Start Your Engines! – Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga Review

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is everything that Mad Max: Fury Road should have been – it gives real substance and context to George Miller’s cinematic world, without losing any of it adrenaline-pumping action. Furiosa is sure to reel people into the theaters, as well as new fans into the franchise.

Although Fury Road was a huge success back in 2015, mainly due to it being a crazy ride packed with non-stop action and stunning visuals, many felt that the movie was essentially a mindless action flick. All the cars and explosions aside, it was basically a story about going from A to B, and then B to A, which clearly an oversimplification of things, but it was hard to see past all that for newcomers to the franchise. Surely, the film did work, but it lacked some much-needed context and world building that could have elevated the restart of the franchise from great to an epic experience. I think with Furiosa, director George Miller aimed to right these wrongs after 9 years, and to my surprise, he succeeded.

Furiosa is a prequel to Fury Road and tells the story of its titular character from the very beginning. Trying to protect the whereabouts of her home, the “Green Place”, Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy, although she plays the character in the second half) is forced on a path that changes her forever. Over the years, we get to see how she turns into the Praetorian she is in Fury Road, how she meets iconic characters like Immortan Joe, and more importantly, how she meets Dementus (Chris Hemsworth), the villain of the story, and the center of Furiosa’s revenge.

Beyond the great performances, the fantastic score and visuals, and the captivating action, what really makes Furiosa better than the ‘original’ is that it finally starts showing parts of the desert wasteland that are crucial to understanding what makes the world of Mad Max so brutal. These details also deepen the emotional aspects of the story, not only making this film’s characters more relatable, but also turning Fury Road into a more layered experience overall.

I think Furiosa is not only the best Mad Max film to date, but also the one that has the best chance of revitalizing the whole franchise. It’s a layered, beautifully crafted action movie, that adds just the right amount of uniqueness and depth to be considered top of the genre. I sure hope we don’t have to wait another nine years for something like this.