Furiosa (2024) – A “Mad Max” Saga?

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga begins decades prior to the events of Fury Road. In its opening, we are reintroduced through the familiar technique of voice-over and stock footage to a future in which society has utterly collapsed and mankind has “gone rogue.” In the middle of desolate Australia, we see the mythical “green place,” which was referred to in the last film. Picking peaches with her younger sister is our heroine and title character Furiosa (played as a child by Alyla Browne). When she overhears some raiders who have discovered the green place, she tries to sabotage their motorbikes but is kidnapped in the process. They are pursued by Furiosa’s mother Mary Jabassa (Charlee Fraser) across their desert trek for three days and nights until they reach their master, the biker lord Dementus (Chris Hemsworth). This begins Furiosa’s lifelong struggle to find her way home and seek redemption, continuing all the way until Furiosa is a grownup (and played by Anya Taylor-Joy, replacing Charlize Theron).

George Miller spent nearly 20 years developing Fury Road, alternating his time with directing his animated film project Happy Feet and developing his long-gestating sequel to the original Mad Max trilogy. It got pushed further and further back until it finally reached our screens in 2015. In that time, apart from figuring out how to shoot and cover the action scenes and push visual storytelling to its very limits, him and his co-writers Nico Lathouris & Brendan McCarthy developed the backstory for the characters of Furiosa, Immortan Joe, the wives, Nux, etc. Similar to Michael Mann and his opus Heat, which received a 2022 sequel in the form of a book (and a film version in development), Miller felt there was enough backstory to make an entire feature-length prequel about Furiosa, making this the first film in the Mad Max saga not to feature Max as a protagonist or even as a character at all (although he does feature in a little cameo in the film).

Now prequels are very tricky and difficult to pull off. There are more bad examples of prequels than good ones, primarily because there is a lack of suspense in the film because we all know what happens to the characters later on, or the filmmakers become too reliant on easter eggs to make fans happy. Thankfully Furiosa doesn’t fall into either category and functions as a standalone film. Whether how good it is however is a different matter entirely.

I really wanted to love this film, as I pretty much love everything Mad Max-related. Yes, the first film is very choppy and flawed, Beyond Thunderdome had its issues also, but when the series is at its best, with The Road Warrior and Fury Road, it acts as a pure rush of energy and adrenaline, packed with raw excitement, inventive action and immersive worldbuilding. But the reason those two films work so well and stand out in the series so much more is thanks to their relatively simple, nuts-and-bolts narrative. The plot of Fury Road could very easily be summarized into “going from point A to point B, and then back to point A.” But that kind of simplicity works as well as it does because every character has a clear goal, and the film more than makes up for its lack of a complicated or dense narrative with jaw-dropping action scenes that tell us more about the characters than any piece of dialogue ever could. This tradition does carry over to an extent to Furiosa. However it doesn’t feel as fluid.

The film is split into chapters, which right off the bat threw me off. I’m not against the idea of dividing a film into chapters, or other adventurous forms of structures. But with Mad Max it feels weird and off. These films are pure action mostly, and I think that generally lends itself to a structure as uncluttered as possible. Both Fury Road and The Road Warrior have narratives that are in constant motion. It certainly leaves room for quieter moments, but even those are in service of said forward-moving narrative. In Furiosa, there are more moments of interruption between the major action scenes, and when I saw that, I felt it destabilized the rhythm. Some of the action scenes, while technically impressive and exciting on their own, felt more inconsequential and I ceased to care that much about the characters and their turmoil. Everything in Fury Road and The Road Warrior moved towards one objective, everything was in high gear towards a single goal. In Furiosa, there are many moments that build character, but not as many that drive the story forward. They’re more confused than they are cohesive.

Now I don’t want to be that guy that comes across as nitpicky, and believe me when I say that there are more good things in this movie than there are bad. Is Anya Taylor-Joy good as Furiosa? Yes. Is it fun to see Chris Hemsworth play a villain? Yes. Is George Miller an excellent director when it comes to action and worldbuilding? Undoubtedly. Is George Miller’s nonchalant attitude towards franchise chronology fun and refreshing in a post-Marvel-era? You betcha! Is it tiring and perhaps redundant of me to constantly compare Furiosa to Fury Road and The Road Warrior when I should really just judge it as a film on its own terms? Absolutely and I’m doing the best I can. Believe me, no one wants to love this movie more than me. But the structure keeps bugging me several days after seeing the film.

I mentioned Michael Mann earlier. I was personally a little mixed on his latest film Ferrari, a film I was really excited about having heard about it for nearly a decade. In a similar sense, I’ve been waiting for nearly a decade for George Miller to return to the world of Mad Max in some capacity, because frankly I don’t trust anyone else with this franchise, and because of how special Fury Road is to me. Why is it that these filmmaking heroes let me down when they finally get to do their big passion projects finally? Is it possible I’m expecting too much from them? After all they’re only people, and no one can always churn out masterpieces. Then again, isn’t it a good thing to hold people as talented as that to as high a standard as possible? They are still great artists, operating on full volume, and I will certainly applaud them for never playing it safe and I will always be curious as to what they decide to do next.