‘Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga’ Review: George Miller’s Action-Packed Revenge Tale is a Bad to the Bone Masterpiece

The idea of a prequel is one that has always baffled me. Why does this need to exist? Why do creatives want to go backwards instead of forwards within the story and characters they have manifested? It’s rarely been the case that these prequels provide anything more than just a cash grab for studios to make more money within a franchise, let alone the film itself actually being successful on any thematic, cinematic level. Heck, the greatest ‘prequel’ of all time is probably The Godfather Part II, and even that storyline is wrapped together within a continuation of the first installment. But there is always an exception that breaks the rule. This time, it comes in the form of George Miller’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, which is not only an impressive, action-packed thrill ride like the previous entries in Miller’s post-apocalyptic dream world but also recontextualizes Max Mad: Fury Road, one of the greatest films of all time, into something more profound than the non-stop thrill ride that we remember it being. And by forging a new meaning for that film in this explosive, blood-drenched revenge epic about the rise of the Wasteland’s most dangerous Imperator, we see Miller deliver one of the greatest prequels of all time and the best film of 2024 so far.

Set as far back as twenty years before the events of Fury Road, we find a young Furiosa (a fantastic Alyla Browne) picking peaches from a tree with a friend at a nearby forest within the Green Place of Many Mothers, the homeland Furiosa is from that she desperately was trying to take Immortan Joe’s wives in Fury Road. The Green Place is everything the older Furiosa said it was and then some, as it is a utopian place where the Vuvalini, her clan run mostly by women, created and nourished a place of sustained living. By the looks of the world and its structures, they have created a paradise within the chaos of the Wasteland and will stop at nothing to protect it from outsiders who dare look to threaten their way of life. Case in point, as she is picking her peach, Furiosa hears something from a distance, and as she makes her way towards the noise, she discovers a small pack of scavengers who have raided the forest for proof of resources to take back to their camp. As she makes her way closer and closer to them, we discover that this young girl is far cleverer than you would think, as she is slowly cutting the fuel lines to the motorcycles that the intruders rode into their homeland on. In order to make sure their community remains safe, no one from the outside must know that the Green Place exists, for the threat of dangerous figures from the Wasteland could find them and destroy everything they have spent years building. But as she is about to cut the last line, she is snatched up by one of the men invading their land, thrown on the back of a bike, and the men race off out of the forest as her friend signals to their tribe that Furiosa has been taken. Miller and his co-writer Nico Lathouris show us only a few glimpses of peace within Furiosa’s story, as we know she is about to go on a painful, heartbreaking, rage-fueled odyssey that will take her years to return to the place she once loved. The moment she is put on the back of that bike, her innocence is gone, and the warrior’s story begins. 

As the scavengers are racing out of the Green Place, they are tracked behind by Mary Jabassa (Charlee Fraser), Furiosa’s mother, and taken out one by one as she rides behind them, getting just close enough to use her sniper rifle to blow their tires off or stick a bullet into the men that kidnapped her only child. Sliding right back into the action of Fury Road with ease, Miller grabs our attention and has us in the palm of his hand as he patiently allows the tension of the sequence to build, leaving the scavengers racing for their lives as Mary picks them apart. Simon Duggan’s elegant cinematography perfectly transitions from a dreamlike world of the Green Place back into the harsh terrain of the Wasteland we’ve come to know within the Mad Max Saga with vibrant ease, as we see this burnt orange world surrounded by nothing but vehicles, the men who ride them, the sand and salt that is left in-between the very few clans left on the planet. As Mary successfully kills off as many of the kidnappers on her chase to save her daughter, she can’t finish off the last one as he races into the horde of bikers looking to show their warlord leader, Dr. Dementus (Chris Hemsworth). Furiosa comes from a place of “abundance;” a place Dementus and his men can take over if the young girl is willing to show them the way. But as the saying goes, like mother, like daughter, because once she is let off the bike, Furiosa uses skills to wrap her loose chain around the neck of the man who took her and connects it to the wheel of the bike to make sure no one but her can speak of the Green Place at all (we even see Mary looking on from the distance with her binoculars with pride as she says “Good girl” to herself as her daughter has kept their secrets safe.)

Browne is excellent throughout the first half of the film as a young Furiosa, in a mostly silent performance, expressing her anger and pain through her eyes as she is taken prisoner. But this is okay because the one doing all the talking is the menacing, ruthless (and at times cowardly) Dementus, played expertly by Hemsworth, in what might be the best work of his career. When he first meets Furiosa, he is a devil with a smile on his face, promising her the freedom she wants in exchange for the location of her home so he can take her back himself. But when Mary breaks into the camp, taking Furiosa with her, his smile turns into rage at the fact that a mother and her little girl almost took away his chance at paradise. As a consequence for running away, he forces Furiosa to watch as his men kill her mother and locks her in a cage as his prisoner till she is ready to speak about where she lives. Hemsworth’s portrayal of Dementus is that of a deranged, power-obsessed villain in the vein of Jack Sparrow from the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, in that one minute, he could be plotting a scheme that goes horribly wrong, and the next minute he is using his silver tongue charm to get out of being killed. This all comes together when, on their way down the road, Dementus’s clan encounters a young man covered in white paint, a War Boy of Immortan Joe, who tells them of a real paradise that they should go to, the Citadel: the place Furiosa and Max take over at the end of Fury Road.

As Dementus rides into the Citadel with his men, he comes to realize that he is not the only dangerous figure in the Wasteland, as Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme), The People Eater (John Howard), Joe’s sons Rictus Erectus and Scrotus (two of the most insane character names ever created, played by Nathan Jones and Josh Helman, who played War Boy Slit in Fury Road), look on as Dementus starts speaking to the people of an uprising against Joe and those who are in charge of not just the Citadel, but also the bosses who control Gas Town and the Bullet Farm, the other two locations mentioned within Fury Road. But the Immortan is younger and more in control than when we last saw him and is ready to go to full war with Dementus as he sends down two of his War Boys from the top of Citadel, shiny and chrome, dropping bombs on them as a warning to leave their city to those in charge. But this only angers Dementus, thus we see he and his men take over gas town successfully overnight, using the fuel as a hostage in exchange for food, bullets, and more from the other crime bosses. These moments are when you fully see why Miller wanted to tell this story first before Fury Road, as the world building is expansive but not overcomplicated, much like the film’s politics. Outside of the Green Place lies what caused the world to descend into chaos: men with power (some smarter than the others), making deals with resources that aren’t theirs in the first place, and hoarding them while the average person is living in the communities they built, starving and living in squalor, as well as fear of their lives being taken by the powerful. When Miller showcases the people living in holes in the ground, living off nothing but bugs and water, it’s horrific and heartbreaking, especially in the eyes of Furiosa, who sees the terror of what this world has done and how helpless everything can feel.

As part of their deal for resources, Dementus hands over Furiosa to Immortan Joe so she can become one of his new wives to breed more War Boys for his army. In trying to find her way out of the Citadel, we realize that she has a better chance at surviving the new world she is in by disguising herself among the workers for the Immortan and slowly, over time, moving her way up the ranks so she can get enough resources on the inside to escape for good, and return home to the Green Place. As we flash forward in time, Anya Taylor-Joy portrays Furiosa (about more than halfway through the film) in one of her strongest roles to date. Staying true to the hero we have seen throughout the film’s runtime, we see her rise to a place where she is useful, skillful, and ready to move on to the next step in her place amongst Joe’s army; putting together a War Rig. In becoming one of the chief workers on the rig, she designs a place – to be a stowaway on the first run to GasTown, and her chance to fully escape her surroundings. But things are never that easy, as we see the rig, led by the handsome, mysterious Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke), become under attack by bandits that Dementus double-crossed and now are trying to pick apart the War bosses’ resources on the Fury Road. This leads Miller to expand the vehicular warfare we’ve come to know within the franchise, with the bandits using parachutes to fly around and buzz down on the rig and take it off the road. It is the kind of exhilarating, pulse-pounding action we’ve come to expect from Miller and is a perfect complement to the action of Fury Road while also upping the level of danger that has always been found on the Fury Road. The editing from Margaret Sixel and Eliot Knapman is expertly put on display throughout this sequence and the rest of the action in the third act of the film, allowing the audience to see everything clearly as War Boys, bandits, and vehicles are being taken down one explosion at a time.

In helping him survive the attack and being the only one left to define the War Rig, Jack sees Furiosa for what she is: a survivor. Knowing this, he makes a deal with her to help him over time on the rig, and then when the time is right, he will help her get the resources to make her return home. As they start to work together, their bond grows, and Taylor-Joy and Burke’s chemistry is off the charts, as they are two lost souls trying to stay alive in a bloody world built on backstabbing and violence. Miller’s brilliance in giving Furiosa another source of connection to someone like her is another heartbreaking reminder of something that Max will tell her years to come, that hope is a dangerous thing that doesn’t exist anymore, as Jack is taken from her by Dementus as a result of collateral damage in his power struggle to keep Gas Town from the hands of Immortan Joe. In the last thirty minutes of the film, Taylor-Joy brings Furiosa’s story full circle with an enraged, focused, layered portrait of a woman who is beyond mercy, turning into the hardened warrior we’ve come to know.

Turning Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga into a full-on revenge story allows us to fully understand the faults in Furiosa’s history and, thus, why her “redemption” in Fury Road is so important to her. She never wants someone to have to feel the loss of their mother, their lover, their arm, or their innocent life again at the hands of those who seek nothing more than to destroy. It’s a touching message from Miller that the world he created, built on the back of a male protagonist and led by chaotic male villains, has a price on those who aren’t mentioned as much in the history books. This mission to create a hero from the ashes of pain is one of profound understanding that as the world changes, so are the people we call a hero, and, therefore the people who really care about leading us to a better life. Time will tell if Miller will continue Furiosa’s story forward after the events of Fury Road and if we will see the results of her taking over the Citadel, a place where she raised herself to become a warrior and a leader. A part of me wants to see it, as it’s been an honor to see Miller create one of the great film characters of the last twenty years, and the other part of me would be happy with the completely rich, layered story we’ve got within the last two films within the franchise. Either way, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is a worthy companion to Mad Max: Fury Road, and showcases Miller elevating the action genre again with another adrenaline-fueled, bad-to-the-bone masterpiece.

Grade: A

Warner Bros will release Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga only in theaters on May 24, 2024.