In between each of his Mad Max instalments, George Miller might be the most unpredictable major filmmaker on the planet. In the 30-year wait between Beyond Thunderdome and Fury Road, he brought us a quartet of cutesy talking animal movies in the forms of two Babes and two Happy Feets, whilst the 9-year gap between Fury Road and this latest instalment Furiosa, contained the bizarre Turkish genie love story Three Thousand Years of Longing. Yet, let it not be said that Mad Max might not benefit from these excursions – Fury Road was made eternal by Miller’s hard-earned mastery of seamless effects work and now Furiosa continues the theme established by Three Thousand… of humanity’s need for stories to craft the most epic Mad Max yet. It’s a film with great scope, and though that removes the mind-alteringly pure thrill of its predecessor, it grants this prequel a unique depth within the Mad Max canon.
Eschewing the franchise’s marquee star pretty much entirely, Furiosa instead fills in the gaps (both for its title character and the wider world of the Wasteland) of the mythos that will eventually lead us to Fury Road. We follow Furiosa (played first as a child by the very impressive Alyla Browne and then by Anya Taylor-Joy) from her youth in the Green Place, through her kidnapping by vicious wasteland goons and eventual rise through the ranks of the army of Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme), gaining the position of trust that will, years later, allow her to free his five wives.
There is, of course, some set-in-stone stuff to get to here – Furiosa will become a commander in Immortan Joe’s army, she’ll lose an arm, and she *won’t* find the Green Place again – but Miller and co-writer Nick Lathouris give us plenty of mysteries along the way. Chief among them is; ‘how did the spirited and moral Furiosa, raised by warrior mothers, end up in the service of the Wasteland’s most powerful misogynist?’, a question answered by Furiosa’s burning hatred for another of post-apocalyptic Australia’s most heinous villains.
This is Dementus (Chris Hemsworth), the flamboyant and unpredictable leader of an empire built out of rogue biker gangs, like a sort of diesel-powered Kublai Khan. It’s him who first kidnaps Furiosa, killing her mother and taking her impossibly far from home and it’s Immortan Joe, who is actually a more complete and interesting character here than he was in Fury Road, who offers Furiosa the best chance of revenge. It’s a sweeping tale of war between warlords and, though it does admittedly take a real while to properly get started, Miller really manages to capture the feeling of a folk legend being told around a campfire as Furiosa, Dementus, Joe, and plenty of minions get to annihilating each other.
Though a lot of the single-minded economy of expression that made Fury Road so exceptional is gone here (and, honestly, rather missed at points), Miller still doesn’t make Furiosa *too* talky. Taylor-Joy barely speaks, her Furiosa a creature of pure instinct and anger, and she’s still deeply compelling, especially in a tentative romance with fellow warrior Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke, as soulful as one can be in a film like this) that convinces even in the limited time granted to it.
Much more verbose is Dementus, Hemsworth clearly having an absolute blast untethered from the MCU, flinging about insane line readings and swirling mania, all while keeping a human core intact. It’s probably the best work of his career, the most compelling and layered villain in the series’ history, while all the supporting roles are filled equally well – just like in Fury Road, the stunt performers here are second to none, pulling off ridiculous action whilst imbuing every crash, brawl, and gunfight with humour and personality.
I’m not sure there are any set-pieces in Furiosa that would give the best stuff in Fury Road a run for its money, but Miller is hardly slacking off in the action department. Bathed in nuclear oranges and electric blues, the centrepiece battles and chases are still absolutely thrilling, packed to bursting with a combination of inch-perfect practical know-how and pure imagination. After the purely experiential combat of Fury Road, here we get a real look at how ‘road war’ really *works*, adding a couple of layers of tactical complexity to action that is still, mostly, perfectly-marshalled chaos.
In following up, plain and simple, one of the best pure action movies ever made, Furiosa was always going to struggle to stack up to its predecessor – partly just because one of the things that made Fury Road such an instant classic was its wild unfamiliarity and freshness, things impossible to replicate in a direct follow up. Yet, the new identity that Miller finds for this instalment is still thrilling, both deepening and widening this mad and brutal world. The tragically poor box office returns that Furiosa has seen so far means that this is likely the last trip we’ll take to the Wasteland (at least the last one in George Miller’s hands), but it’s a more than worthy goodbye.
Jack Blackwell – Film Reviews 