The Mad Max franchise is one of the few franchises that has stayed tried and true to its shape since its origin in 1979. Much of the franchise’s success over the last 45 years is attributed to George Miller holding the keys to the post-apocalyptic vehicles he has manufactured. As most franchises bloom and eventually wither away behind vicious fan bases and every dollar squeezed out of the cow, Mad Max has sustained. Each entry hurtles the viewer through the waning days of civilization in Mad Max and through the most chaotic marvel of a dystopian desert in Fury Road.
Now, Furiosa, the fifth of George Miller’s Mad Max films, takes the audience back to a beginning. A look through the rearview mirror to the middle of an apocalyptic desert with the fragrances of fruitful origins ripe for the picking. Starring Anya Taylor-Joy as the titular titan, Furiosa, and Chris Hemsworth as the chaotic menace, Dementus, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga crashes into theaters nine years after the storm of Fury Road. Unlike its predecessor, Furiosa can’t follow up the act with the fiery passion that made us mad for the Wasteland.
For the first time since Bruce Spence’s return as The Gyro Captain in Beyond Thunderdome, the Mad Max films have returning characters. This time, Furiosa, Immortan Joe, Rictus, friends, and foes play a much more substantial role in the narrative compared to the friendly pilot. Set in the years before Furiosa became a legionnaire for the dictator Immortan Joe, up until the moment Fury Road begins, Furiosa is a tough-as-nails origin story. From the harmonic Eden of her roots to the vast spaces of the desert, Furiosa is cast into a plot-heavy revenge tale. Akin to the rumbling burn of 1970s action films that elevated ambiance and mood over textbook action, Miller understands what it takes to make Furiosa stand as an individual entry in the Max mythos.
This means that Furiosa is much more in line with the original Mad Max than Fury Road. Outside the obvious connective tissue that paves the way forward to the following events, Furiosa is the birth of a legend just as much as its originator. This is the most fascinating angle of the film. Throughout the saga, we’ve seen different depths of apocalyptic madness. We’ve yet to see the birth (and an inevitable rebirth) of a hero in the middle of a world without structure. Furiosa is that film, but the mileage wears thin, and the parts rattle with exhaustion because they’re running on the fumes of Fury Road’s contact high.
George Miller explored his characters within the action of Fury Road. Every decision that was made to propel the narrative deepened the lore and furthered the drama without having to stop the film in its tracks to get the audience caught up to speed. Every emotional force guiding Furiosa, Max, Nux, and Immortan Joe’s wives was revealed through the intense consequences of their reactionary choices. Miller seamlessly integrates storytelling beats and character-building without catering to the most nullified form of a blockbuster. So why does Furiosa feel so different? Why does it look ugly? Why does the story run in a circle by repeating some variation of the same beat again and again? What is there to care about that wasn’t previously explored in Fury Road?
Furiosa’s weaker impact is realized through flat CGI landscapes and an overly burnished look. The digital shine coats the film with an aesthetic that heightens the storybook expression, but the characters feel less imposing, and the action significantly less meaningful. There isn’t as much action, as Miller makes room for the audience to hang out with the characters in their domains, but all of the action severely lacks energy, intensity, and scope. This can be attributed to John Seale's replacement, Simon Duggan. Duggan, who may be known for his work on The Great Gatsby, has a catalog of films that appropriately express his lack of visual intensity by looking at Disenchanted, Warcraft, and 300: Rise of an Empire under his belt. Duggan takes the national pride of Seale’s work and reworks it to fit in with the rest of the blockbusters out there. Really, there isn’t much difference in the visual composition between Furiosa and a film like Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. How much longer will it be until an audience has had enough of watching characters stand in front of a screen with vacuous backgrounds? Especially after Fury Road revitalized the capabilities and potential of the Summer blockbuster in a diminishing landscape throughout the 2010s.
George Miller attempts to hang one of his hats on the casting of Anya Taylor-Joy (ATJ) as Furiosa. Previously played by Charlize Theron in a performance with enough intensity to make you believe she emerged from the womb of the desert, ATJ does not measure up to what the role asks of her. Taylor-Joy can’t tap into the bubbling animosity that is supposed to establish Furiosa as a Wasteland myth. Perhaps she is too limited an actress, or unfit to tackle the portions of the role that replace dialogue with emotion — she doesn’t excel at capitalizing on either. Theron used her body to limber around metal and fire, her eyes threw daggers, her face could morph from ferocity to focus within seconds, and she could internalize these expressions by withholding the details that informed her character. Taylor-Joy doesn’t burrow into the role because her approach is over-exposed by the outward projection of animosity in her tale. Perhaps her interiority is explored through the plot rather than the mystifying architecture of imagination, but this also speaks to the diminishing returns of Furiosa.
When it comes to prequels, distance from the subsequent successor often works in its favor. Although two-thirds of George Lucas’ Star Wars prequels don’t do much for most audiences, Lucas (at the very least) approaches his story through a politically adjacent lens. He also has the added benefit of setting that trilogy years apart from the originals. Furiosa, on the other hand, is a direct lead into Fury Road. There isn’t much room for Miller to imagine a world through Furiosa’s experiences when they’re closely associated with the catalysts of future events. Ironically, you can liken this film to Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. A film full of visual splendor with an ending that mostly makes up for how much plate-spinning Miller is doing to justify how pointless the movie is.
I say this because Furiosa doesn’t do enough to be entertaining as an operatic spectacle, revenge story, piece of the Mad Max puzzle, or as a prequel to Fury Road. It’s challenging to find a reason for this film to feel like anything other than an obligation to the maddening craze behind Fury Road — a baffling development for an impassioned filmmaker like Miller whose style is unlike any other. The problem is that the film is masquerading behind a dynamic visual palette of Wasteland hues and liminal nuggets of exposition to pepper the negative space of Furiosa with a revenge fantasy spoiled by its own conclusion. It’s unfair to say the narrative’s predestinations are working against a prequel, but when it is so intimate with the chronological follow-up, it is much more difficult to find reasons to care. Which can be noted by the inability to embolden the denouements with realizations that recontextualize the journey up until that point and through the follow-up. What does Furiosa explore that Fury Road already did? Nothing. It’s a waste of time.
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