Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)

Rated R because George Miller loves his particular brand of Australian cult chaos.   If you know the Mad Max universe, then you know that these movies are about crassness and ultraviolence.  People die horrible deaths and are deformed.  People lose appendages and are gnawed upon by maggots. Death and carnage coupled with bad language.  There's no real sex or nudity in this movie, but it feels like it could be behind any corner.  R.

DIRECTOR:  George Miller

This is one of the places that I drastically differ from my father.  My dad was a refugee in Australia from World War II.  He never gave up his Australian citzenship, even when he moved to the United States.  Now, I remember him being really into The Road Warrior.  I never disliked the Mad Max movies.  Heck, I think I really liked The Road Warrior and kind of liked Beyond Thunderdome.  But the Mad Max movies never really stay with me in any way.  I don't leave the theater telling everyone how much I like these movies.  Part of that comes from the fact that I think that these movies are more about setting than actual character stuff.  George Miller seems to enjoy the environment more than the people in his worlds.

There's nothing wrong with Furiosa.  If you loved Fury Road, which I was only "meh" about, Furiosa will hit a lot of the same buttons.  Heck, Fury Road was beloved by most cinephiles, so I know that I'm the exception to the rule on this one.  To say that Furiosa hits  a lot of the same buttons as Fury Road states that George Miller actually has another triumph on his hands.  The thing is...I really don't care.  Both movies, to me, is about cool insane fight choreography and people being mean to each other.  See, I don't necessarily hate that.  But between you, me, and the wall, I get a better version of this watching Fallout, which is a show I'm enjoying but also do not love.  I'm apparently very hard to please with my post-Apocalypse. Honestly, these movies kind of suffer the same issues that The Walking Dead kind of face.  These are great stories that need to get their message across and get out.  Again, I'm the only person saying this, so feel free to ignore me.  It's just that I don't know if Furiosa really adds a ton to the discourse about the problems with humanity after the rules have been thrown out the window.

The oddest thing is that George Miller does a really good job of making his protagonists of each film the least important person in the movie.  In Fury Road, we care way more about Furiosa than Max.  Max is almost a passenger in his own film.  In Furiosa, it almost seems like there are moments where Miller is reminded that his protagonist hasn't been on screen in some time.  Dementus, by far, steals the show.  Realize that I'm saying that Anya Taylor-Joy doesn't steal the screen in this movie.  She's an absolutely incredible actress who doesn't do a darned thing wrong in this move.  The problem is how the character is written.  Dementus, as the villain, is charismatic as heck.  He's evil through and through.  But he's one of those villains who really just enjoys being a villain.  He's fun to watch.  Furiosa, in contrast, prides herself on her silence.  It kind of worked for Mad Max.  Mad Max was often quiet in these grandiose, over-the-top sequences.  But it worked, becuase Max was a hunter.  There was almost a Punisher vibe to the entire character. That silence creeped up on his prey.  Instead, Furiosa's silence, while not being empty, was almost used to make people ignore her.  It's smart, from a character's perspective.  A silent girl can't get abused.  But she's also driving a movie (no pun intended). 

A movie like Furiosa is incredibly hard to make because these movies tend to be intentionally low on plot.  George Miller might be the king of being a genius filmmaker and someone who can turn in something that is almost exclusively a guilty pleasure movie.  I don't deny that Miller is talented.  He really is.  He knows how to shoot a movie that is action packed.  But 41-year-old me really wants more to a movie than just two-and-a-half hours of nonstop choreographed violence.  I would say that's a me thing.  After all, the first time that I watched the first John Wick, I had the same complaint.  It was only after multiple viewings did I really learn to love that movie.  But it was through watching sequels that made me reevaluate what made a John Wick movie work.  I've seen all of the Mad Max movies.  While I have a place in my heart for The Road Warrior, even now I have to admit that I barely remember the film.  The more entries into George Miller's universe I get, the less I really care about anything that I watched before.  Ultimately, Miller doesn't have much to say outside the fact that vehicular murder is kind of fun to watch.  Yeah, Furiosa herself is a sympathetic character, but I don't know if that's even why Miller is making these movies.  He knew that Furiosa was a pull-away character in Fury Road and that he was being accepted as a respected auteur.  Making a Furiosa prequel probably gave him the opportunity to do what he's been fighting to do his entire life.

I said that I was going to write less in these things because I can't maintain a heavy writing load while trying to write a book at the same time.  In this case, I don't really need an excuse to cut and run.  The movie is so simplistic that I can't really say that the movie stuck to my ribs.  While interesting and well-made, it's nothing really all that new to me.  I really liked Chris Helmsworth's Dementus.  I kind of think that the end sticks the landing.  The fight choreography is cool.  But I also don't think that we get the arc that I want to see in these movies.  I don't think that there's much vulnerability with this movie either.  It's what we have seen before and that's fine, I guess.  But when this one comes to the Oscars (if it does), I know that I'll only be rooting for it because it is one of those rare genre pieces that get embraced by the Academy.  If all is on the table, it's just a fun movie without a lot of meat.