‘You fabulous thing. You crawled out of a pitiless grave, deeper than hell…’
Mad Max: Fury Road is one of the very few examples of a franchise returning after many years away with an entry that matches or even surpasses the source material. Top Gun: Maverick pulled off this same trick in 2022 but other examples are few and far between. It’s one thing to helm a successful reboot, however, and another thing entirely to then keep the saga going without the benefit of introducing a whole new world to a whole new audience…
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga presents us with the origin story of Imperator Furiosa (played by Charlize Theron in Fury Road and Anya Taylor-Joy here (Alyla Browne plays young Furiosa)). We find out how she became the one-armed, shaven-headed badass we meet in Fury Road,(namely because she crosses paths with Chris Hemsworth’s aptly named maniac, Dementus) but other than that plot is sacrificed in favour of loud noises and stuff blowing up.
While Taylor-Joy is top-billed and is obviously the protagonist, she actually doesn’t appear until the halfway point and then isn’t given that much to do afterwards. Acting in a Mad Max movie must be tough. The focus here is on spectacle, everything else is secondary. And Christ, what a spectacle George Miller has cooked up for us again here. The huge, monstrous vehicles, the outlandish costumes, the sweeping, sandswept vistas. This is a genuinely beautiful movie and it’s a real shame that not enough people came out to see it. I could watch 50 films in this world and never get bored of it.
Furiosa is an imaginative, high-octane thrill ride that serves as an excellent companion piece to the film that preceded it. This is how you make a big-budget, action spectacle. Furiosa leaves every superhero movie of the last decade choking in a cloud of dust and blood. A visceral cinematic experience.
