Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)
9/10
“As the world falls around us, how must we brave its cruelties?”
—The History Man
From that opening line of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, I was hooked. The fifth instalment in director George Miller’s post-apocalyptic action series, Furiosa is a prequel to 2014’s Mad Max: Fury Road, hailed as one of the greatest action films ever made, and serves as a fitting companion piece. Where Fury Road unfolded as one long chase scene, Furiosa presents a more epic tale that immerses us in Miller’s world-building and reinforces the iconic status of its lead character, with Anya Taylor-Joy ably taking over the role of Furiosa from Charlize Theron.
To be accurate, Taylor-Joy isn’t the only actor to play Furiosa in this movie. Nearly the whole first hour follows Furiosa as a child, played by Alyla Browne, as she is kidnapped from her family in the Green Place of Many Mothers, a flourishing contrast to the radioactive desert wasteland the rest of Australia has become. Raiders take Furiosa as a prize for their leader Dementus (Chris Hemsworth) while her mother Mary Jabassa (Charlee Fraser) follows in hot pursuit. Dementus ends up killing Mary and adopting Furiosa as his daughter. Over the course of the story, Furiosa falls under the authority of Citadel warlord Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme) and eventually escapes to seek her revenge against Dementus.
The Mad Max films have often accompanied periods of widespread pessimism, decline and fears of global catastrophe. The 1979 original, for example, was produced amid the stagflation and “malaise” of that decade. Its sequel The Road Warrior was released against the backdrop of heightened tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union and fears of nuclear Armageddon under the presidency of Ronald Reagan. That film greatly influenced a period of apocalyptic chic, as a glance of contemporary music videos will attest. Fury Road appeared a few years after the Great Recession and when the actual record of the Obama presidency belied the empty “hope and change” rhetoric of his 2008 campaign, paving the way for the election of Donald Trump as president two years later.
Furiosa hits cinemas at a time when capitalism is facing the greatest crisis in its history. The 2020s have been characterized by the COVID-19 pandemic, the global climate emergency, imperialist wars and genocide, and economic turmoil in the form of rampant inflation and the soaring cost of living. The doomsday clock of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists is currently set at 90 seconds to midnight, the closest it’s ever been. It’s against this backdrop that the opening words of Furiosa, delivered by a wizened old figure referred to only as “the History Man” and following sounds and sights of apocalyptic destruction, make such an impact.
Rosa Luxemburg said more than 100 years ago that humanity faces a choice between “socialism or barbarism”. Post-apocalyptic films like the Mad Max series show a world in which barbarism has long since prevailed—though you could easily say the same about our current world under capitalism, which Lenin described as “horror without end”. Seeing people face a constant daily struggle to take care of their basic needs is inherently compelling, and sadly the condition that the majority of the world’s population faces today. At least on the silver screen, those struggles can form the basis for an entertaining action film rather than grim reality.
It’s an odd coincidence how two of the best films to grace the screens so far in 2024, Dune: Part Two and Furiosa, are both science-fiction films set in the future amid harsh desert landscapes. In Dune, the valuable commodity the various houses fight over is the spice melange on the desert planet Arrakis—while for the native Fremen, the most valuable substance is water. In Mad Max, the most valuable substance is gasoline. Both the Dune and Mad Max films are made by masters of their craft and—certainly for Fury Road and Furiosa in the latter case—are best seen on the biggest screens possible, where viewers can lose themselves in the jaw-dropping spectacle.
Furiosa is divided into five chapters, which reminded me of Zack Snyder’s Justice League (that’s a good thing; despite my break with Snyder after Rebel Moon, I’ll still defend his Justice League cut as one of the best superhero films ever). The first covers Furiosa’s kidnapping, her mother’s attempts to reclaim her, and our introduction to Dementus.
Special praise must be given to two actors in the early parts of the film. Browne does an incredible job playing Furiosa as a young girl, especially for a child actor who has to carry so much of this film on her shoulders. Fraser is a total badass as the mother stopping at nothing to reclaim her child, proving both a crack shot with a sniper rifle and hell on wheels when she rides a motorcycle. She also has a startling resemblance to Taylor-Joy. I got distinct Ripley vibes, which is the highest praise I can give for an action heroine.
Full disclosure, I’ve loved Anya Taylor-Joy since her debut in The Witch. She got me into a theatre to see Emma and was one of many reasons why The Northman was one of the best pictures of 2022. In a just world, The Northman would have swept the Oscars with Taylor-Joy winning for Best Supporting Actress. As Furiosa, she’s magnificent as always, using her slight build to her advantage as a girl who has been able to pass as a mute boy for 10 years. In her 30 lines of dialogue, Taylor-Joy sounds incredibly like Theron, who first made Furiosa an iconic character. Now Furiosa has been played by two of the best actresses of the last few decades.
Hemsworth is having a blast playing against type as a villain, while still investing Dementus with enough pathos to become more than just a one-dimensional bad guy. It’s quite the challenge to play a man who killed the mother of a young girl, yet still manages to retain some level of audience sympathy. Maybe part of it is how hapless Dementus is at accomplishing anything, from his attempts to take the Citadel to his mismanagement of Gastown, site of a massive oil refinery. Then he’ll torture a character to death and remind you how despicable he is.
All in all, this was a very entertaining movie. It’s a shame Furiosa underperformed at the box office, though not surprising when you consider this is a prequel (always a hard sell) and a spinoff about a character not even played by the same actress. Still, it’s a great film, one that will hopefully be appreciated more in the years to come.