Mad Max: Fury Road hit theaters in 2015 and became an instant action classic, wowing audiences with spectacular action sequences and riding the momentum to ten nominations at the Academy Awards. Its highly anticipated prequel has finally arrived with a heck of a legacy to live up to.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga provides the backstory of Furiosa (portrayed here as an adult by Anya Taylor-Joy and as a child by Alyla Browne) and her origins in the Green Place of Many Mothers. While foraging with a friend one day, Furiosa finds herself kidnapped by a biker horde led by the warlord Dementus (Chris Hemsworth) after his minions stumble upon the Green Place and try to pry its precise location out of her to give to Dementus. After Dementus takes her as his daughter, his gang happens upon the Citadel, presided over by the Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme). As the two tyrants fight for dominance of the Wasteland, Furiosa takes advantage of the conflict to gain both her freedom and revenge in hopes of also making her way home.
Fury Road featured over the top, practical stunts and production design that were accentuated by CGI and VFX rather than powered by them. The result was a film that appeared to defy the laws of physics, offering jaw dropping scenes of truck chases, fire breathing guitars, explosions, and human bodies that flipped and turned without somehow severely injuring the stunt actors involved. The same efforts return in Furiosa which, depending on viewers’ individual vantage points, could be a good or a bad thing. The prequel film features more elaborate chase scenes across the Australian outback with Immortan Joe’s chalky white war boys wrecking havoc and sacrificing them in his service, fights atop giant trucks, and all of the action packed scenes that made Fury Road so beloved. Furiosa also keeps much of the quality cinematography of its predecessor, including the magnificent blue-hued nighttime scenes along with pristinely framed white shots and excellent use of lighting to make the characters visually striking and standout (see this reviews headline photo). Indeed, most of what Fury Road compelling and interesting can be found in Furiosa.
And yet, the repetition of Fury Road’s greatness is what makes Furiosa feel so rote and uncompelling. The film feels like a continuation of what the audience has already been treated to and enthralled by without any additional innovation or raised stakes that build upon what came before. The elaborate chase scenes and explosions are just extended editions of scenes that are nearly a decade old at this point and no longer carry the shock and awe of when they were first brought to screen. Same for Furiosa’s cinematography that while visually appealing is not as arresting the second time around. The film’s bread and butter is a meal that audiences have already consumed and being served it again with just a little more parsley on top just feels like having leftovers. On top of these issues, the VFX in the film makes the usage of green screen obvious at times, a stunning setback for a franchise that was so pristine in its visual presentation in its last entry that many mistakenly believe that Fury Road used no CGI at all.
In addition to repeating what made Fury Road great, Furiosa also repeats what many observers of the 2015 film feels was its fatal flaw, the sparse story at its center. Furiosa is ultimately a tale of liberation and vengeance as we see Furiosa claw her way toward something resembling freedom after being kidnapped by Dementus and eventually fighting to free herself from his camp entirely before exacting her revenge. Like Fury Road though, this tale is sparse on character development and plot fleshing out her actions in favor of the elaborate bombast of its action sequences. Any scenes involving dialogue of the characters and their motivations feel like vignettes that are just passing the time until the next desert chase scene. Taylor-Joy subsequently does the best that she can as an actress with this material, but instead, she mostly feels like another stunt actor in a film full of them. Hemsworth comfortably provides the best performance of the film disappearing into the psychopathic but charismatic role of Dementus (aided in the effort by his prosthetics) and would have been even more notable had the plot contained more heft. Their underutilization encapsulates Furiosa’s issues as a film; a focus on spectacle over substance with the spectacle being a rehash of what awed audiences previously without adding anything to knew to wow them once more.
Image: Warner Bros.
