If it does nothing else then Furiosa: a Mad Max Saga reminds us what a bolt from the blue Mad Max: Fury Road was. How, after a string of Mad Maxes offering diminishing thrills (I mean Beyond the Thunderdome), writer director George Miller seemed to turn to gentler pursuits – Babe, Happy Feet – before blistering back in 2015 with a sensational action movie that was almost operatic in ambition. Mad Max to the max.
Now he’s back again, nine years on from Fury Road, having another go at the same thing, telling the origin story of Furiosa, the one-armed badass then played by Charlize Theron and now played by Alyla Browne (as a wee kid) and Anya Taylor-Joy (grown up).
Furiosa is the noble-born child abducted, enslaved and eventually against the odds hacking her way to boss level by learning warrior skills. It’s a version of the story of Ben-Hur, and self-consciously so – her first mentor, vainglorious wilderness warlord Dementus, rides around in a Roman chariot pulled by three motorbikes. He’s played by Chris Hemsworth as a blowhard populist politician – promising much, full of catchphrases, not so hot at delivery. Later, the charismatic, cool and taciturn Praetorian Jack (another nod to the Rome of Ben-Hur), this movie’s stand-in for Max Max himself, will finish her education.
As in Fury Road there is one massive central action spectacular piece, the mad dash through the desert by a gigantic truck under attack. Jack (played by Tom Burke) drives, Furiosa clings on beneath only inches from the road below while enemies attack from all sides using every possible means. It took 78 days to film, apparently, and you can believe it.
This film re-affirms the Max Max franchise as the punk petrolhead fantasy and confirms that actually Fury Road did this just a bit better. It’s central showpiece action sequence fitted more organically into the whole. In fact, if there is is a complaint against Furiosa, it’s that it does eventually feel just a touch like one damn thing after another.
Miller borrows gaming’s point-and-shoot style here and there and his use of CG throughout is smart. Like the way that Alyla Browne is being morphed into Anya Taylor-Joy long before Browne has left the story – CGing in Taylor-Joy’s eye shape, for instance – and towards the end there may also be some borrowing of Charlize Theron’s features to suggest that the younger woman has now become the fully fledged Furiosa of Fury Road (I might be wrong about the CG here, but something is going on, perhaps just hair and make-up?).
Social media likes to blah on about this movie being a flop, and that’s because of girls not being credible badasses or something. But it’s the preponderance of undifferentiated snarling old white guys getting served their asses that gets just a bit tiresome in this movie. Nor was the movie a flop, or else no one would have greenlit the next movie in the sequence, which is already written (as was this when Fury Road was being made) and ready to go.
Those caveats to one side, lots to like. Hemsworth is brilliantly over the top and appears to be doing a version of Jason Momoa. Burke is stoic in stiff leather as Jack. Taylor-Joy gives us all the badass stares in the book as Furiosa – by name and nature. At one point she almost smiles, and it feels like the sun has come out (in a movie that’s wall-to-wall scorching desert sun that might not be the cleverest metaphor).
But really it’s a triumph of production design, stunt choreography, cinematography (new guy Simon Duggan taking over from John Seale, who was tempted out of retirement for Fury Road but wouldn’t be tempted twice) and… driving. Many bikes and cars were harmed in the making of this film and watching people drive and die, drive and die, is really what this movie is about. Gentlemen, and ladies, start your engines.
Furiosa: a Mad Max Saga – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2024
