Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)

Furiosa is a worthy addition to the Mad Max franchise, which now also includes comic books and graphic novels, video games, and soundtrack albums. For me, it’s also where the franchise veers close to becoming an exercise strictly for continuity freaks, the people who insist not only on seeing all the Marvel or Star Wars or whatever movies, but also in a specific prescribed order. Furiosa, fifth in the franchise, is a prequel to the previous, 2015 installment, Mad Max: Fury Road. I feel like I already know much more than I want to about such geographical points of interest as the Citadel, Gastown, the Bullet Farm, and the mysterious Green Place. Don’t get me wrong. I may sound tired and cynical, but there are plenty of stunts and much glorious action in Furiosa. It pairs well with popcorn. Tom Holkenborg’s score is as moody-good as he gave us in Fury Road. Furiosa attracted stars such as Anya Taylor-Joy (The Queen’s Gambit, The VVitch, Last Night in Soho) and Chris Hemsworth (Thor movies, Avengers movies, etc.). Tom Burke gets the designated Mel Gibson role. Furiosa is a young girl living in the all-women (mostly women?) Green Place who is kidnapped while out in the desert. It was important to Green Place people to keep their location secret. This young Furiosa (Alyla Browne) is captured and held for years by one Dementus (Hemsworth). Then she grows older and becomes the fierce and big-eyed Taylor-Joy. There are new vehicles here to enjoy and some impressive new stunts too, as I say. But it’s kind of the same old thing—racing down desert highways and fending off attacks. There’s usually a reason for going from one place to the other, but I kind of lost track of them here. The beauty of Fury Road is the simple clarity of it. Furiosa has complications that don’t bode well for the franchise. On the other hand, George Miller is the creator, director, and single indispensable figure in all this, and he's 79 now, even older than Donald Trump, so we’re not likely to get a lot more from him. It’s possible he will sell it off to Disney or something, but in that case probably only the continuity freaks will stick around for more. Here's my stack-ranking of the five Mad Max movies: 1) The Road Warrior (Mad Max 2, 1982), 2) Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), 3) Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024), 4) Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985), and 5) Mad Max (1979). Unusual franchise in that the first is the worst by far.