Movie Review : Furiosa : A Mad Max Saga (2024)
George Miller never really went away for thirty years between Mad Max movies like it was implied upon the release of Fury Road. The original trilogy were three of the first four movies of the thirteen he directed in his forty-five years career. He also adapted John Updike's novel The Witches of Eastwick, made a miserable biopic starring Nick Nolte called Lorenzo’s Oil and somehow Babe. Yes, the children movie about the little pig. My point is: Geroge Miller is not a genius, but he managed the lifespan of a great idea like one.
There was no way Fury Road wouldn’t work because it basically captured the thrills of the original with the technical means and creative sensibilities of a different era. In many ways, it was probably more like the movie he originally envisioned Road Warrior to be than even the original Road Warrior. In that sense, Furiosa : A Mad Max Story had no chance in hell to recapture the buzz over Fury Road, but it did a decent job at being the cinematographic equivalent of an expansion pack for it.
It's not great, but it's alright and perhaps it should stop there for a couple other decades. Until we have something more to say about the collapse of society and the end of the world.
Furiosa : A Mad Max Story is exactly what the title says it is. An origin story of Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy, originally played by Charlize Theron), a one-armed wasteland warrior who grew up a sa hostage to a wayward biker hilariously named Dementus (played with remarkable nuance by Chris Hemsworth) who happened to murder her mom. He ends up trading her to Fury Road’s villain Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme) where she proves herself as a useful soldier until she finally gets a shot at getting even with her old foe.
Furiosa : A Mad Max Story's best asset and worst problem is that it's exactly what you think it is. A two-hours long empowering feminist film that lives in a borrowed paradigm. I don't want to bitch about female empowerment (women have earned to have their own tales), but this film deserved to have more of an identity of its own. There's more than one way to be badass. But this iteration of Furiosa was closer to Max from Fury Road than she was to Charlize Theron's character.
So, the movie ends up being a long, slickly shot series of action scenes with one or two atmospheric corkers put it for good use (it's always Hemsworth leading them), but it's a great series of slickly shot action scenes. It's fun, it’s cartoonish and there's even a long chase scene that really could've been just been recycled from Fury Road. I’m generally trying to judge a movie for what it is, but my problem with Furiosa : A Mad Max Story is that it's nothing precise. At least not in essence. Its identity markers are superficial.
But it's good. It's competent. There's a great action scene in a place called the Bullet Farm where a motorcycle, a van and a monster truck face off. It's breathless and alive, but it's also cartoonish at the same time. Whenever there's a sand storm rising, Furiosa : A Mad Max Story takes an atmospheric quality it should’ve nurtured more. I also loved the religious subtext surrounding Dementus, which was a nice detail nuancing an otherwise wacky character. He was ambiguous until he wasn’t.
Feminist movies written by men
What about the feminism, right? What about Furiosa's deliverance? Well, she doesn’t do a lot of talking throughout the movie and she does most of it when she's a child, but I found the great, impactful moments to be fine…. but kind of overwrought? It reeked of workshopping. That’s what happen when you have a movie claiming to be feminist being essentially written by two men. It means well, but it's drained dry of spontaneity. It crumbles under the weight of its own, self-imposed responsibility.
Whatever happened to Patty Jenkins who nailed it with the first Wonder Woman? Was she unavailable for consultation? It’s a minor tragedy because stuff like that should not attract attention to itself. It should be weaved in the fabric of a movie and almost subconsciously affect people it's targeted towards, but Furiosa : A Mad Max Story makes in big neon letters a check it's too self-conscious to cash. It's not the first time Warner Brothers drops the ball like this. Maybe we should cool it with the ideological marketing.
*
I guess that I didn’t really like Furiosa : A Mad Max Story. I wanted to like it more than I did, but can you really enjoy a movie that delivers exactly what you think it's going to deliver and not in a specifically slick or empowering way. Had it not taken nine years to make, I would’ve said it was just a rushed cash-in. Apparently George Miller wanted to film this movie back-to-back with Fury Road also, which kind of makes sense. It just feels very weird, derivative and disconnected despite being technically tip-top.
If you’re gonna make a film that champions women empowerment, make one that matters.
