“Do you have it in you to make it epic?” bellows Dementus (Chris Hemsworth), big-bearded warlord and would-be ruler of the wasteland, in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. Writer/director George Miller sure does, crafting his prequel to 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road as an even grander vision of post-apocalyptic survival and warfare, complete with gnarly set pieces that roar and rumble with unbridled ferocity. In terms of look, scope, and attitude, this eagerly anticipated follow-up ably matches its predecessor, thereby reconfirming its maker’s status as film’s preeminent virtuoso of V8 chaos and madness, and reestablishing the franchise as Hollywood’s most deliriously deranged.
Yet despite its numerous virtues, Furiosa, which hits theaters May 24, is a somewhat underwhelming beast, and that has less to do with execution than concept. Co-scripted by Nico Lathouris, the latest installment in Miller’s long-running saga is the first to go out of its way to not reimagine its material in some novel fashion. From the hyperactive indie grunge of Mad Max to the rugged widescreen splendor of The Road Warrior, the daffy Spielbergian extravagance of Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, and the maniacal speed-freak insanity of Mad Max: Fury Road: The writer/director has treated his series as a venue for startling creative experimentation. By doing so, he’s kept it not only fresh, but vital. With Furiosa, however, he chooses to follow the playbook he penned less than a decade ago. Consequently, the results are—for better and worse—only as epic as you’d expect.
Furiosa strives for majesty from its biblical opening scene of a young Furiosa (Alyla Browne) picking an apple from a tree, at which point she immediately spies biker-gang intruders in her lush Eden home. Despite exhibiting considerable feistiness, the girl is snatched, instigating a pursuit to reclaim her by her mother (Charlee Fraser), who’s a deft rider and even handier with a sniper rifle. Nonetheless, Furiosa soon winds up the captive of Dementus, a chieftain who wears a white translucent robe that doubles as a cape, and who gives her a teddy bear that once belonged to his children. As vigorously embodied by Hemsworth, the wild Dementus lives up to his name, although his motives—to conquer the wasteland by whatever vicious and underhanded means necessary—are rather mundane, and he pales in comparison to the unforgettably monstrous Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme), with whom he quickly finds himself at odds.
Furiosa won’t give up the “land of abundance” from which she hails, but Dementus locates another seemingly lucrative outpost to overthrow when he encounters a chalky, chrome-mouthed War Boy, who leads him back to Immortan Joe’s Citadel. Unsurprisingly, Dementus and Immortan Joe don’t get along, and after Dementus seizes fuel depot Gastown, the two strikes a tentative deal that involves handing over Furiosa, who—in order to avoid the creepy advances of Immortan Joe’s goliath son Rictus Erectus (Nathan Jones)—shaves her head, poses as a boy, and joins the settlement’s work detail. During an escape attempt aboard a brand-new War Rig, Furiosa (now played by Anya Taylor-Joy) earns the trust and affection of driver Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke), and the pair endeavor to complete their supply-run duties—to the fortresses of Gastown and to Bullet Town—and, ultimately, to begin considering a life free from their imperial master.
Speaking as little as Tom Hardy did in Fury Road, Taylor-Joy cuts a savage figure in Furiosa, persuasively inhabiting the role that Charlize Theron first originated. Miller, meanwhile, stages motorway mayhem with even more relentless adrenalized rage than before, highlighted by a siege on Praetorian Jack’s War Rig by assailants who come on cars and motorcycles, and via bike-attached parachutes that keep them airborne, as do giant fans strapped to their backs. In this and a later assault at Bullet Town, the film growls with animalistic intensity, and Miller’s orchestration of this carnage is as assured as ever. With Simon Duggan’s camera whipping through the action (and, per Miller’s trademark, zooming fiercely into close-ups), and Junkie XL’s score blaring and thundering with regal menace, the proceedings are impressively dynamic.
They’re also, alas, familiar. For all its glorious sound and fury, Furiosa is content to be merely more of the ass-kicking same, and while it achieves those ends with aplomb, its lack of ambition proves disappointing. By harkening back to Furiosa’s origins, Miller creatively traps himself in a box, forced to make this endeavor stylistically and narratively compatible with his previous wasteland outing. To a greater extent than in Fury Road, the film indulges in overt CGI flourishes, and aside from a few clunky compositions, its hyper-realistic hues and sped-up frame rates lend it a painterly (if still deranged, steroidal) quality. By and large, though, this is an extension rather than a reinvention, and despite the fact that it successfully carries out its mission, its impact is compromised by its relatively limited artistic goals.
That’s additionally true with regards to Furiosa’s story, which functions as a superfluous prologue that divulges specifics about its heroine’s history (this is how she was kidnapped, this is how she lost her arm, etc.) but fails to make us understand her in a different or deeper way. In that regard, it’s simply another prequel that fills in blanks that were already understood and needed no further elaboration. Just as Taylor-Joy and Hemsworth serve up variations on past performances (the latter with the aid of an awesome chariot), so too is all the sand, gasoline, blood, and flesh the same as it was during prior trips down this asphalt highway to hell. Think of it as akin to a sophomore album by a band that, rather than building off its trailblazing debut, sticks to what works in order to please a passionate fanbase.
This isn’t to say that Furiosa is a bust; on the contrary, it’s of a thrilling piece with that which came before it, and its lunatic centerpieces come close to equaling those found in its most recent ancestor. Still, Miller’s choreography of this bedlam is almost as great as his unadventurousness. Instead of using his prequel as an opportunity to shine a new light on his gone-to-seed world and its mercenary populations, the auteur opts for retreading recognizable territory. That may get it some initial mileage at the multiplex, but it won’t earn it an eternal spot alongside Fury Road in cinematic Valhalla.
