Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Furiosa portrayed by Anya Taylor-Joy

“FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA” (George Miller, 2024) Furiosa, or as I would call it; Furiosa: The Importance of Tires, is a very unique prequel when it comes to the conventions it follows. We get a very detailed and up close look of The Wasteland from the fiery pits of Gas Town to the intricate twists and turns of the Bullet Farm. While it is interesting to see these locations in such a large scale, especially when they were only mentioned in passing in the 2015 film Mad Max: Fury Road, a part of me was left content while the other part thought it may have been better off leaving it out entirely. A big part of any movie is the idea of story structure. That is, what do you choose to show in your story to help captivate the audience. Personally, I felt that this movie did too much when it came to the backstories and worldbuilding. It invested too much in characters that didn’t have an impact to the story. For example, in Mad Max: Fury Road, we see a doctor in a few different scenes working with background characters. You don’t know his backstory, only that he has medical knowledge and is kind of gross. In Furiosa, we learn all about his previous gang, what his name is, he’s traded to a different team, the list goes on.

Other characters in Furiosa get a similar treatment, except for Furiosa herself. I personally loved Anya Taylor Joy’s portrayal of the character, however I feel that the use of her character was left unutilized. It certainly doesn’t help that she doesn’t make an appearance until halfway through the movie, but even when she does show up her character only has thirty lines. While the silent-as-a-stone motif is played off well by Taylor Joy it felt less intimidating than Charlize Theron’s Furiosa, who in my opinion is one of the best Female action heroes of all time. The saving grace of this movie is the stunt work and cinematography. When this movie picks up, it picks up. My two favorite scenes from this movie are the Bullet Farm battle and the Highway chase. Both scenes are shot beautifully start to finish with each beat moving the action along. The problem lies with what happens between these scenes. It felt like each scene was so direct and didn’t leave much to the viewers imagination. I understand Miller’s approach of making this movie an odyssey and having it connect with Fury Road but I personally would’ve cut twenty minutes off of this one. Doing so would result in a more structured story and would connect the two films together, which is ultimately the goal with these types of films. Overall it’s a 7/10, 70%, C-