Here’s a couple interesting things – rewatching Mad Max: Fury Road the other night, I realised that I don’t think the lead swap that occurs in that movie would be taken too kindly if it happened today. Back when Charlize Theron’s Furiosa first hit our screens, I hadn’t seen any of the other Mad Max movies and wasn’t invested in Max at all. Even still, I think through how high-octane and visually spectacular Mad Max: Fury Road was, it sort’ve paved over how the Road Warrior was taking a back seat in his own movie, and it probably started a trend where, at first, not only did other filmmakers think they could get away with doing the same thing, but also that it might even be in vogue, and famous franchises could promise one recognisable character but deliver their own. Now at least, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga should put all right with the world, as I’m confident this movie will be about Furiosa, her youth, and what lead to her position of trust in Immortan Joe’s outlandish organisation… Let’s have it!
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga begins with Furiosa (Alyla Brown, and then Anya Taylor-Joy) as a young girl in the green place, before she is abducted by a gang of motorcyclists, and taken to a desert tent city run by Dementus (Chris Hemsworth). Dementus wants directions to Furiosa’s bountiful homelands, but she refuses to speak, so Dementus imprisons her on the roads. Dementus, as leader of the Biker Horde, comes across the Citadel, and challenges Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme) for power. All the while, a young Furiosa continually survives upward, going from one organisation to the other, finding herself on a path to apprentice the supply rig up the Fury Road.
Yeah, I’m not feeling it, ma dudes 😕 I might be new to the Mad Max franchise as a whole, but I think I go into a Mad Max movie craving huge practical stunts, in the manner befitting a Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd movie of old (as was director George Miller’s original intention), and not a CGI fest. I suppose the CGI is okay for establishing the larger-than-life locations that exist in these later movies, and the vibrant colour corrections that gave Mad Max: Fury Road its texture can stay, but for nearly everything else I expect the ingenuity of practical effects to make my experience whole. In short, I feel like I was distracted and disappointed by the copious CGI affects and backdrops utilised throughout the entire movie. It made me question if I put up with more of it in Mad Max: Fury Road than I cared to remember, but then as this movie bizarrely recalls scenes from ‘Fury Road in its closing credits, it’s clear to me that there’s an aesthetic difference between the two movies. I understand that CGI may allow for more visually radical action than might be available otherwise – cheaper and safer too, and the parachuting enemies were sick – but I think we all know by now how the human eye has learnt not to be tricked so easily anymore, which is why I thought there’d been a push back to respecting the practical in top-end projects; a big reason why Mad Max: Fury Road was so well received in the first place, I think. In this movie, there are War Boys getting thrown off rigs like pinballs, and I cannot recall a single moment where I felt tension in the action. Throw on top of all that the natural drawback of a post-apocalyptic prequel, where you pretty much know who must live and who will die, and the adrenaline rush is severely diminished.
And I was worried ahead of time that Chris Hemsworth’s character would be nothing but Hemsworth in a silly nose with a nasally voice, and the movie never quelled my misgivings. Dementus is very much just Chris Hemsworth in a silly nose with a nasally voice… In fact, after the presence of Immortan Joe and his commanding organisation in the last movie, this movie was always going to be up against it to find a villain of equal measure, and Dementus is a huge step down. Hell, even when we first reach the Citidel in this movie, I was engaged just to see Immortan Joe and his eclectic crew once again, including his man-baby son, Rictus Erectus (Nathan Jones), and John Howard’s People-Eater, twisting his nips. However, I did see (and wrote about) George Miller’s last movie before this one, Three Thousand Years of Longing, and knew that Hemsworth’s character could best come with the virtue of patience, where an ending may reveal a story arc making him worthwhile. But it doesn’t – one-on-one, Dementus does get to express himself to Furiosa by the end, but it’s nothing out of the ordinary. Dementus postures that he and Furiosa are the same, in that they hurt, and crave destruction to feel, but I’m not convinced; and it’s hardly an insightful conclusion, considering Dementus carries around his daughter’s teddy bear, so we can infer pretty early on how he must have a past he’s yet to reconcile with. It did occur to me, while watching this movie, that maybe a reason I was so unaffected by Dementus, is that I’m fluent in The Walking Dead, and it’s easy to see similarities between Dementus and the Governor, and Negan; where the Governor, particularly, was one who sought over-corrective control since he lost his heart, and Negan relished in sadistic joy. I’m also quite sure that it’s very strongly implied throughout the entire Mad Max saga, that most all peoples have lost their minds in this misery, which is why the guy with the widest ass chaps is most often considered the biggest badass 😄 On the drive home, it quickly occurred to me that it really would’ve been better if when Dementus is gabbing about causing chaos to numb the pain, Furiosa had beat him to shut up, retorting that everyone who has survived in this world has lost, and so his pain is nothing special; but his actions have only contributed to her loss, and everyone else’s around him. From that response, I could see a clear line for the hard Furiosa to choose to be the opposite of Dementus, and do some good by the world, when she later agrees to take the wives with her, on the escape, in the next movie. But, Furiosa did already go back for her friend, Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke), when he was up against it, so it’s hardly like the movie dogeared her as selfish anyway, and I’m not sure if this movie has an emotional lesson it in anywhere 🤷♂️
A prequel also needs to be more than just “member-berries” – this is where Furiosa got her peashooter, this is where Furiosa got her boomstick. It seems to me that a lot of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is focusing on ‘how’ things happened, and not as much on the more interesting ‘why’ things happened. The movie gives good reason as to why Furiosa shaves her head in the first place, to avoid being seen as a pretty child, but why does she shave it again to go into battle? Just coz? A benefit of the Mad Max movies up to this date has been that the Road Warrior drifts in and out of these pockets of languishing cultures, so you don’t really need explanations as to why they came to be, since the protagonist is just passing through. But if one like Furiosa, is said to be living in them for lengthier amounts of time, then I’d like to know more about how they work. For example, why is there tattooed gibberish all across the body of the History Man (George Shevtsov), when I think the timeline would indicate that he was alive before the apocalypse, and speaks English? To reiterate my point, when we see a similarly styled woman in the previous movie, we can discern that she’s visually spectacular, and there must be an in-world reason for it somewhere, but we don’t have time for it, while the movie has high stakes in play. But when our main character is stuck in a cage with the History Man, for however many days, over however many years, and the bloke is chatty, am I not to wonder what’s going on with all that? Ah, but I suppose the movie could argue for me to ignore that, since Furiosa never spoke, so she couldn’t ask him, but there are other ways for the movie to explain itself if it wanted to, like it does with the Organic Mechanic (Angus Sampson), the biotic engineer.
Truthfully, I did try to have minimal expectations going into this movie, but I would’ve liked a story of how Furiosa got in such favour with Immortan Joe, while we only really get one scene of their relationship – as Joe recognises her resilience, coming back to tell on Dementus, with half an arm missing. Even more emotion in the story of Furiosa and Praetorian Jack wouldn’t have gone astray. I don’t know, this movie just felt like a series of things that happened, to get Furiosa from vivacious little girl to competent cog – it feels like a livable character bio from one of those visual dictionaries that used to come out with a new Star Wars movie. Plus, the problem with showing a badass character when they are younger, is that they may not have been a badass before, which kind’ve undoes the original mystic. Or, and what this movie kind’ve does, you make the badass fairly gifted from the beginning, which leaves you still wondering where Furiosa learnt much of her insight, like biting the biker’s fuel line. The more you dig into the past of a character, the less the answer can just be “somewhere”. If I didn’t know this was a movie George Miller wanted to make, then I would quickly assume that the studios saw profit in a Mad Max spin-off, and gave the project to some young schlanger, with half the pull and half a budget, like we see with many franchise projects from Hollywood. I also could conceive that this project could’ve worked better as a TV miniseries, giving it time to flesh out more of the worldly whys that I wanted to see, but also elevate a couple of the huge battles the movie omits, like the taking of the Bullet Farm, and details of the 40-day war – I think I would be more forgiving of the obvious CGI if this was seen in a TV format as well, where time restrictions and budgets are different. In closing, I didn’t hate this movie, but I did find it pretty bland and forgettable. And now that I’ve forged a way through all the Mad Max movies for myself, I can exude the joys of ranking the movies, and I would put this movie 4th of 5, going from best to worse in order of Mad Max 2, Mad Max: Fury Road, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, & Mad Max. What do you think? Do you disagree? 2.0
P.S. An added bonus of a Mad Max movie is always playing ‘spot the obscure Aussie’ 😍 Good to see an Umbilical Brother, David Collins, getting a run on the big stage, with an extravagant quicksand death to boot. But never did I expected to see former Australian Survivor champion Mark in the mix 🥇
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