Jonah Naplan   May 23, 2024

George Miller’s colossal epic, “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” is a visceral achievement on so many levels. It’s a great prequel for such a complex, nuanced character. It’s a great action movie stuffed with breathless set pieces that show off all the newest bells and whistles the industry’s got to offer. It’s a great popcorn flick, with entertainment aplenty and enough explosions to satisfy summer blockbuster lovers. And it’s a great film, period. Building upon the themes and tone of the 2015 smash hit “Mad Max: Fury Road,” “Furiosa” is a much darker, angrier, and violent continuation of lore that could only have been created by a veteran filmmaker who knows the ins and outs of a camera like the back of his hand and has had years of experience studying how bodies occupy and move through time and space. “Furiosa” is the ultimate compendium of Miller’s work, seamlessly sewn together by action, world, character, and theme, pointillistic pieces that all gesture towards the larger picture, one that’s potent, moving, and at times deeply, deeply disturbing.

I saw this movie not as one to be followed as a narrative piece, but one that you just have to feel in your bones. Such films, when they’re successful, are to be preserved and protected. Too often we get blockbusters that seem to care far less about making the viewers feel things and more about the smashy-smashy instant gratification that comes from watching constant action. “Furiosa” is not constant action, at least not in the manner of “Fury Road” or something like “John Wick: Chapter 4.” It takes its time to fully develop its characters and themes so that when the action does happen, it’s rooted in big emotions and stakes. In a recent interview with “Furiosa” star Anya Taylor-Joy, the actress was asked what the difference is between an “action movie” and a “George Miller action movie.” Her answer could not be any more fitting to this film: “The fact that every action sequence is led by something character-driven, and that everything around you also supports that character.” Each and every action sequence in “Furiosa” works so well because they don’t feel overly saturated by technical elements or bash the viewer over the head with unnecessary touches just so that the scenes can be highlighted in previews and TV spots. This is a human-driven movie with a good bit more story than its predecessor, but that’s only because it’s around a half hour longer and George Miller has refined his ability to communicate plot through action beats even further.

The movie is split into five chapters, and all of them bring something completely new and interesting to the table. A young Furiosa (ably played by Alyla Browne) opens the film in her homeland known as “The Green Place.” A fearless and brave gal, she compromises the vehicles of a sinister Biker Gang, but ends up getting captured by the tyrants, and so begins the movie’s first major chase scene as the kidnappers race back to their headquarters with Furiosa’s mother (Charlee Fraser) hot on their heels. The sequence ends at the desert hideout of a warlord named Dementus (Chris Hemsworth), who soon takes the young Furiosa under his wing almost as an apprentice of sorts or, in practice, an emotional device to appeal to outside organizations he’d like to work with.

“Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” chronicles the decade-long feud between these two souls and is constantly shifting our perspective on who’s the one in control. They seem to be working with each other at first, but times change when they visit the Citadel and Furiosa is traded over to its leader Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme) and his two sons Rictus Erectus (Nathan Jones) and Scrotus (Josh Helman) to be used only as a tool for making babies (a horrible fate that would later inspire her to return to the Citadel and free fellow enslaved women at the start of “Fury Road”). It is here that the young Browne is replaced by the older, but uncannily similar, Taylor-Joy whose fierce stare and determined agility renders her a perfect successor (or antecedent, for that matter) to Charlize Theron’s Furiosa.

Anya Taylor-Joy delivers a truly revelatory performance here, reminding me of The Bride from Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill” movies, Ellen Ripley from the “Alien” franchise, and Sarah Connor from “The Terminator.” She develops such a strong rapport with Hemsworth as well as Tom Burke—who appears in the second act as Praetorian Jack to participate in the movie’s best chase scene—that we wonder how much the actors bantered and buzzed with each other off camera to perfect their natural chemistry. Furiosa doesn’t have much dialogue; the power of Taylor-Joy’s performance comes from her ability to exact dominance over the viewer merely by issuing a hardened gaze. She does so much with her soulful eyes; they communicate loss, grief, revenge, and, fleetingly, satisfaction. We’d know what she’s feeling even if the audio was shut off.

Cinema impresarios have spoken all about how the camera is a magical tool; it can detect any emotion from a character so long as they act with it or for it but never against it. George Miller displays two versions of this idea in “Furiosa”; pauses in the action display the faces of the film’s stars as they bond and talk to one another about their pasts, presents, and futures, while big action setpieces demonstrate the hierarchies of industrialization within provinces like Gastown and Bullet Town and, therefore, who’s winning the chase or battle. It’s all wedded to an impossibly powerful score by Tom Holkenborg and assembled by editors Eliot Knapman and Margaret Sixel, both elements crucial in heightening the theatrics of the action.

Where “Furiosa” falls short is the pacing. There’s no reason for this thing to be 148 minutes long, and the runtime pads itself out by adding unnecessary fluff to the midsection and the space between action setpieces. Where it really flourishes is moments of movement; big, vibrant, beautiful segments that typically last anywhere between fifteen to twenty minutes in length, showcasing all the gadgets and gizmos of modern-day VFX, and driving the narrative forward through heavy vehicular warfare by means of monster trucks, motorcycles, automobiles, and chariots. Moments like this are not just entertaining to watch with a bucket of popcorn, but they actually assist in building out this grimy, dirty world of mercenaries, warlords, innocents, and sheep of evil.

In addition to being just a great action filmmaker (shout-out, too, to cinematographer Simon Duggan), Miller is simply a great storyteller whose visions of a future society hit hauntingly close to home. The world of “Max Max” is angry, unassured, and desperate. Acts of violence are committed because they seem to be the only answer after centuries of trying different methods of change and negotiation. It is with this mind that watching “Furiosa” becomes an unsettling as much as a diverting experience. So often it will present the viewer with an act of torture so horrible that we have to stop and consider what exactly it all means and represents in our world and theirs. The answer is not exactly subtle, despite never speaking explicitly of it. But we can infer that Miller is broaching the idea that our society could possibly turn this relentlessly mad if social order isn’t maintained.

It’s difficult to see “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” as a penultimate work for George Miller because he clearly has so much more left in him, and there’s still so many stories to explore. Like its characters, it boasts an integrity unmatched to most of the movies we tend to see this time of year, which is endlessly commendable on fronts of writing, entertainment value, and, likely, box office numbers, too. I feel privileged to get to see it ride off into the horizon with my own two eyes.

Now playing in theaters.