Mad Max: Fury Road stormed theaters in 2015, holding viewers hostage for almost every minute of its arresting runtime. Its unrelenting practical effects, raging soundtrack, and laser-focused editing set the table for a propulsive experience. And the enormous depth of world and character building that lurked beneath the script’s surface set it apart from almost any action film that came before it.
So what about the movie that came after it?
Furiosa was arguably the heart and soul of Mad Max: Fury Road, and Max was just along for the ride. With this sequel-as-prequel, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Furiosa is the fulcrum for a more sweeping epic. Starting early in Furiosa’s childhood and taking us right up to the moment that Fury Road begins, Furiosa explores both the character’s journey and the rich world-building that set the previous chapter into motion. And while Furiosa’s stronger moments go toe-to-toe with its predecessor, its symbiotic relationship with Fury Road occasionally stunts the script.
Nearly half of Furiosa is set in the character’s pre-adolescent days, with Alyla Browne portraying Young(est) Furiosa. Here, the film is scrappy and lore-focused, introducing us to the show-stealing character of Dementus (Chris Hemsworth), who kills Furiosa’s mother and takes her in as his own forced family. When Dementus goes toe-to-toe with the familiar Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme), Furiosa trades hands once more. As she grows into adulthood, we see an older Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy) trying to balance her desire to escape back to her home with her desire to seek revenge against Dementus.
What Furiosa does so well is world-building. Gas Town, Bullet Town, The Citadel, and the political players that move between these realms create an interesting landscape of the film’s own, irrespective of what Fury Road would do with this world down the line. The villains are given sharper claws and deeper intellects, making calculated efforts at both alliance and sabotage. Hemsworth’s performance in particular crafts a villain that contains multitudes and still occasionally manages to lean on his comedic chops.
And what Furiosa does best occurs about halfway through the movie in a piece referred to as The Stowaway. This 15-minute sequence, which took nearly 80 days to shoot, is arguably the most important piece of prequel lore Furiosa has to offer. Here, we see Furiosa experience first-hand the kind of even-handed focus needed to steer a massive war-rig across a sandy desert while an army tries to tear it apart. The choreography, cinemotography, and stuntwork on display is top-tier perfection, and at this point we should expect nothing less from director George Miller.
What holds Furiosa back, though, is rooted in its script and pacing. In Fury Road, Furiosa was both stoic and emotional. Her mission and desires were clear as day, even if everything that went into them had already happened off screen. Even with her resolute moral compass, there was a grittiness to her character: to be so trusted by Immortan Joe and then to turn on him, and the gray areas she must have occupied to get to that point were part of what made her so interesting.
Strangely, Furiosa almost undermines that character work – or, in any case, does little to deepen it. Taylor-Joy’s performance doesn’t feel like it reaches the heights of Charlize Theron’s Furiosa, but that’s largely a function of the material. Although this film spans more than a decade of her life, Furiosa is almost fully formed as the character we met in Fury Road from beat one as a small child, one who would sacrifice her own life to protect others. Those gritty and gray moments where she lives and breaks bread with her captors, rising through the ranks, and earning trust primarily happen off-screen, with nary a hint of Stockhold Syndrome or doubt in sight.
The only character transformation we witness in Furiosa is physical, with the loss of both a limb and her long hair getting more weight than any of Furiosa’s more intellectual journey. Where Fury Road turned its focus entirely to tight editing filled with unrelenting action, Furiosa rests more of its success in telling a sweeping tale of a woman’s journey. Because it’s such a focal point, the passive dynamic and lack of character development in Furiosa is all the more glaring.
While Furiosa frustratingly fails to do with character what Fury Road did with action, it is still by and large an excellent blockbuster, well worthy of seeing in theaters. It didn’t shock me or grip me all at once, but it’s stacked full of small details and big moments that I can’t get off my mind days later. Whether you’re in it for Hemsworth’s ability to chew the scenery, the depth of world and backstory, or for an additional helping of the action sequences that immortalized its prececessor, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga has a little bit of something for everyone.