Movie review Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

In 2015, George Miller finally released Mad Max: Fury Road in theaters, impressing all fans of colorful action and just good movies. The film was in “production hell” for many years, and the director even doubted whether Mad Max as a franchise needed a new story. However, Fury Road turned out to be so good that it still holds an important place in the hearts of many fans of both the series and good movies in general.

It seemed only a matter of time before another movie was released. We had to wait nine years, but in 2024, the prequel to Furious: Mad Max. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga finally became available for viewing. It turned out that Miller had not lost his grip at all, but this time he could not jump above his previous achievements.

The plot of the film centers on Furiosa, played by Charlize Theron in Fury Road. But Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is a prequel, so Anya Taylor-Joy, one of the main new stars of Hollywood, was chosen to play the young heroine. When she was a child, Furiosa was kidnapped right out of the Greenlands, one of the few places where you can live in peace even during the post-apocalypse. The bikers of the eccentric warlord Dementus (Chris Hemsworth) wanted to use the girl to find a way to the Greenlands. This event was the beginning of Furiosa’s revenge story, which stretched for many years.

The world of Mad Max has always attracted me with its view of the end of the world. The landscapes in the films are mostly deserted, almost sterile. And the emphasis is always on powerful vehicles that cause heart palpitations in any mechanic or just a connoisseur of technology. Fury Road has taken the series’ formula to the absolute. What does Miller’s new work have to offer against this background?

Frankly speaking, almost everything is the same as Fury Road. On the one hand, we again got an uncompromising action movie, in which the tactility and closeness to the audience of many scenes is incomparable. It would be rather foolish to describe the battles of Furiosa, because they will not impress in the format of a text. Miller and his crew sneak into your mind with the language of cinema, numerous details and interesting visual methods. You should watch Furiosa only in theaters; on the big screen, the magic is revealed with terrifying force.

But if you think about what’s happening for a second, you’ll find that the movie doesn’t offer any tangible steps forward in terms of staging. Yes, there are chase scenes lasting several minutes, in which even minimal movements have weight, but we were pleased with something similar in Fury Road. To some extent, it turns out that the very existence of Fury Road becomes the main problem of Furiosa. The effect of novelty has been lost.

It also seems in some places that the new movie is a little more dependent on computer graphics than its predecessor. “Fury Road was praised for its practical effects and naturalistic filmmaking. Furious has all of this, but some CGI moments are too striking. You’ll understand what I mean when they start showing a cut from Fury Road during the credits. The 2015 movie looks much better.

However, what Furiosa definitely succeeds in is working with characters. Where The Road of Wrath was limited to hints and very small scenes, Furiosa’s story manages to fully reveal the main characters. And without unnecessary expository dialogues and digestion of emotions. “Furiosa” is able to say a lot to small people, which is always appreciated.

At first, Anya Taylor-Joy didn’t seem like the best actress for the role of Furiosa, especially after Charlize Theron. However, she has repeatedly proved that she is capable of portraying the uncontrollable, almost primal anger of her characters. Therefore, the young Furiosa in her performance turned out to be worthy: she is not very vocal, but sharp, determined and undoubtedly dangerous.

However, the main discovery of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is still Dementus. Chris Hemsworth, due to his association with the role of Thor, seemed to be drowning in self-parody, and his roles in action movies like Evacuation did not appeal as the pinnacle of drama. In Dementus, the actor managed to perfectly find the moment when his grimaces and smiles turn from something comical into the personification of real danger, which also perfectly fits the crazy world around him. The irony is that Dementus as a villain loses to G.I. Joe, who is also in the movie, but Hemsworth’s character turned out to be much more interesting.

And yes, Furiosa should be perceived as a prequel, so without knowing the events of Fury Road, some accents and features of the world may pass the viewer by. Moreover, this is a reference prequel: it reveals familiar characters from new angles, gives them additional features and makes you look at the next film in the chronology from a different angle.

The locations, the environment and the numerous interesting details that fill the world of Furiosa are also very pleasing. Miller and his team managed to make the same desert locations diverse, and in terms of direction, the film does not turn into a typical Hollywood action movie. Even the final battle in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, which in another movie would have been a large-scale massacre, is shown here only as a set of scenes with a voiceover explanation.

After all, the story never forgets that it is primarily about Furiosa and her childhood traumas, which haunt her all her life and do not give her peace. Hence the more focused script of the film, the slightly slower pace of the narrative, and even the “slow” action in some scenes. Everything in Furiosa has its own meaning.

And yet, while watching the movie, you can’t help but think that you expect a little more from it all. Perhaps, in this way Miller wanted to encourage the audience to watch Fury Road again. What can I say, the ploy was successful.