Furiosa Is The Rare Prequel That Isn’t Pointless
I am generally ambivalent about prequels. I think they come with a lot of baggage. Generally speaking I find them lacking in stakes and the drama can only be so dramatic as we have a sense of which characters make it to the subsequent film. With a stray moment here and there Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga avoids these problems.
The movie begins when the world is freshly fallen and Furiosa and her sister are discovered by a roving motorcycle gang (in very cool outfits). She is taken by them and we meet our main villain, Dementus, played deliciously by Chris Hemsworth. Furiosa’s mother Mary Jobassa (Charlee Fraser) is no slouch herself and goes after her daughter, causing Dementus and his crew all kinds of headaches and helping Furiosa get away. The next two hours is one violent emotional blow after another for poor Furiosa, but allows us to see a glimpse into the woman she becomes.
The world building of this film is immaculate, taking a lot of the cooler elements of Mad Max: Fury Road and expanding upon them, creating a very full-feeling Wasteland. The fullness of the movie does at a certain point begin to feel a little stifling, though. This movie may have more dialogue than all previous Mad Max films combined. Dementus says the most throughout the film, a trait I absolutely loved about him. He felt like a Shakespearean villain, a new direction from the mostly quiet fury of the other films. I did find myself wondering multiple times throughout the movie if this ancillary world building actually makes Fury Road less interesting. If we’re told how much of this world is actually made it eliminates some of the “hit the ground running” nature of Fury Road.
When young adult Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy) meets her mentor is when this film really shines. Her mentor never slows anything down and their chemistry and trust is electric and instant. Their care for each other is really the centerpiece of the back half and the action scenes they share feel almost tender at times. It almost makes the fact they don’t make it to the Green Place a fresh hurt. Furiosa’s challenge throughout this entire film is to make it back to the Green Place and she doesn’t achieve it which does in a way make the film feel unfinished. We know she doesn’t make it, if she did there’s no Fury Road. The film finds some short-term stakes to make up for this, but it still smacks of “just watch the next one.”
While I really enjoyed getting to know Furiosa and the Wasteland that shaped her on a different level I did find myself wondering when she had time to shave her armpits or why her greasepaint was sparklier than the men’s. This isn’t a conversation just for Furiosa but unfortunately it wasn’t engrossing enough for me to be unbothered by these things. Overall I liked it a lot and think the very ending (before the Mad Max: Fury Road supercut of credits) is yummy. Thanks, George Miller, for doing a decent job of showing how many men have to test a woman to make her become a hyper-competent action star.
I give Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (Warner Bros,; R; 2hrs 28mins) a 4 out of 5.
