The backstory of the wasteland Imperator is told in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. As a child, Furiosa (Alyla Browne) is kidnapped from the Green Place of Many Mothers in the post-apocalyptic wasteland. Furiosa is taken to the camp of the Warlord Dementus (Chris Hemsworth) and her mother Mary Jo Bassa (Charlee Fraser). Furiosa is soon traded to be a future wife of Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme) of the Citadel, as part of a bartering effort after Dementus forcefully takes control of the fortress of Gastown. Furiosa ends up escaping her captivity to avoid advances from Joe's son Rictus Erectus (Nathan Jones) and ends up disguising herself as a boy and working as a mechanic.
15 years later, a now-adult Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy) accompanies a War Rig driven by Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke), with the two being the sole survivors of a raid. Jack makes Furiosa the new driver of the War Rig, as a way to build her skills before she tries to find her way home. However, war soon begins to brew between Immortan Joe and Dementus, the latter of whom has driven Gastown to near-ruin.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga Synopsis
Arriving 45 years after Max Rockatansky first drove his Interceptor across post-apocalyptic Australia, writer/director George Miller returns with this prequel/spinoff to 2015's Mad Max: Fury Road. The film tells the backstory of Imperator Furiosa, who was originally played by Charlize Theron and is now played as a younger woman by Anya Taylor-Joy (The Northman) and as a child by Alyla Browne (Sting, Three Thousand Years of Longing). The film tells the story of how Furiosa was taken from the Green Place and ended up in the service of the warlord Immortan Joe, with Lachy Hulme taking over the role from the late Hugh Keays-Byrne.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is also a vengeance tale, as Furiosa holds a vendetta against Dementus, played in very over-the-top fashion by Chris Hemsworth. After a failed attempt to take the Citadel by force, Dementus and his biker gang end up instead invading the outpost of Gastown. This results in Immortal Joe having to make an uneasy alliance with Dementus, which eventually begins to fall apart leading to an all-out war.
My Thoughts on Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
With the director now 79 years old, you at least have to applaud George Miller for writing and directing five films in the post-apocalyptic Mad Max universe over five decades. However, the question needs to be asked whether Furiosa was a necessary film to produce. Reportedly Miller wrote the script for the film as he was developing backstories for Mad Max: Fury Road and the screenplay served as inspiration for Charlize Theron's performance in that film. However, with nearly a decade passing between the two films, it necessitated a recasting of the role, since George Miller didn't want to use de-aging technology, even though the final film does use similar technology to make Alyla Browne have more of a visual similarity to Anya Taylor-Joy.
While I have no real criticism about the performance of Anya Taylor-Joy, who doesn't make her first appearance until nearly an hour into the film, I did think that Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga felt quite redundant. One of the things accomplished by each previous film in the Mad Max series is that they feature a different cast and situation, stumbled upon Max as he journies through the wasteland. However, Furiosa ends up featuring more of what was already seen in Mad Max: Fury Road, including Immortan Joe and his suicidally devoted Warboys and returning supporting characters, such as the bronze-nosed Peopler Eater (John Howard) and the Organic Mechanic (Angus Sampson).
While the film does feature a revenge story element and Chris Hemsworth hamming it up big time as the villain Dementus, I found it hard to get into Furiosa: A Max Max Saga. As you know where the character ends up, and are reminded of such by the clips from Mad Max: Fury Road that play during the end credits, there are no real stakes to the action of the film. Even the secondary protagonist of Praetorian Jack, played by Tom Burke, seems to be solely a part of the film to be a stand-in for the absent Max Rockatansky, though the film does sneak in a very brief Easter Egg involving the latter.
Another way that Furiosa pales when compared to Mad Max: Fury Road is that as opposed to the previous film, which was presented as an extended car chase, the action scenes of this film are fewer. While George Miller is still quite adept at composing his set pieces, the lustre of the incredible practical effects of Mad Max: Fury Road has gone. Perhaps after nearly five decades, George Miller is finally starting to run out of gas on his signature franchise.
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