Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga Movie Review and Rating

Review: George Miller finds so much new ground to cover with Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga that perfectly justifies its own existence. While Fury Road was interested in such a contained story propelled by larger-than-life action sequences and big rig warfare spawning from a game of cat and mouse, Furiosa fills in the gaps of a world much larger than what is expected. Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth stun in a prequel well worth the wait.

anya taylor joy furiosa movie 2024 — Anya Taylor-Joy as Furiosa in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga Movie Review

Nearly a decade (!) after Mad Max: Fury Road rewrote the rules for what action blockbusters should be – a rambunctious shotgun blast of high-stakes precision and craft mixed with oil tanker duals to the death – director George Miller is back with Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga to prove that his perfect vision wasn’t a fluke, and that it’s just the beginning of the next great action franchise.

And while Fury Road was interested in such a contained story propelled by larger-than-life action sequences and big rig warfare spawning from a game of cat and mouse, Furiosa fills in the gaps of a world much larger than what is expected. It’s an epic for its various landscapes and settings, each improving the lore without sidelining its story.

But it’s still hard to overstate just how much Fury Road and Furiosa compliment one another. Furiosa invigorates its predecessor by thoroughly expanding on the titular character’s backstory – from young girl to proven warrior. Alyla Browne (as a spry youngling showing the signs of a Furiosa one wouldn’t want to mess with for a surprising amount of the film’s runtime) and Anya Taylor-Joy combine to deliver a character that acts and talks in sync with the original fighter in great detail.

The two are used as a cypher to depict the downfall of a post-apocalyptic truce between warlords Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme) and Dementus (Chris Hemsworth). It’s astonishingly hard to describe Hemsworth’s work in this, both as a tyrant with a ludicrous thirst for blood, and a gutsy poser with no control over his own clan.

And Anya Taylor-Joy proves once again that her physicality and screen presence is amongst the best in the business. Furiosa internalizes her trauma and grief, and Taylor-Joy achieves great results as she feels the world around her slowly closing in and devolving into chaos and insanity.

Tom Burke makes an appearance as well as a partner in crime with Furiosa – one who assumes a similar sense of humanity despite the world emptying itself of people like them. He’s the closest we get to a Tom Hardy/Mad Max male figure in Furiosa, but he stays at such a distance where you never feel the movie pulling away and shifting from its main protagonist.

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It did take a bit of time for Furiosa to pin down its own story and objective as it commits hard to the worldbuilding this time around. It’s quite jarring at times the scope at which the movie strives for, building complex cities and clans in the same world that felt void of those in its prior entry of the franchise, like the only civilization left on planet Earth is that of the Citadel. In fact it almost resembles the Beyond Thunderdome era of the franchise moreso than the 2015 film that serves as its immediate connector.

And I could spend ages talking about the immaculate action sequences that George Miller continues to pull together unlike anybody else. Much like Fury Road, it’s hard to comprehend just how this was made, as if every scene took weeks and months to perfect. It relies much more on CGI this time around, evident in a few scenes you’ll pinpoint as you watch it, but in a world that feels so hyper and surreal, it doesn’t feel much like a knock.

I imagined it would be impossible to write a film that works in tandem with perhaps the most accomplished action movie of the 21^st century, but George Miller finds so much new ground to cover with Furiosa that justifies another dozen movies in the franchise. Honestly – if they don’t carve out another couple entries I’d be surprised because there’s just that much to explore, all told in incredible detail through the eyes of Imperator Furiosa.

Best New Movie

Genre: Action, Adventure, Science Fiction

See Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) in theaters now

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