Sometimes George Miller feels like unleashing two hours of action; sometimes he feels like telling a character story (albeit still with more and better action than your average genre film). For “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” (2024) – the fifth-released and fourth chronological entry – he feels like doing a bildungsroman of Furiosa, and it’s well worth his and our time.
Tag-teaming it
Anya Taylor-Joy is top billed because she is a star, but almost equal billing should go to Alyla Browne as the younger version of Furiosa, who takes us through the movie’s slow but compelling first half. Since the start of my “Mad Max” reviews, I’ve been unable to avoid comparing Miller to George Lucas – starting with their shared love of cinematic speed – but now as Miller embarks on a prequel (“Furiosa” takes place before 2015’s “Mad Max: Fury Road”) I bet some fans wish Anakin’s coming-of-age story had this much style and verve.
We have the sand planet, post-apocalyptic Australia in this case, and Furiosa is wrenched from her mother (Charlee Fraser) and home. World-building bobs and weaves with Furiosa’s story as Miller – writing with “Fury Road’s” Nick Lathouris – has improved as a storyteller of epics since the clunkily penned “Beyond Thunderdome.”
“Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” (2024)
Director: George Miller
Writers: George Miller, Nick Lathouris
Stars: Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Burke
Over five days, RFMC looks at the five films of the “Mad Max” saga.
Granted, I couldn’t recount every poli-socio-economic detail behind the battles of “Furiosa.” It’s perhaps enough to know that there’s Gastown, Bullet Town and the water-resplendent Citadel. (Furiosa comes from an Eden similar to Oasis from “Beyond Thunderdome,” but she dare not speak of it, lest it be conquered.) The three towns trade with each other fairly peacefully, but Dementus (Chris Hemsworth, playing a “Mad Max”-ian villain with a pinch of haplessness to go with his evil) is the wild card.
Miller and Lathoruis have fun with names. In addition to Dementus, there are henchmen in The Citadel named Scrotus and Erectus. Never fear, though, the septuagenarian Miller hasn’t reverted to a chortling schoolboy; he’s still making great “Mad Max” films like he did in the Eighties.
Now, I admit that knowing all the effects of the OG trilogy are practical makes them all the more impressive. I know the newer films have more CGI, partly because the end credits go on forever, and also I can tell at times. But barely.
Caravan of carnage
And although the notion of a caravan of one gang running up against caravan of another gang on the open road of the Wasteland is a given, Miller makes sure to do something fresh. The War Rig – which would be a great toy if we still lived in the age of toys (nowadays, there are two possibilities: the War Rig hasn’t been released, or it’s a $300 “collectible”) – is multiple oil tankers hooked together, armed, reinforced, and featuring warriors atop it.
As a counter, the enemy has parachutists unfurl behind their bikers and drop explosives on the War Rig from above.
“Furiosa” is presented in chapters like “Zack Snyder’s Justice League,” so for a while Tom Burke’s Jack is the hero, driving the War Rig and almost wordlessly mentoring Furiosa in the art of being cool in that leather-wearing, shotgun-sporting Maxian way. Mad Max himself appears in a cameo, overlooking the chase from a cliff like Aurra Sing in “Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace.”
Sorry, I can’t help it with the GFFA comparisons. But suffice it to say that Miller has constructed a similarly fun (though not quite as vast) sandbox – literally, one might say – and I’m happy to watch him and his team play in it. Even more impressive than the open-road chase is the action in the mining and production fortress Bullet Town, featuring Jack smashing structures with the War Rig and Furiosa going rogue as a sniper.
What’s CGI and what’s practical in “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga”? I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter, because it’s all good.
“Mad Max” reviews:
Saturday, Jan. 4: “Mad Max” (1979)
Sunday, Jan. 5: “Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior” (1981)
Monday, Jan. 6: “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome” (1985)
Tuesday, Jan. 7: “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” (2024)
Wednesday, Jan. 8: “Mad Max: Fury Road” (2015)