Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga Review – George Miller Returns to the Wasteland

Prequels often suffer from a simple problem: we already know where everything is going.

We know Furiosa survives.

We know she eventually becomes an Imperator.

We know Immortan Joe's Citadel will still be standing when Fury Road begins.

Miller therefore isn't particularly interested in creating suspense around Furiosa's destination.

He's interested in the cost of getting there.

The movie spans years of her life, gradually stripping away pieces of the child who once lived in the Green Place and replacing them with the hardened survivor audiences already know.

It's less an origin story in the traditional superhero sense and more the construction of a legend.

Anya Taylor-Joy faces an unenviable task.

She's inheriting a character Charlize Theron made instantly iconic.

Trying to imitate Theron's performance would have been a mistake, and Taylor-Joy wisely doesn't.

Her Furiosa is remarkably quiet.

Instead, anger, calculation and determination are frequently communicated through a stare.

That restraint works because the Wasteland isn't a place where characters survive by explaining their feelings. Furiosa watches, learns and waits.

Taylor-Joy brings an intensity to the role that makes even the quieter moments feel dangerous.

And when Furiosa finally gets behind the wheel, she looks like she belongs there.

Then there's Chris Hemsworth.

Dementus is enormous fun.

He's theatrical, ridiculous, charismatic and horrifying, sometimes within the same scene.

Hemsworth appears liberated by playing someone who doesn't need to resemble a conventional hero. The familiar movie-star charm remains, but Miller twists it into something much uglier.

Dementus needs people to follow him.

That means he has to be entertaining.

He performs leadership as much as he actually leads, turning himself into a larger-than-life figure for the violent army surrounding him.

Underneath the spectacle, though, is a deeply damaged man capable of extraordinary cruelty.

Hemsworth embraces every strange corner of the character.

Eventually the engines start.

And then you remember who is directing.

George Miller has an extraordinary understanding of movement. His action sequences aren't simply collections of explosions and fast editing.

You understand where vehicles are.

You understand what characters are trying to accomplish.

You understand why something going wrong matters.

And then everything goes completely insane.

Motorcycles swarm enormous vehicles. Characters leap between machines travelling at terrifying speeds. Weapons appear to have been constructed by people who regard basic health and safety as an insult.

One extended road sequence in particular reminds you that Miller remains in a league of his own when it comes to turning moving vehicles into cinematic choreography.

Furiosa isn't constantly racing forward like Fury Road.

But when it does accelerate, hold on.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Furiosa is how much it expands the Wasteland.

Fury Road gave us glimpses of a civilisation built around fuel, water, machinery and power.

Here, Miller gets to explore more of it.

The Citadel isn't simply a spectacular location. It's part of an ecosystem.

Resources have value. Alliances matter. Trade matters. Control of roads matters.

Behind all the madness is a surprisingly coherent society built from the wreckage of another one.

Miller never explains every detail.

He doesn't need to.

The best world-building often makes you feel as though stories are happening beyond the edge of the frame.

The Wasteland certainly feels that way.

Anyone expecting two and a half hours of relentless Fury Road-style pursuit may initially be surprised.

Furiosa is more episodic.

It's a sprawling story covering a significant portion of its protagonist's life rather than one enormous chase.

That occasionally makes the pacing uneven.

There are stretches where the movie seems almost happy to wander around its bizarre world before exploding into another extraordinary action sequence.

But that difference ultimately works in its favour.

Miller isn't attempting to remake his previous film with younger characters.

He's adding another piece to the mythology.

And by the time the two stories begin approaching one another, Fury Road itself feels richer because of what we've learned.

Furiosa had an almost impossible act to follow.

It doesn't surpass Mad Max: Fury Road.

Very few action movies do.

But judged as its own film, this is still an astonishing piece of blockbuster filmmaking.

Anya Taylor-Joy makes Furiosa her own. Chris Hemsworth delivers one of the strangest and most enjoyable performances of his career, and George Miller once again creates action sequences that make you wonder why everybody else makes driving fast look so ordinary.

It's violent, eccentric, occasionally unwieldy and completely committed to its world.

George Miller may have been travelling through the Wasteland for decades.

Somehow, he's still finding new roads.