Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)

Director George Miller's rip-roaring origin story of the relentless Road Warrior

Bound for vengeance, a Furiosa scarred by her brutal past battles to win her future

Furiosa:  A Mad Max Saga (2024)

In theaters

This is a prequel to the 2015 Mad Max: Fury Road, which gave us a portrait of apocalyptic doom directed by Australian George Miller with gonzo fierceness and dazzling technical precision.

Set in a sprawling, unforgiving desert landscape after the collapse of the world as we know it, that movie notched a new, high standard for action storytelling.

So, why did Miller and co-writer Nick Lathouris think it needed, of all things, a prequel?  Its icily focused protagonist Furiosa, played with grit and disarming elegance by Charlize Theron, proved just as much a badass as her partner in survival Mad Max, played by Tom Hardy.

But with her coldly steady gaze, close-cropped hair and the black war paint smeared across her brow, one could wonder what had made this woman so grimly poised to strike, so flintily untouchable.

We never got a full answer, since that movie’s action unfolded over a mere four or five days.  Hence this prequel. It turns out it took years of turmoil and agony to forge the steely-eyed Furiosa of Fury Road.

Dementus (c.) and his thuggish army strike terror in their ceaseless hunt for dominance

This time we see how the 10-year-old Furiosa traversed 15 years to become unstoppable. She learns, through pain and sacrifice, to take zero crap from men, no matter how powerful. Her bleakest coming-of-age insight: dystopia hasn’t rid the world of toxic male dawgs. Quite the contrary. It’s cranked them up.

We first meet an adolescent Furiosa (Alyla Browne) with her mother Mary Jo (Charlee Fraser) in an oasis in the barren desert, the Green Place. The vast surrounding vista is called The Wasteland (an onscreen map suggests it’s in Australia), despoiled by climate change and incessant gang warfare.

The Green Place blossoms with lush vegetation, wildlife, and fresh water. Furiosa opens the film by plucking a ripe peach from a tree:  a hint of Eden?

Motorcycling male marauders invade this paradise, but the armed residents turn out to be fierce protectors of their green sanctuary.  The invaders are forced to flee.

But they kidnap Furiosa and turn her over to Dementus (Chris Hemsworth), a cruel warlord who hopes to cajole the girl into leading his swelling army of thugs on motorcycles back to the Green Place.

When Furiosa’s mother Mary Jo (Charlee Fraser) fails to rescue her and is captured, the young girl watches as Dementus orders Mary Jo’s execution.  Unsurprisingly, Furiosa’s hatred for Dementus hardens into a cold passion, the dark vengeance that propels her through the rest of the movie.

This is where Anya Taylor-Joy steps into the role of Furiosa, and the actress makes the character her own.  She creates not so much an earlier version of Theron’s bristling battler, but a child who, too young, becomes a bitter avenger. She rarely speaks, and I don’t recall ever seeing her smile.

In a tradeoff for access to fuel, Dementus turns Furiosa over to another Wasteland warlord, Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme).  Gasoline is the most vital commodity in this world. Vehicles need it to scurry across vast sandscapes to grab what limited resources, water above all, the parched earth still contains.

Furiosa ups her game as a retaliator after joining forces with Pretorian Jack (Tom Burke), a celebrated caravan driver who exchanges water for gas and/or bullets. He vows to help shape her into a heart-of-stone Road Warrior who can take down the hated Dementus.

The movie’s most impressive action sequence shows the attempted capture and robbery of Pretorian Jack’s gleaming bright nickel-plated transport vehicle. It looks to be a good 80 feet long. He staffs this rolling behemoth with War Boys, their bodies painted in eerie white, who live only to attack.

They fearlessly defend the speeding vehicle from rivalrous gang assaults waged with trucks aimed like weapons, kite-dropped explosives and billowing flamethrowers.  This sequence hurtles by in 15 minutes of mesmerizing screentime with no letup. Weaponry and warriors weave and collide in ever-shifting combat.

Captured with swooping cameras, it’s an action sequence that will become legendary.  I dare you to move from your seat while it sways and roars across the screen.

Taylor-Joy finds her own voice and presence as the increasingly battle-toughened Furiosa, an avenging angel who’s also a Road Warrior whose mature magnificence we’ll behold in Fury Road.

Anya Taylor-Joy’s grim Furiosa, much more than a survivor, is hellbent on retribution

Hemsworth makes Dementus deeply repellent, an unbending purveyor of evil reveling in his own baseness.  It’s an uncompromising performance that incorporates a malicious glee, making the villain’s downfall at Furiosa’s hand feel just.

That is, we can’t help asking, if decency even stands a chance in this blighted world that’s rapidly running out of resources and options.

Filled with an end-of days bleakness, Furiosa the movie nonetheless tantalizingly puts the pieces in place for what could be a rousing finale for both Furiosa and her future partner in survival, Mad Max (whom we don’t meet during this early stage of her story).

George Miller directs this spinoff and prequel in a high, relentless style.  It gives Furiosa’s story a mythic-biblical gloss that I don’t think it actually needed. I liked the junkyard Rube Goldberg contraption feeling of the vehicles in Fury Road. The roiling rattletrap mayhem felt deeply unnerving, as if it might spill off the screen.

But I’ll happily go along with Miller’s heightened “epic” conception in this prequel if it propels him to allow Furiosa’s journey and leapfrogs with her into a third movie.

We see molded here the Road Warrior she’ll fully become in Fury Road.  The younger woman’s agonizing beginning deserves an ultimate resolution to her pain and sacrifice. Furiosa triumphant would make one heck of an icon.

I hope Miller, nearing 80, will find the means and summon the rigor to bring this Eternal Woman to the grand conquest over male rapacity she’s richly earned.

The Greek word apocalypsis can be translated as “a revelation.”  And it’s worth remembering that repeatedly in the Bible an apocalypse isn’t just a catastrophe, it’s also a prophecy.

In other words, in the wake of devastation, all is not lost.

So, I’ll celebrate Miller’s determination to make myth, since it’s now clear that in both movies he’s been preparing Furiosa for a final, cleansing reckoning that even the gods and prophets of old would recognize. 

This movie’s most important achievement may be that it prompts you to watch or rewatch Fury Road, where the struggle we see take root here continues.

Miller’s rapt portrayal of the origin of a fighter for retribution suggests that more sublime moviemaking from this visionary director could lie ahead.  Furiosa is now clearly poised to become the woman who answers to no man, ever, for any reason, at any time.

Myth?  Perhaps.  But also, just possibly, a foretelling of a transfigured global future?

Vroom-vroom. I’ll be there.