses, the three World Wars, the Water Wars, and the Tri-Nation Nuclear Wars that span our own past and future, before adding the brand-new Forty-Day Wasteland War to this list of humanity’s futile attempts to assert its blood-thirsty dominance. To preserve knowledge in a world that burned its books long ago, he etches his mournful wisdom across every inch of skin, thereby setting up a key plot point when a captive Furiosa uses his ink to draw a star chart on her arm. To get back home to the Green Place, she must simply follow this guide, and this alone stands as her sole hope across years of confinement.

Those familiar with Fury Road will see the loss of this arm coming from the start, but Furiosa never falls into the trap of gratuitously hitting anticipated plot points for the sake of empty fan service. Each step that Furiosa takes towards becoming the woman who eventually rescues Immortan Joe’s wives lands with impact, seeing her objectives shift with incredible resourcefulness as old doors close and new ones open. She is certainly a proficient driver, fighter, and mechanic, though these skills merely back up a resolute, retributive anger which positions her as a force that any adversary should tremble to reckon with – “The darkest of angels, the fifth rider of the apocalypse.”

Just as key to unlocking the mysteries of the woman we recognise in Fury Road is the hyper-stylised visual storytelling which surrounds her, pushing Furiosa to the brink of sanity in this surreal, malformed world. Swapping out the Namibian desert landscapes used previously for the authentic Australian outback, Miller’s scenery is as strong as ever, saturating the dusty orange sand beneath the harsh sun and washing it in stunning shades of sapphire when he shoots day-for-night. An inventive use of flare guns also injects bursts of vibrance through red, green, and black clouds of dust, unnervingly staining Dementus the colour of blood at one point, and making this environment’s crude, primitive production design appear increasingly alien. Miller’s silhouettes and rigorous blocking of actors are often admirable within still compositions, though the jerky movements of his visuals stand out even more, seeing him subtly manipulate frame rates as vehicles rush towards the camera and the camera dramatically hurtles towards actors.

It requires a marvellously steady hand to maintain such fine control over these fast-paced set pieces, though Miller’s kinetic editing and keen sense of geography keeps them from slipping into incoherence. This is particularly impressive in one Fury Road-style pursuit that splits its attention between Praetorian Jack driving the gigantic War Rig, Furiosa clinging to its underside, and bandits attacking from parachutes and propellors strapped to motorcycles, but Miller’s vehicular warfare also expands beyond chases here. Ambushes, infiltrations, and escapes from fortresses often use the architecture of these giant, metal beasts to brilliant effect, piercing the walled defences of Gastown and its moat of crude oil, and dangerously scraping the edges of the Bullet Farm’s deep quarries.

The allegory behind Miller’s trucks, cars, and motorbikes in Mad Max has been explicit ever since the first film in the series, transforming these vehicles into mechanical extensions of their driver’s body, status, and personality. Furiosa is no exception here either as she learns to navigate the powerful War Rig, though equally core to the question of her survival in this demented wasteland are the dehumanising compromises that must be made. Bit by bit, shards of metal, plastic, and glass replace the lost pieces of one’s soul, until that too is as brutally mechanical as the machine one drives. “To feel alive we seek sensation, any sensation to wash away the cranky black sorrow,” Dementus solemnly contemplates as he faces Furiosa one last time, and indeed there is a strange overlap between the futility of their attempts to find release from this hellhole. To actively carve out a greater purpose with compassion and resilience as noble guides though – that alone is enough to set this warrior apart from the multitude of nihilists and zealots driven mad by the emptiness.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is currently playing in cinemas.