Tina Kakadelis
Nine years after Mad Max: Fury Road came roaring onto theater screens, we’re finally given a look at the backstory of Furiosa. Originally played by Charlize Theron, two actors take on the role in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. Alyla Browne takes on the role as a child while Anya Taylor-Joy plays a version of Furiosa closer to that of Theron’s. The story of Furiosa has been in the works for years with writer/director George Miller creating backstories for all the new characters from Fury Road. Despite the years of planning that went into Furiosa, this chapter of the Mad Max saga feels like it was lost in the desert for a little too long.
While the rest of the world is ravaged, Furiosa lives in the Green Place of Many Mothers. It’s a haven amongst the desolation of the Wasteland, one that must remain a secret to preserve the sanctity of the place. Furiosa notices a group of Marauders stumbled on the outskirts of the Green Place and attempts to sabotage their bikes, but is captured. She’s brought to Dementus (Chris Hemsworth), a Warlord with dreams of ruling the Wasteland. In his quest, Furiosa and Dementus cross paths with Immorten Joe (Lachy Hulme) of the Citadel as well as the leaders of Gastown and the Bullet Farm. All the while, Furiosa desperately tries to find her way home.
Part of what made Fury Road such an excellent action epic was the underlying story of Furiosa’s quest to liberate the Wives from their lives of imprisonment. She thought the way to move forward was to escape, but it’s in returning to try and better the world. Hope for the future, hope for a home, and hope for something to change. Fury Road transcended the action genre to blend the spirit of the American Western with a story of survival told from a woman’s point of view. More than that, the film was edited in such a way that felt visceral. It was frantic, frenetic, and a high-octane thrill in the form of a movie.
Furiosa is everything that Fury Road is not to its own detriment. If Fury Road was running at 100mph, Furiosa was maybe pushing 30mph. Instead of layered themes of family, home, and social class, Furiosa plays it closer to a run-of-the-mill action flick. Furiosa is shuttled from location to location to not really achieve a larger goal, but rather to provide a series of violent circumstances. Yes, Fury Road was bombastic and violent, but there was the understanding that something was at stake. That Furiosa was fighting for something much larger than herself and that Max (Tom Hardy) begrudgingly helped her out of his lingering hope for something better than the Wasteland. Furiosa is all flames and fury, but no substance.
Even if someone enjoyed Fury Road simply for its car antics, Furiosa doesn’t deliver on the sheer madness that the previous film provided. The action is much more stop and go with characters hopping off their motorbikes constantly to turn around and watch the horizon. The momentum never hits its stride and is left sputtering somewhere in the Wasteland. Even though it’s missing the extreme car battles of Fury Road, Furiosa has its own group of madcap cars. Dementus’s motorbike chariot and massive monster truck are highlights and the War Rig is outfitted with some pretty cool swinging spiked metal balls. Luckily, the flame-throwing guitar player from Fury Road makes a short-lived appearance.
A prequel’s job is to give the audience a better understanding of an established set of characters or world. Furiosa’s events take place some indeterminate time before Fury Road, but give no deeper understanding to the character of Furiosa than we already had. From Fury Road, it was already established that she grew up in the Green Place and that she was more than capable of defending herself. However, Furiosa doesn’t go deeper than just giving the audience the visual of her growing up in the Green Place and expertly shooting people. It’s as though Furiosa is already a fully formed character from the get go. The point of a prequel is to explain how the character becomes the one we’re first introduced to. Even as a young girl, Furiosa is headstrong and capable. The only difference between Furiosa in the two films is her age.
“As the world falls around us, how must we face its cruelties?” asks the film in the opening minutes. It’s a returning thematic question from Fury Road, one that Furiosa does valiantly try to answer toward the end of the film. For Furiosa, there is a desire for revenge, but how do you get that revenge? Nothing can be done to bring back those we’ve lost and yet revenge can possess us to scorch the earth to try. The conversation Furiosa has with Dementus, the man who robbed her of her family and her childhood, at their final showdown is the film’s most compelling moment. Furiosa promised to build a richer world for a character who stole the show in Fury Road, but the world we were given is just as empty as the Wasteland.
