A Turbocharged Odyssey which doesn’t quite live up to its predecessor.
Mad Max: Fury Road, which hit screens nearly a decade ago, remains a film quite unlike any other. It is a frenetic, captivating, visually astounding, non-stop, two-hour car chase whose relentlessness and vigour would be almost impossible to top. So, with the film’s new prequel Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, George Miller has decided to not try as he instead rears an altogether different beast. Furiosa feels more like an Alexander Korda epic coated in chrome, as Miller paints an epic and petrol-soaked portrait of loss and vengeance spread over a multi-year post-apocalyptic canvas.
The film, which leads directly into Fury Road, follows a young Furiosa (played as a child by Alyla Browne and then later Anya Taylor-Joy) who is kidnapped from her home ‘The Green place’ by a pair of marauders. From there she is taken to their leader Dementus (a fully boganned up Chris Hemsworth). When she refuses to give up the location of her home, Dementus decides to taker her with him as his adoptive daughter, calling her ‘Little D’. This eventually leads them to the citadel and Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme) who decides to take Furiosa as one his brides, whom he keeps locked away for breeding purposes. However, she manages to escape his clutches and lives a life of anonymity in the Citadel and its surrounding wastelands until she finally becomes the Imperator Furiosa, who was played in such iconic and badass fashion by Charlize Theron.
This summary alone highlights how Furoisa’s plot is much denser than its predecessor, as the film hunkers along more like a truck convoy than it does a car chase. While there is certainly no shortage of spectacle to be found, the film at times lumbers along as George Miller must manoeuvre what is a much heftier and more unwieldly film. Miller largely pulls this off, but the added narrative threads, exploration of lore, and expanded runtime does leave the film feeling a bit meandering. Watching it, I even found myself teetering on the edge of boredom once or twice. More frustratingly the incredible balancing act the film requires means a lot or character and plot development occurs offscreen, as most detrimentally shown with Dementus, while other potentially interesting threads are shunted off completely.
This is by no means to say the film is a dud, as Miller’s visionary and bombastic direction provide it with some great moments. The film’s inflections from the Book of Genesis are not subtle and provide some breathtaking imagery. This includes Furiosa’s mother being crucified in a hellish landscape, Dementus covered in a crimson fog of blood, and a fantastic Cronenbergian inversion on the Garden of Eden’s tree of life growing out of a man’s crotch.
Likewise, the film’s set pieces bare Miller’s unique authorial branding. While what appears to be an increased use of CGI, and possibly even some motion blurring, does leave Furiosa without some of the physicality and tangible design so brilliantly captured before, its chase and action sequences continue to be inventive and taught. The film is bookended by two brilliantly executed predatory and slow-burn pursuits which are masterclasses in tension and suspense. There is also one protracted sequence involving Furiosa, and a new character Praetorian Jack (Tom Clancy), driving a war rig which proves wonderfully chaotic as it brings in demonic paramotoring gliders, and an elaborate contraption of spinning weaponised maces.
One thing Furiosa cannot be accused of is resting on its laurels. The film constantly strives for new creative heights, and it is a sadness, and perhaps even unfair, that it shall always be compared to Fury Road. Although, the film itself invites comparisons by playing scenes from the film over its closing credits. On its own, the film stands as an inventive and epic blockbuster that easily rises above many of its peers. It is a piece of audacious and operatic filmmaking the likes of which I wish we could see more often. However, it’s just not quite Mad Max: Fury Road.