- Starring
- Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth
- Director
- George Miller
- Rating
- R
- Genre
- Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
- Release date
- May 24, 2024
Overall Score
Rating Overview
Rating Summary
The Mad Max franchise, created by George Miller, is a series of post-apocalyptic action films that began with “Mad Max” in 1979, starring Mel Gibson. The series is known for its high-octane chases, dystopian landscapes, and innovative stunts. “Mad Max: Fury Road” (2015) introduced the character Furiosa, portrayed by Charlize Theron, a fierce warrior seeking redemption and freedom.
Furiosa
Starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is a 2024 post-apocalyptic action-adventure film that serves as both a spin-off and prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road. The movie follows a young Furiosa, abducted from her homeland, as she navigates a battle between warring factions in a desolate world.
Furiosa Review
The technical achievements of many modern sequels, spinoffs, and reboots vastly outstrip those that came before. No series of films better exemplifies this than the Alien franchise. Yet, with budgets that dwarf those of the originals by a hundred million dollars (even after they are adjusted for inflation), Prometheus, Alien vs. Predator, and the like are utterly generic, with characters no one remembers and plotlines better forgotten. Conversely, Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley remains legendary nearly fifty years after the release of the original Alien.
The reasons for this are enough to fill pages. Suffice it to say that films like Alien, Predator, and Mad Max were creative pieces filled with compelling characters about whose well-being audiences cared and original villains and environments that piqued the imagination. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for most of their grandchildren.
2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road, while an imperfect film that focused far too little on its titular character, was unique in modern sequels in that it built on and even improved on many aspects of the original. Those who watched were treated to some of the most exciting and viscerally provocative visuals since the first Matrix. However, the charismatic performances and easy chemistry of its central trio of characters are what kept the audience grounded and engaged with the relentless high-octane action.
Tom Hardy, who played Mad Max, could make a C-SPAN transcript seem captivating, and Academy Award winner Charlize Theron is no slouch. However, Nicholas Hoult’s full-bodied transformation into a zealot-turned-traitor whose naivety and relative innocence were the surprising emotional glue for the picture. Despite its over-the-top action and relentless explosions, audiences found themselves invested in the main trio and their flight from tyranny, even if the dialogue was minimal and the plot thinner than mountain air.
Fast forward to today. Taking audiences from her childhood all the way to the events that initiated Fury Road, Furiosa is less compelling than even the narrative acid trip that was Beyond Thunderdome (at least that gave us Master Blaster). This is largely thanks to director George Miller’s excruciatingly slow pacing and the film’s bloated 5 Act structure. Its two prologues (yes, there are two) are each longer than a Catholic Easter Vigil and provide such needless and redundant info that it’s difficult not to drift to your favorite app while watching.
The frustration is that Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga has a number of interesting ideas and plot points that are maddeningly underdeveloped and used more as excuses to move the action along and to get characters to where they need to be than as organic storytelling components. For instance, three strongholds are within driving distance of one another in the Wasteland, each possessing something the other needs to survive. When Chris Hemsworth’s Dr. Dementus gains control over one of them, it throws their balanced symbiosis into chaos… at least that’s what we are told. Really, it’s just an excuse to keep him out of the way and in one place long enough for Furiosa to grow up and still know where he is when it’s time for his part in her story to continue.
With all of this, the film’s almost crippling weakness is its lead character. Ostensibly, Furiosa would like to get revenge on those who caused her pain at an early age, but she seemingly has no plan or will to act until a lifetime of happenstance places her within striking distance of those who wronged her. Instead, she’s a virtual non-entity for much of the film. When she is finally arbitrarily promoted from Faceless Nobody who’s excellent at everything to Ill-defined Somebody who’s excellent at everything because it says that it’s time in the script, audiences will likely not care.
None of this is helped by the character’s almost complete silence throughout, nor the way in which she expresses her pain. Fury Road was an almost tactile experience that tapped into the primal core of every man, whereas Furiosa’s silent weeping sucks the energy out of scenes.
In a recent interview, Miller patted himself on the back while informing a reporter that the two actresses who play Furiosa have only 30 lines between the two of them in this two-and-a-half-hour movie. If those she interacted with were mildly interesting characters who filled the silence, or the action leading up to her promotion and final showdown were meaningful, this wouldn’t be such a big deal, but except for Chris Hemsworth’s Dementus (who is painfully absent for three-fifths of the film), there is no one who says or does anything that anyone cares about. There’s an attempt to introduce a love interest for Furiosa, but he and Taylor-Joy have as much chemistry as a broken Bunsen burner, and he comes off as a very poor man’s Mad Max.
While competently filmed, the action seems like mostly perfunctory filler that establishes much of what was already and far more masterfully established in Fury Road. Furthermore, most of it feels redundant, repetitive, and recycled from both previous scenes and its predecessor (some of it actually is from Fury Road). Finally, there are several instances when large panning establishing shots and even many action pieces don’t entirely pass the CGI muster (I saw it in an XD theater. It could be that other cinematic experiences do a better job of hiding these imperfections.).
Furiosa gets two things very right. The first is its unrelenting attention to detail. Every feature of the design feels authentically post-apocalyptic and organic to its surroundings, and the overall aesthetic is true to the previous entries. The second is Hemsworth. He swings for the rafters in every scene and is utterly unrecognizable as twisted Dr. Dementus.
If you’re a Mad Max junkie, or you just want to watch some $#!t blow up, Furiosa might be worth a viewing, but if you’re not interested in an early draft of Fury Road that’s 45 minutes too long, maybe wait until it’s streaming.
WOKE REPORT
Mixed Chicks In Flicks
- There’s a very tiny amount of Hollywood-mandated diversity that makes very little sense based on the world of the film. It’s annoying, not because of the diversity, but because it feels out of place and artificial. However, I promise it is very little – just enough to make the filmmakers feel good about themselves.
- The opening scene shows a small society almost entirely made up of spindly armed supermodel women who also happen to be Amazonian-like warriors. However, the film never makes anyone into a “girl boss” that’s the physical match of men, much larger and stronger than them. Rather, they are excellent marksmen and riders (both of horses and motorcycles) and quick on their feet.
- This is another very brief sequence and almost not worth mentioning.
James Carrick
James Carrick is a passionate film enthusiast with a degree in theater and philosophy. James approaches dramatic criticism from a philosophic foundation grounded in aesthetics and ethics, offering insight and analysis that reveals layers of cinematic narrative with a touch of irreverence and a dash of snark.
Oh great… Mad Maxine… Slay queen, yasssd, go girl boss. Yeah… screw this.
Did you not read the review? It’s specifically stated that she’s not a girlboss. We never once see her beat up men or anything like that. She can drive well, and she shoots people from far away using a sniper rifle…. and even those skills are taught to her by her male love interest. I saw the movie last night and it’s significantly less woke than Fury Road. Fury Road even had twice as many female characters.
It’s kind of where we’re at now. After several years of garbage female characters, people are going to be leery, and it’s hard to blame them.
Guns are meant to be an equalizer between the sexes. It actually makes sense if a smaller target like a woman has an easy time dealing with big burly dudes because she can just shoot them.
However, because Hollywood hates guns so much because they want Americans to give up their guns (which has never worked out well for any country that disarmed it’s citizens, and Marxists have already shown people why nobody should give up their guns for Marxists), they’ve done so much stupid kung fu type stuff without any of the mystical aspects of kung fu movies like chi. Xu Xiaodong shows how well that works in real life.
Personally, I don’t find action prequels exciting. I realize that she might die, which would cause a temporal paradox and blow a hole in the universe, but I don’t really expect that to happen.
There’s a difference between being leery and automatically hating anything that has a female lead. We have to judge this stuff on a case by case basis rather than screeching “girlboss” and “woke” at everything that doesn’t have a white male lead. I’m a straight male. Yet Alien is my all time favorite movie. And Lara Croft is my all time favorite video game character. There are correct ways to have a female lead in a movie or tv show or video game. Furiosa is a good movie(not a great one), but the way Furiosa is written is very realistic. She never once even comes close to overpowering a male character in hand to hand combat. She avoids hand to hand combat altogether. We can’t say “we don’t hate female characters, we like well written ones” and then at the same time get ticked off at every movie that has a female lead without ever giving the movie a chance.
As for your second point, Hollywood hates guns in real life. They don’t mind them in their movies. 99.9999% of action movies even to this day have tons of guns.
And while I’m a gun owner myself, I wouldn’t say it’s never worked out for a country that banned guns. People from countries like England and Australia say they feel much safer in those countries than they do in America. Shrug. It wouldn’t work in America, but it has worked in other places.
Lol. You think people are safer in England and Australia? Their governments impose their ridiculous will on the citizens without a second thought. Lockdowns, check. Forced injections, check. Green new scam, check. Banning fertilizers, check. There’s no fear of retribution by the people. Also, people don’t get shot they get stabbed and at record levels. In England the population has been replaced by “migrants”. The migrants are now running the country. There are actually parts of the capital where English citizens are afraid to go. They’re in no way better off there. The two countries you mentioned are basically testing grounds for what’s to come in America. If they feel safe they definitely shouldn’t.
We’re sitting ducks here. don’t give up your guns.
Everything’s getting hit by the Kathleen Kennedy treatment… Put a chick in it and make her gay, and lame. What happened to the good ol’ Mad Mad movies with Max actually in it?
Max was in every other Mad Max Movie. This is a prequel for a different character.
Another guy who didn’t read the review or watch the movie. She’s not gay at all. She has a male love interest who teaches her everything she knows. I was shocked at how un-girlboss Furiosa was. If you actually bothered to watch the movie, you would probably enjoy how it never shows Furiosa or any woman being as strong as any man.
So after this woman is done fighting this army of he creatures who wins?
Make a dystopian movie with a female lead and everyone will be happy but no try to ride on the coat tails of a classic instead. I don’t know why they keep trying this, it never works. The audience for Max has primarily always been male, are they dumb or something. Is there anyone that honestly thinks this will be a smash at the box office? It will be declared a success if it makes a profit at all . Stop annoying the audience with your agendas.
Fury Road is, by far, the highest grossing movie in the franchise. Yet, Furiosa is the co-lead of that movie. Some have even complained that she’s more of the lead than Max is. And the entire plot of that movie is women escaping from men. Compared to Fury Road, Furiosa was much less woke.
I still would’ve preferred another tradition Mad Max film in which Max is the the main character. I don’t care that’s he’s been in every film. Without him there is no film.
You’re not wrong.
I haven’t seen it yet. But I do read spoilers. But, what I do know, is that Furiosa is poised to have the lowest Memorial Day weekend opening box office since 1983. Considering how high movie tickets are today compared to 1983, and the fact that Furiosa has no major competition (other than the new Apes film, which has been out for weeks) , it’s a certifiable box office disaster of epic proportions. Turns out Mad Max fans want a film the features, you know…Max. And not his DEI replacement.
The only movie in the franchise to make over 40 million was Fury Road, which had twice as many female characters. Plus, many make the argument that Furiosa was basically the leas in Fury Road anyway. If you actually bothered to watch the movie, you would know Furiosa isn’t meant to be Max’s replacement. She’s nothing like him. She’s basically a victim throughout the whole movie who has things happen to her, rather than making things happen herself.
And can we please stop blaming the gender of the main character for movies flopping. Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning, The Fall Guy, Napoleon, Shazam 2, etc. All those movies had famous white male leads. And all of those movies were very entertaining. Yet all of them flopped. Meanwhile, Barbie of all things became the highest grossing movie of last year. It’s not about the gender of the main character. Heck, Godzilla Vs Kong 2 is making $$$ despite the fact that its main characters are two giant monsters.
Dude, you need to touch grass. It’s a prequel to a sequel no one asked for. Mel Gibson is Mad Max, nobody cares about this new one whether she is a girl boss or not. It’s time we get our own heroes and villains and start new franchises, instead of milking 40 year old ones to death. Give us new and original, not She-Ra of the desert.
I heard this was out, but instead of wanting to go watch this… it just reminded me of mad max and i looked to see if there were plans to make a mad max movie.
“Suffice it to say that films like Alien, Predator, and Mad Max were creative pieces filled with compelling characters about whose well-being audiences cared and original villains and environments that PEAKED the imagination. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for most of their grandchildren.”
The word is “piqued”. If interest “peaks”, that means that it was once popular until everyone stopped caring.
Watch out for those homophones. The grammar apps don’t seem to know how to use them. Or, as the poster in my middle school computer lab put it: “Dew knot trussed yore spell chequer too fined awl yore mistakes”.
This comments section is so disappointing. I saw this movie recently and was pleasantly surprised by how little wokeness it has. There are 2 female characters. Neither of whom is ever shown overpowering a single male. They’re only able to kill using guns (usually using snipers from far away). This is exactly the kind of realistic, powered down female character you’ve all been asking for, yet some of you are still complaining just because the movie isn’t all about a male character. It really makes me wonder how Alien or Aliens would go over with you guys if those movies came out for the first time today.
Hell, what about the Kill Bill movies? These people are not pleased with ANYTHING. The most nitpick things they get mad at. I’m honestly just going to start watching new movies and shows without reading the reviews anymore. I thoroughly enjoyed the film.
The Bride in Kill Bill is hardly invulnerable. Even with that, there were a lot of times when the story made clear to show that the villains could have killed her and chose not to, which gives her plot armor that can feel hollow and unfulfilling. The villain loses because he shows himself to be honorable on multiple occasions, which is a 180 from many stories.
The simple truth is that people have seen stories like this so often, and better stories to boot, that they’ve lost interest.
“When she is finally arbitrarily promoted from Faceless Nobody who’s excellent at everything to Ill-defined Somebody who’s excellent at everything”… Smells like girlboss?
Yeah, it’s borderline. She’s certainly got hints of Mary Sueness, but the story is so thin and her part in it so worthless that it balances it out.
It’s kind of where we’re at. It sounds like this is a fairly average story, where there’s hints and elements but nothing overproportioned.
That said, if my complaint is that my food is too spicy, the solution is not going to be, “Eat this. For Cajun food, it’s pretty mild.”
Cajun food is just really spicy, even if some stuff is spicier than others. and if we say that movies are completely unable to escape girlboss elements, it’s better to avoid altogether.
I blame Hollywood for just inundating people with stuff until they got sick of it and then refusing to offer something without those elements.
And personally, action prequels bore me because characters have obvious plot armor. They’re not going to have Furiosa die because her death would cause a temporal paradox that’d blow up two thirds of the universe, so why should I ever feel there are any stakes when she does something dangerous?
JC, that’s not what happens. She’s not good at everything. She’s good at the things everyone else in that world is also good at. She has necessary survival skills (shooting, riding bikes, etc.) taught to her by her male love interest (who’s a masculine white male). We never see her being good at something that most of the men aren’t also good at. And a Mary Sue/GirlBoss character wouldn’t lose so often and suffer so many consequences. She’s the opposite of a character like Rey. She’s exactly the sort of female character we’ve all been saying Hollywood needs to utilize more often. She never overshadows the male characters. In fact, she’s not even one of the 2 most memorable characters in the movie. Dementus and Jack are both more memorable. And there are about 4 different male characters who have more dialogue than her. There are already tons of people on social media saying the movie would have done better at the box office if they had turned her into a girlboss power fantasy and completely committed to that, rather than toning her down in order to be realistic. Most reasonable people won’t find her or the movie to be woke if they actually watch it. But, I’ve seen some say that any movie with a female lead who isn’t 100% a damsel is automatically woke.
Just because the lead character is female doesn’t mean there aren’t other perfectly rational reasons why the movie isn’t good.
I never saw any of the Mad Max films, so I have no opinion on that. I do, however, vaguely remember seeing Prometheus. The leading lady from that film was probably the best and only good character in it. I think she was a scientist and a Christian following her faith to search for the possible extraterrestrial origins of humanity. She was not an action heroine. The other female scientist was cold, unlikable by design, and got humorously squashed by a giant alien starship falling over on top of her in painfully slow motion. Like the review says, the rest of the movie is best left forgotten.
It’s not that we don’t like female leads. It’s that we don’t like shallow and poorly defined characters who happen to be female (or male, for that matter). Or movies where indulgent filmmakers can’t string together a coherent, logical sequence without needlessly padding the runtime. Or when the overuse of poor special effects makes us nauseous.
She´s not excellent in everything. She is good at stuff post-apo people are good at because they have to, and she is mentored by – wait for it because it is unirronically shocking – a straight white man.
Though her threshold for pain is incredibly high, I wouldn’t consider Furiosa a girl boss or Mary Sue. And the movie is in no way woke.
Conversely, Furiosa’s backstory and the basic plot enhanced the action and added to the overall experience. I was immediately invested in the character given the first sequence and cared more about what transpired as a result.
i disagree with this review
The world would be boring if we all agreed 👍 n everything.
I thought the movie was great. I am disappointed it didn’t open with big numbers. That probably means we wont see another Mad Max movie.
i was hoping for a ozploitation middle finger salute to the wokeness of current films – but it didnt really do it. having a female lead is basically what killed the movie imo. if it wasnt a mad max film , it wouldve been very good.. but theres no need to rebrand and reboot the franchise into this kind of safe territory . mad max is all about a guy called max who is angry and a SM biker gang who killed his child and terrorized his wife and a community… preceding films built on that.. but always using the original elements.
People are stupid or what, Fury Road was 100x more woke than Furiosa, i actually enjoyed both btw its good to watch a movie led by a female character for a change, Furiosa is a great character
The movie was boring. It did explain all the players in Fury Road but it was structured as a documentary of sorts. At times it had narration, like “The Road Warrior” did, but sporadically throughout the film. It had chapter titles which was even more bizarre. The machinery and mayhem was pretty cool but so intense it was obvious blatant CGI. It was toooooo long. 2.5 hours.
As far as wokeness…. I think it was a story about Furiosa, and her history. I would much rather have it been about Mad Max. People claimed it had pedophilia in it and I didn’t even see any indication that she was actually sexually abused. Intent yes, but she seemed to always escape from the situation before something happened. So I did see a hint of wokeness. In the beginning women responded to the abdudtion of a child while the demasculinized men in the girls tribe didn’t even react in the slightest. It was just extremely out of place.
Praetorian Jack sucked really bad. Was he trying to act like a lousy actor or what? The movie fell flat when he appeared.
All in all, I’m glad I didn’t buy this video and only rented it. I doubt I’ll ever spend another 2.5 hours watching this again.
People saying there are no “girl boss” themes are delusional, BUT it’s not that bad. The beginning is the biggest girl boss moment where women chase down and beat the men with ease. Still watchable, as they make zero comments about women being better than men. The theme is present but very light.
I think what happened here was a collision between Hollywood bean counters and the real world audience. They thought they could pull in a bigger audience with a female lead instead of Max, but it backfired. The film will not nearly cover its cost. And although tough women in movies can be great, they overdid it a bit here, resulting in negative reviews from the few who were not deterred by the theme. Ultimately, it is not a good movie, but a similarly bad movie with Max probably would have pulled in double the numbers. This is the Mad Max franchise, not Mad Furiosa.
Ive heard a lot of Aussies hate this movie solely because of how woke it is and female focused but then I was pleasantly surprised to see how much screen time Chris Hemsworth gets when I finally saw it. He always looked great as Thor in the MCU but he really looks like a tough no nonsense man’s man in this, just the right amount of bulk, thickness and vascularity and not totally ripped and smooth shaven. His body looks like its been grinded and battered by the unforgiving elements of the dystopian world and hes handled huge loads of combat and challenges to his reign. A true on screen alpha male role model in a sea of weak leftist coded male protagonists like Chalamet in Dune, my personal comparison film for Furiosa. Hemsworths Dementus easily downs Chalamets Paul in one heavy shot if they met in the field, that’s for damn sure!
Absolutely. Chalamet as a lead in Dune is ridiculous. Weak, beta, talent-free, charismaless nepotist. Interestingly, leftism is far higher among nepotists than among non-nepotists in film business. Makes sense though, because they grew up privileged and narcissistic in a morally decaying part of society.
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