Worth Mentioning - A Big Bellyful of Revenge

We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.

Cody watched Furiosa and missed Max.

FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA (2024)

George Miller, the mastermind behind the Mad Max franchise, went overboard when coming up with the characters for the fourth movie in the series, Mad Max: Fury Road, crafting elaborate back stories for even the most minor person to appear on screen. Before he could feel comfortable telling the story of what Max experiences in that film, he had to know what Max had been doing for the entire year prior – and when he came up with the character of Furiosa, he wrote out her entire life story. The Furiosa story was always something Miller wanted to bring to the screen, and at one time he wanted to make Fury Road and the Furiosa prequel back-to-back. It just didn’t work out that way. For a variety of reasons, the Furiosa prequel movie hasn’t come along until nine years after Fury Road... and I have to be honest, at no point in these nine years did I ever have any interest in seeing a Furiosa prequel movie. I think I read at least some of her story in a Fury Road tie-in comic book back in the day, and that, along with the movie Fury Road, was plenty for me. I was never anxious to see more of the Furiosa character in the way that I’ve always been anxious to see more of the Max character.

But here we are. Miller made a Furiosa movie instead of another Max movie. His name may be in the title, but he’s not here in any substantial way. (He does get a quick cameo near the end – just a shot that lasts for a few seconds, where Max is seen from a distance and played by a stunt double.)

Miller and Fury Road co-writer Nico Lathouris had written the screenplay for Furiosa before Fury Road went into production – in fact, Charlize Theron, who played Furiosa in Fury Road, was given the script to read so she would know her character’s full history. But by the time Furiosa was heading into production, Miller felt that too much time had passed for Theron to be able to play the younger version of her character, and de-aging technology isn’t flawless enough yet for him to be willing to use that so Theron could return. So the role was recast... which always would have been necessary for the first stretch of the movie anyway, since Furiosa is a child when this movie catches up with her.

Alyla Browne plays the youngest version of Furiosa, with Anya Taylor-Joy taking over as the character grows into adulthood – although Miller was comfortable enough with AI technology to have Taylor-Joy’s features blended with Browne’s more and more as time goes on. All this was deemed necessary because unlike the Max movies, which usually take place over a short period of time, Furiosa plays out over a span of around fifteen years.

In post-apocalyptic Australia, Furiosa was raised in an oasis within the wasteland, a thriving spot called the Green Place of Many Mothers. But then she was abducted by bikers who follow a warlord called Dr. Dementus (Chris Hemsworth with a prosthetic nose). Despite the best efforts of Furiosa’s mother May (Charlee Fraser), Furiosa ends up stuck with Dementus, who wants her to lead him back to the Green Place... but she refuses to. And since none of the bikers who brought her to Dementus survived the whole trip, the secret remains with Furiosa.

Dementus may never make it to the Green Place, but he and his bikers do make their way to the settlements seen or mentioned in Fury Road: the Citadel, Gastown, and the Bullet Farm. He sets himself up as a rival to the Citadel leader Immortan Joe – who was played by Mad Max villain Hugh Keays-Byrne in Fury Road. Since Keays-Byrne passed away in 2020, the role has now been taken over by Lachy Hulme. Furiosa ends up in the clutches of Immortan Joe, so we’re back to the world of War Boys and many wives that we saw in Fury Road. There’s also the return of, and in fact the construction of, the War Rig vehicle, with Furiosa striking up a relationship with the Rig's commander, Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke)... who is oddly similar to Max. It's like Miller thought he needed to drop a bootleg Max into the movie to try to appease viewers who would be disappointed by the lack of the actual Max, especially since his name is in the subtitle but he's not in the movie. Not for more than few seconds, anyway. Jack is okay, but he's no Max.

Furiosa is too long at 148 minutes, there are plenty of moments that could have been trimmed down, but it does feature some cool action sequences... although some of the major moments have a distracting coating of CGI that really put me off. It also has strong acting performances, with Hemsworth really chewing the scenery. But it never won me over to the point where I felt glad to be watching this sketched-in history of Furiosa and the Citadel rather than a new Mad Max adventure. It’s a well-crafted film, but Max was sorely missed... and to be honest, I kind of resent the movie for taking up Miller’s time and resources when I would much rather have had him directing that attention toward continuing the story of Max. 

Miller is 79 years old; his time is more precious than ever before. But this is the movie he wanted to make first, he made it, and it’s fine. Now I just hope its underwhelming box office numbers won’t kill any chances for the Max movie I’ve been hoping to see (and which Miller teased way back in 2015, saying it would be called Mad Max: The Wasteland).