Sand: It is coarse and rough, just like life in the barren wasteland, where Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (now streaming on Max, in addition to VOD services like Amazon Prime Video), the new vision from mad director George Miller. Of course, you know that it’s the prequel to one of the greatest films of the modern era, the 2015 film. Mad Max: Fury Roada two-hour rumble through the desert that grabbed and tugged at our skulls, ripped out our spines and swallowed them whole while little drops of intestinal juice ran down its grinning chin. As I said, a GREAT movie. By many accounts, an absolute hit. It was a good hit, garnering Oscar nominations and awards, and a gripping book documenting its overly painful making (Kyle Buchanan’s must-read Blood, sweat and chrome). So how do you move on from a film like that? Simple answer: You shouldn’t, but nobody ever said Miller didn’t have a few screws loose. So here we are, nine years later, reveling in the origin story of Furiosa, the tough protagonist of Fury Road originally played by Charlize Theron, and whose dusty boots are now filled by the extremely capable Anya Taylor-Joy. How can the film not be great? (Apart from the box office, I mean, where it has so far made a strangely disappointing $168 million worldwide.) I would say it is absolutely very, very good, and given the context, that’s about all we can ask for.
The essentials: The Green Place: Here it is. Finally! We heard So a lot about it in the last film. Furiosa just kept going on and on and on about it, stopping just short of politely (but impatiently) getting us to sit down while she showed us all her favorite photos on her phone. Except now Furiosa is maybe 10 years old and played by Alyla Browne. She reaches for a plump, ripe peach and plucks it from a tree, something that surely happens regularly in this little paradise oasis in the otherwise hideous hellscape of an ugly, dry, itchy, scorched hellscape of a post-apocalyptic Australian desert. But shhh! The Green Place is a secret, and its peaceful and benevolent residents will do anything to keep it that way. Of course, this being a violent movie, that means that secret is in danger – from a couple of leather-clad bastards on souped-up motocross bikes who grab poor little Furiosa and race her over and around the dunes to their chaotic lair. She’s proof of the existence of a lootable, beautiful, resource-rich piece of land that her boss, a super-bearded nutcase named Dementor (Chris Hemsworth), would love to know about.
No spoilers: The secret remains a secret, but it comes at a price. Furiosa’s mother (Charlee Fraser), despite a hell of a sniper rifle shot, meets her end, unable to save her daughter. And so Furiosa becomes Dementor’s china doll possession, and perhaps a replacement for the “little ones” he is said to have lost. He doesn’t go into detail about his personal horror, but it doesn’t take a Freud to realize that it fuels his power-hungry, bombastic, eye-popping madness. He carries around the little teddy bear that was theirs, even entrusting it to Furiosa; Dementor keeps her in a small trailer cage pulled by one of the thugs of his legion of crazy bikers. I pause here to note that Furiosa is certainly angry, but only as angry as a child can be, which isn’t angry enough to escape the clutches of a madman.
As is inevitable with madmen, Dementor is power-hungry. He ventures into a little den you may know, the Citadel, and confronts a couple of ugly bastards you may also know, Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme) and his bloated pus-sack of a right-hand man, the People Eater (John Howard). Things don’t go well for Dementor at first, but he eventually defeats Joe’s allies in Gastown, leading to a truce and a business deal that puts Furiosa under Joe’s “care.” She grows up in the Citadel, posing as a man under Joe’s panda-faced War Boys, and avoiding Joe’s mutant sons, Rictus (Nathan Jones) and Scrotus (Josh Helman). Now played by Anya Taylor-Joy – finally, about 40 percent of the way through the film – she’s partnered with Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke), who drives the War Rig on dangerous trips across the desert to Gastown and the Bullet Farm to scavenge supplies. How dangerous are these trips? So dangerous that Miller can stage his trademark mind-numbing action sequences. And all the while, Furiosa has kept an ember burning deep inside her, the red-hot coal of vengeance. Just imagine what she wants to do to Dementor for killing her mother and taking her from her beautiful home. IMAGINE THAT.
What movies will it remind you of?: Apart from the obvious comparison with the other sci-fi mega-movie “Sand in Your Cracks” from 2024 Dune – Part Two? Only the others Mad Maxit, because Miller is unique in his nurturing tone and style, and anyone who even points in the general direction of his throne should just stop doing local used car advertising now. And so, you finally Ranking of Max Films so far:
5. Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome -It’s better than you remember! Trust me! But it’s still the least of all.
4. Mad Max – The original is a milestone in action cinema and the beginning of a wonderful friendship between us, Miller and the art of film – but it inevitably pales a little in comparison to the greatness that followed.
3. Furious – It has what it takes to make it, in Dementor’s words, “epic”. No question about it.
2. The Road Warrior (or MadMax 2 for you, Australians) – This smash hit is an absolute spine-tingling hit among the fast-paced car chases and sets the tone for number 1 on this list.
1. Fury Road – There has never been anything like it. Before, since, or probably never.
Remarkable performance: Some may not like Hemsworth’s gregarious portrayal of the Dementor, who tends to be one of those indulgently talkative, egomaniacal characters – but some may be very wrong, because Hemsworth is colorful and entertaining as a contrast to the film’s many strong, taciturn types. What these people are missing here is that Dementor is a mad philosopher, and what he says is crucial to the world-building and Furiosa’s character development, and thus to the film’s core themes; his talk about the futility of revenge is oddly eloquent and quite powerful. As for Taylor-Joy, she is magnetic and charismatic, absolutely and curiously evoking our empathy, despite the nagging feeling that she’s a little underused. And a special mention goes to Burke, who makes the most of his limited screen time as the only character in this hellish setting who shows Furiosa any semblance of kindness.
Memorable dialogue: Dementus and his sycophant Smeg (David Collins) are on the run from the persistent Furiosa:
Smeg: Who is that?
Dementus: I don’t know – someone competent and overly vindictive!
Sex and skin: None.
Our opinion: Again: Fury Road is a masterpiece. You just don’t follow it. Too fast. Too powerful. Too much under the hood. All those 40-barrel carburetor things and gas-juicer things. You just chase it and chase it and chase it. And this relentless, epic, mind-numbing two-hour desert chase is now a meta-metaphor unto itself in the pantheon of motion pictures. Wisely, the chase is not the primary dramatic core of Furiousat least in the literal sense – but it’s there in the subtext, as Furiosa loses things and wants them back and strives for them even though she’ll never get them. Her mother. Her childhood. Her innocence. She’ll have to settle for revenge, but her avenger Dementor wisely points out the futility. He knows it all too well. He loved and lost that teddy bear and clings to it, and it drove him mad. Will it drive Furiosa mad too?
Embedded in Furiosa and Dementor’s lives is a lesson about power, and how using it can inflict wounds that never heal. You wonder how a human soul can act like that. You tug on that thread, and think about patterns of behavior, and how the dominoes fall, and where the first one fell. You think about that original sin, and whether humanity can ever be redeemed. Maybe not. Very likely not. People like Dementor give up and let the darkness take them. People like Furiosa cling to that goal and keep fighting—there is nobility in that, and I’d argue that nobility wards off futility forever. Life, as the all-too-true cliche goes, is not about the destination, but the journey, about who you are and what you do along the way. It’s like something. Something familiar. A chase through the desert, perhaps, and if you do it right, on machines that blare thunder. Life is a furious road. Life—life is the furious road.
You will find that most science fiction or action films are not so tightly woven and reinforced with ideas. This is Mad Maxthat is Miller. His answer to the narratively condensed Fury Road is to spread out across the timeline and across different locations: a decade or so, several key scenes. We see the Bullet Farm and Gastown, which were only glimpses in the distance Fury Road. We get a repeat of the previous film in the form of a War Rig chase that ups the ante with glider-borne attackers and a subplot in which Furiosa and Praetorian Jack form a friendship with few words, almost entirely through action. We get a gripping shootout that turns into a chase that significantly shapes Furiosa’s image and personality. We get a just finale that thematically cements the film as a myth and epic, and ties in closely with Fury Road.
What more could we ask for? Some of us have been excited about Miller’s expanded use of CGI in Furiousafter the “what the hell, how did he do that” effects of its predecessor – but some of us are short-sighted. Real cars still crash and real stuntmen still bite, and Miller uses CGI as a tool to expand his vision. (Read Blood, sweat and chrome to understand the near-impossible luck and sacrifice necessary to overcome the challenges that leave one dangling on the edge of the cliff, and you will better understand why CGI is a likely compromise, Furious (even possible.) The world he creates still feels real. It’s imaginative. It draws you in. Some of the film drags along without much action, but it’s still fascinating in its art direction and complex character dynamics. It’s as alive as fantasy films can be.
Our call: STREAM IT. Be realistic about your expectations and you will love it Furious for what it is: unique visual storytelling.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
