Released: 11th January
Seen: 26th April
In 2015 George Miller returned to the franchise that began his career after a 30-year break and gave us Mad Max: Fury Road, a film that many would argue (and be completely right to do so) was the best action film of the 2010s. A high-octane explosion-filled joyride through the desert, Mad Max: Fury Road revived a long-dead Ozploitation franchise and took it to Hollywood where it reminded the world that the guy who made the two Happy Feet movies used to be an absolute madman who made films where cars explode just for the fucking fun of it. What was a big surprise back then was that the standout character in the Mad Max movie wasn’t Max but a side character named Furiosa who became an instant classic character who people wanted to know more about. It might’ve taken nearly a decade but Miller has heard our cries and given us the glory that is Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga abandons Max on the side of the road and goes back in time to follow a young Furiosa from when she was just a child (Alyla Browne) living in The Green Place of Many Mothers alongside the rest of her family. One day while out picking peaches, Furiosa happens upon some raiders and tries to sabotage their bikes, because there’s a high chance they could come back and bring others and destroy the paradise that Furiosa and her family live in. Unfortunately, those raiders end up kidnapping Furiosa and bringing her back to present to their warlord, Dr. Dementus (Chris Hemsworth) who takes a liking to Furiosa and trains her in the life of a wanderer of the wasteland. Of course, because he’s an evil warlord, Dementus messes up a lot and ends up being Furiosa’s grand adversary throughout her life, even to adulthood (when she becomes Anya Taylor-Joy) when her path crosses with Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme) and one of the first great wars of the wasteland begins.
Prequels are probably the hardest things to do in terms of following a successful film. In a sequel, you could pretty much go anywhere, take any left turn you want and you’ll be fine but a prequel comes with a predetermined ending. Furiosa has to survive because we see her in Fury Road. She has to lose an arm and all of her hair because that’s what we saw last time. That instantly removes some of the tension since they can’t really hang her life in the balance… but that’s a concern for lesser directors, George Miller is too smart to let that worry him while he’s making this tension-filled roller coaster ride. Even knowing full well that Furiosa surely has to survive this, it always feels like the film is one second away from killing her anyway just to fuck with you. It’s certainly not afraid to take out and torment the other characters in the film, all of whom are just fascinating weird creations that make this nightmare world feel rich and flavourful.
It helps that Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is just dripping with style and glorious action. Much like Fury Road, this film looks glorious with its love of insanely high contrast colours and whip-fast camera moves that make every action scene feel like it did a line of cocaine. Every action scene pushes everything to the limit, from the insanity of the violence to the explosions from the crashing cars. Everything is big and fun and over the top, though slightly more controlled than you might remember from Fury Road. You won’t get the flamethrower guitar here but you’ll certainly get a lot of cars driving roughly over the faces of many nameless bad guys. It’s just kind of stunning to see how all these action scenes work together so well to help us get to know these characters better. It’s not just action meant to look cool (though it does) but everything you need to know about Furiosa or Dementus or anyone else can be found in just one of their action scenes. It’s a masterclass in visual storytelling that we just do not get to see often enough.
It also helps that the cast is bringing everything they have. Naturally, there’s a lot of returning cast from Fury Road reprising roles they had back then but the new additions are delightful. Lachy Hulme impressively fills in the shoes left by the late Hugh Keays-Byrne who created something glorious with Immortan Joe that Lachy keeps intact, so well that there are moments you forget it’s a different actor. Anya Taylor-Joy, along with her younger counterpart Alyla Browne, is a great central focus for Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, again filling in for Charlize Theron is no easy task but sure enough it’s one Anya and Alyla pull off wonderfully. They give each scene the raw emotion it needs to work, you want to see them get their well-earned furious vengeance against those who have wronged them and they manage to make you nervous for them despite knowing how Furiosa ends up.
The standout of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, without a doubt, is Chris Hemsworth’s insane creation of Dementus who is absolutely demented in all the best ways. Ever since Bad Times at the El Royale I’ve been adamant that Hemsworth needs to play more villains because the combination of his natural charm and looks make him genuinely terrifying when he decides to be evil. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga took my words as a challenge and let Hemsworth create one of the most gloriously evil bastards to be captured on film. Every single scene has Hemsworth downing mouthfuls of the scenery like it was candy, putting on an Aussie accent that’s so thick it would border on offensive were it not done by an actual Australian. It’s glorious, every scene is made better when Dementus pops up and if they’re looking for who to make the next prequel about, he’s got my vote.
Now the obvious point to make is that this is certainly not quite as good as Fury Road, but that’s largely because Fury Road is as close to perfect as you can get in a movie and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is merely Very Very Very Very Good, which is a good issue to have. Sure I want Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga to live up to the original in every way and it certainly comes close in several of them but there are a few spots where it kind of stumbles. It’s certainly a lot more indulgent, the added half-an-hour and repeated chapter titles really didn’t feel needed, and there are a few shots that felt like they needed another go-over in the digital department to fix them up but those are incredibly minor issues for a film that manages to do so much.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is truly epic filmmaking in every possible way. Absolutely gorgeous to look at, chock full of some of the best action scenes you’ll see all year, led by a stellar cast giving their all to the insanity that George Miller has asked them to take part in and showing how good a film with a diverse cast, female lead and subtext about toxic masculinity can be. It’s proof that Mad Max is a franchise that still has a lot of life in it and hopefully this film does well enough that we won’t have to wait another decade for them to let Miller make another one of these… though if anyone would have the energy to direct another insane action film at 89, it’ll be George Miller.
Movie Meister Reviews 