Straight away I have to admit, I’m a fan George Miller’s Mad Max movies, and you can tell from the headline I relished “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” like a nice tank of guzzolene. That said, it wasn’t completely shiny and chrome, but damn close!
It is a prequel after all, and it wouldn’t be a surprise if fans of “Mad Max: Fury Road” wait to hear the hype before going to the theater. Fury Road was a fast-paced epic that brought the wasteland into the 21st century 30 years after “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.” There is no shame in being leery of buying into yet another major movie franchise prequel. Movie-goers have been fed a steady diet of big-budget prequels for more than a decade. Most recently from the likes of the much-maligned “Madame Web,” a middle-of-the-road (at best) “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes,” and better received “The First Omen,” all within the last year.
Prequels are a seemingly mixed bag of mediocre or worse… awful. Are there good or great prequels? Of course “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” and “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” are two shining examples. Furiosa is another film to be added to that list. The writing and world-building is every bit as impressive as we would expect from Miller.
About the Mad Max films and the Prequel
The Mad Max universe was born about 45 years ago in an era rich with new and exciting science fiction and action franchises that still dominate today. Titles like “Alien,” “Conan the Barbarian,” and the animated wild ride that is “Heavy Metal” all dropped between 1979 and 1981. It is little wonder that this raucous world came to be.
For the uninitiated, this newest release is the fifth movie made. The saga began with “Mad Max” in 1979, followed by “Mad Max 2: Road Warrior” in 1981, “Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome,” and Furiosa occurs more or less after Thunderdome, but before Fury Road.
We get to see a young Furiosa, played by Alyla Browne, take shape and become the badass imperator we all know and love, played by Anya Taylor-Joy. Anyone having seen Fury Road, will know the meat and potatoes of Furiosa’s backstory, but this newest iteration fills in the blanks and more. As a child, she is stolen away by witless captors from “the green place” also called “the place of abundance.”
While pursued by her fearless mother, young Furiosa is delivered to Dr. Dementus, played by Chris Hemsworth, who leads a motorcycle horde. Hoping to learn the secret location of her homeland, Dementus holds her like a prize.
Dementus and his followers are a psychotic force of chaos begetting tragedy and sorrow for everyone who crosses their path. Furiosa is no exception as she is swallowed up and held captive to witness his tyranny firsthand. In true chaotic fashion, it is nearly pure happenstance that Furiosa finds herself in front of Immortan Joe, played by Lachy Hulme, and his Warboys at the Citadel. She is thrown into a strained piecemeal agreement between Dementus and Joe, but through cunning deception, she hides in plain sight for a time. Eventually, she becomes an imperator on the War Rig.
While Immortan Joe and the lords of Gastown and Bullet Farm are certainly evil antagonists, they are plagued by Dementus. Dementus is a recurring nightmare for her, that fuels her hate and contempt. She longs to return to the place of abundance, he is always in her way. In true epic Mad Max fashion, she overcomes him, which leaves her right at the start of Fury Road.
Where Fury Road is a compact story of hope and escape, Furiosa is a slower-paced epic with pure unadulterated hate and revenge at its core. With the difference in pacing, it would be easy to watch the films back-to-back. The seamless transition into Fury Road is fitting, as Miller and writer Nick Lathourishad wrote Furiosa while developing Fury Road more than 10 years ago. During interviews, Miller indicated writing Furiosa was a necessity for actors Theron and Tom Hardy to understand the context and motivations behind Fury Road.
Our main antagonist and protagonist in Hemsworth and Taylor-Joy knock it out of the park. Taylor-Joy’s menacing stares and conveyance of utter desperation-filled hatred is exhilarating. She is seething vengeance incarnate. She has less than 40 lines of dialogue in the entire film, but every word is so purposeful, that inserting more dialogue would have watered down many of the scenes and taken away from her character.
Of course, that is true for the half of the movie she’s actually in. It’s strange how late in the film we meet the adult Furiosa. The movie is split into five chapters, which is a bit unhinged, or at least unbalanced. The audience doesn’t see Taylor-joy until chapter three. “Batman Begins” runs 2 hours and 20 minutes, Furiosa runs 2 hours 28 minutes. Imagine the child Bruce Wayne brooding for an hour, before Batman, played by Christian Bale, takes stage. Furiosa is the namesake of the movie, and Taylor-Joy is one of the leading faces behind the film’s marketing.
The storytelling is good enough to pull past this, and the movie’s pacing doesn’t make Miller’s choices detrimental. To be fair, this may be an artifact of how Furiosa was written basically as an extended backstory.
Dementus detriment
Miller made other odd choices. He decided to pluck Dementus, the ultimate driving force throughout the first third of the movie, from the foreground for long periods of time, only for Miller to revive him to full chaotic monster level as Furiosa’s character is finally matured. Years in the story pass with no interaction.
Hemsworth’s Dementus portrayal dominated every scene. There is no doubt this is his best performance on screen, as looking back on his catalog of more than 50 films, Furiosa is far and away his finest role. Hemsworth is best known as Thor from the MCU, where he delivers great action and witty comedic lines. His dramatic chops are thin, but he more than makes up for it here with exceptional monologues, and great physical acting.
While this is Hemsworth’s best role, Dementus could have been portrayed better by a different actor. Hemsworth isn’t menacing. Chaotic … yes. Psychotic … sure. Scary … not sold. Dementus doesn’t come off as truly fearsome in Furiosa. Instead he’s almost like a villain from an 80’s cartoon, think GI JOE or He Man. He bumbles in without a plan, does damage, makes threats, and barely escapes. I could almost hear “‘Til we meet again, Furiosa!” while he raises a fist of fleeting defiance.
Immortan Joe is far more menacing on screen and that is disappointing. Dementus is supposed to be main big bad. His legion of bikers is a swirling cavalcade of death and destruction and he leads them … with half-hearted quips?
Granted, the list of current Australian actors that could play this part is extremely short. It’s unclear whether or not an unknown actor could have pulled it off. However, there are two actors I would have reached for: Guy Pearce and Eric Bana. Bana played Nero in the reboot “Star Trek.” A character so full of rage, that he literally created a new timeline. During an interview, director JJ. Abrams says Bana could have played a more nuanced version of Nero, and looking at Bana’s skins on the wall, his dramatic prowess is certainly up to snuff. On the other hand, who could pass on Pearce. His cache is filled with roles that would set him up nicely for Dementus. His portrayal of Charley Rakes in “Lawless” opposite Hardy was spectacular and singularly menacing. Both actors could have developed a more sinister Dementus.
Nitpicking an epic movie…
There were other sticking points that gave me pause. In Fury Road, Miller’s CGI was superb. It was so good, many believed it had no CGI at all and the myth does prevail to a certain extent. In truth, Fury Road had a heavy amount of CGI along with tons of practical effects.
In Furiosa, Miller again utilizes copious amounts of CGI, but this time around it’s more noticeable. Noticeable because it looks sloppy in several scenes. Sloppy to the point many fanboys online are defending it as just “Miller’s style.” While I agree the Mad Max Saga is not polished, and that’s purposeful for gritty surrealism. I think the disconnect comes, because to get that unpolished gritty look, especially when it comes to ragdoll physics, CGI takes a ton of work.
Despite some bad CGI here and there, some weird pacing and story line construction, and barely missing the mark on having a truly terrific villain, there’s more good than bad in the film that makes it worth watching. It’s a perfect popcorn flick for the start of summer. It was never going to get any attention from the major awards shows, especially in the same year “Dune Part II” came out, so we don’t have to put it under the same lens. Overall, its a good movie, with good acting, good action and a good script. Furiosa: a Mad Max Saga is a solid 8/10.
