'Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga' Review: Witness This Prequel, Shiny And Chrome
Ken Jones, OnScreen Blog Chief Film Critic
Eight years ago, director George Miller returned to the world of his iconic Mad Max character with Mad Max: Fury Road. This gonzo action film ended up being one of the best movies of the decade and also introduced a character, Furiosa, portrayed by Charlize Theron, who arguably outshines Max in his own movie. The popularity of the character was such that Miller created a prequel for her, with 2024’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.
Opting against de-aging special effects, Anya Taylor-Joy replaces Theron in the iconic role of Furiosa in this post-apocalyptic action film. A young Furiosa (Alyla Browne) is kidnapped from the Green Place by a group of raiding bikers and winds up in the possession of a warlord named Dementus (Chris Hemsworth). Dementus leads a horde that eventually stumble across a war boy of Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme).
After a prolonged standoff between both sides, an uneasy truce is made between Dementus and Immortan Joe, with Dementus being placed in charge of Gastown while Furiosa is given to Immortan Joe as a future wife. She eventually escapes and lives in obscurity among the workers of the Citadel, where she eventually works her way up to working on the latest and greatest War Rigs to eventually find her way back home.
Given that this is a prequel and she is searching for the Green Place in Fury Road, we know the outcome of that quest here. Knowing where a character ends up can make prequels a tough sell; they have to nail the character's journey. Luckily for us, Miller knows how to take his audience on a journey.
While Fury Road remains the pinnacle of Miller’s action storytelling, Furiosa has moments that come close to matching it. The action set pieces of this film are inventive and thrilling, finding new ways to dazzle as people fight on multiple sets of wheels, on and across multiple vehicles, at high rates of speed. There are at least three or four moments where Miller and his crew pull out new flourishes of action that you do not expect to keep the action from being merely a rehashing of the action in Fury Road.
The film also expands the scope of the world we glimpse in Fury Road, taking the audience to Bullet Farm and Gas Town, places previously mentioned but never shown or explored. These places live up to their reputations as places of hard labor, and Bullet Farm is part of a great action set piece.
Furiosa’s story is given more time, clocking in at nearly 30 minutes longer than Fury Road. It is also told in five chapters, and Taylor-Joy does not appear until the third chapter. The younger Browne does a great job portraying the child/teen version of the character, imbuing her with an early sense of determination and stubbornness in the face of a cruel world, and a cruel man in Dementus.
That steeliness carries through to Taylor-Joy’s performance as a young adult Furiosa, one who pretends to be a mute to hide that she is a woman instead of a runtish boy. Taylor-Joy brings the requisite intensity to the role that Theron established with her original performance. Choosing to go with a younger actress instead of de-ageing Theron is indeed the right move here. She looks the part and feels the part. Particularly impressive is the acting that Taylor-Joy does just with her eyes.
When the first War Rig is launched heading out of the Citadel, she distinguishes herself on the Fury Road when the War Rig is besieged by raiders. She proves herself capable in front of Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke), the War Rig commander, and they form a bond.
Furiosa’s story is one driven not just by her desire to return home, no matter how long it takes, but also by revenge on Dementus, who takes her childhood, home, and family away from her. Hemsworth gives a tremendously villainous performance as Dementus, a character who is truly demented and fitting of the post-apocalyptic wasteland these characters inhabit. Hemsworth’s Olympian physique is brilliantly undercut by a prosthetic nose and a nasal voice.
When he is first introduced, he is wearing an outfit with a white cape attached to his suit. When they encounter a war boy, one of the bikers from his horde fires off one of the colors flares in his midst, turning his cape red. This gives the character, I think intentionally, more than a passing resemblance to Hemsworth’s Thor in the Marvel movies, albeit a twisted version of his iconic character.
Dementus is a great villain and a terrific performance by Hemsworth, with some surprising shades and layers. His background has echoes of Mad Max’s tragic origins. Furiosa’s eventual pursuit of him and vengeance raises some of the timeless questions that all stories of vengeance ask: can vengeance make you whole? What does it cost you? Will it turn you into what you hate? Is there any other way to balance the scales?
George Miller set the bar incredibly high with Mad Max: Fury Road. Charlize Theron set the bar high with her performance as Furiosa. Miller and Taylor-Joy make a prequel that does right by the character and the Mad Max universe, and Hemsworth provides a villain of the year performance.
It doesn’t quite reach Fury Road's dizzying heights and unrelenting action spectacle, but it is also not trying to replicate that same formula. It has a little bit more on its mind, and, thus, delivers on its own merits.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is worth seeing and enjoying.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars