As the world falls, young Furiosa is snatched from the Green Place of Many Mothers into the hands of a great biker horde led by the warlord Dementus. Sweeping through the wasteland, they encounter...
“Lightning never strikes twice" is one of those famous idioms that has often been proven right or wrong in the filmmaking industry depending on the insanely specific circumstances surrounding it and the odds that idiom would ring true for “Furiosa”, the long awaited prequel to the critically acclaimed Mad Max: Fury Road were called into question a lot. After nine whole years, I’m here to say…...
…..it’s another lovely day in the wasteland.
George Miller has a scalpel-like precession to how he infuses his manic energy into his movies but his tactic in breaking this movie’s events into acts resembling regrown Hydra heads is brave. He paints it the same way you’d watch an anime, playing ballet with the spectacle but with gumption and a keen eye.
Even with an endless barrage of post-apocalyptic tales constantly skydiving off the horizon in recent times, Mad Max has always had a way of making the most simplistic of environments stand out amongst the others. Despite being a barren rendering of hell on earth, the world remains every bit as fascinating as the first time around; places once whispered about or seen briefly are now shown in full visual grandiosity and the merging of arid landscapes and lucid imagery elevates this production design beyond just tapestry to paint an incredibly vibrant painting on.
This presentation’s insistence on matching the frenetic and visceral nature of a Mad Max flick doesn’t take long to bear fruit as it’s very unabashed in its R-rating and captures that 80’s Road Warrior surrealism in its atmosphere. But the cinematography comes a distant second in matching those efforts, deliberately jostling you around to where it numbs you into submission only to be awoken by the tenacity of its editing, 3/4th’s of which are seamless. And don’t even get me started on the dense sound design too with the typical rocking propulsive Junkie XL score thankfully offering more variety in its synths, rhythms and melodies than Rebel Moon did. Between the imposing choreography and relentless action sequences not only taking the concentrated intensity of Fury Road and leveling it out on a wider, broader scale and canvas but emulating old-school westerns—specifically that of Sam Peckinpah films—it does make up for how light on action it was, even if what we’ve seen has already been topped before, with its precise pacing.
This bit also doesn’t bare much repeating: just like Fury Road, this one is teeming with colorful, enigmatic characters writ large and all bolstered by rich performances across the board. Anya Taylor Joy brings an animalistic mirth to her performance, emotionally wrought of someone fighting for survival while trying to maintain who they are and Chris Hemsworth radiates with the type of scuzzy magnetism that reminds you of how much range he truly has when the Marvel shackles have been let loose.
As a Homeric odyssey that broadens the ever-expanding dystopian world in which it is set, the story that accompanies it had a lot to live up to, putting aside how the narrative at play here is more episodic than its predecessor and covers a lot more ground. Now the Mad Max series has never exactly been known for its intricate plotting, but this solitary journey knows better than to mess with its successful formula and sacrificing its predecessors runaway-train momentum to allow the world to speak and breathe for itself was a hearty gamble that does gradually pay off in hindsight. It’s idly frustrating in the first few chapters due to its stop-start chain-jerking and there were, at best, two, maybe three plot holes I caught through the whole affair but once it picks up, you won’t want to take your eyes off the screen; I know I sure didn’t.
The chassis might be familiar but it’s a completely different engine powering this, and for the better. It isn’t without emotional stakes and it makes sure to resonate with you on a humanitarian level, while being structurally similar to the 1979 original as a coming of age story, touching on the subtext of generational trauma that merges into pure feminine rage from Furiosa's adolescence to maturity. Hefty attention is paid to how the characters are portrayed here in general, thus taking most of the relationships, connections and losses Furiosa has suffered and turning them into such ironclad, vital subtext, it retroactively enriches Fury Road with greater emotional heft. And it goes somewhat beyond attaching itself to the same hip in regards to the primitive but fleeting instinct of raw humanity struggling to survive in spite of itself. Of testing fate, giving into the worst parts of ourselves through compromised morality, the futility of rage, ubiquity of war and the implausibility behind maintaining hope.
Yes, these themes are certain staples of apocalyptic scourges and they’re expected by this point but Fury Road’s balance of cerebral chaos and low-key twisted Biblical themes fit so immaculately alongside this prequel: most of the events constructed in this movie seem specifically designed to scour the Wasteland for the emotion required to fuel that.
That being said, there is somewhat of a….a weightlessness to the two and a half hour affair. What we love about Fury Road is here and it’s done well to service the overarching narrative being told but it feels kinda muted, due to not fully exaggerating all its features.
Not everything is practical in this movie unfortunately, and the VFX used to support said sequences do clash frequently with those practical effects, the lighting and the production design on more than one occasion, leading it to occasionally tread on uncanny valley as a result. And sometimes you can’t help but contemplate Furiosa’s positioning in the story itself; I can understand some complaints from a vocal minority saying the film used her less like an active participant in the story’s progression and more as a lever to kickstart the events that occur. Then again, they did the same thing to Max in Fury Road, making him the observer of this weird world meant to pull us in…..so it’s up for debate, I guess.
Overall, a film of abundance. If Fury Road was the exhale to this story, Furiosa is the inhale.
