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A Review of “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)”

 

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Mad Max: Fury Road is one of the best action movies ever made. I have been craving for another Tom Hardy sequel for years! I understand that because of the lawsuit with WB is the reason why the sequel still hasn’t happened. For now, we have a prequel concerning Charlize Theron’s character, Furiosa, from Fury Road. Is this a worthy entry in the Mad Max saga?

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One enjoyable thing about the Mad Max films is that they all feel very different. Furiosa is no exception. It is a very gang-driven, political and revenge-filled story. We get a lot of world-building on how the Wasteland is operating with all its factions. Seeing the political tension between the previous villain Immortan Joe and the new villain Dementus is very engaging. It is also interesting to see a calmer and smarter Immortan Joe. I also like that we get to see what “The Green Place” looked like as we only got tiny mentions before. The prequel story also successfully expands more on how Furiosa is where she is by the time of Fury Road. By the end, I do sympathise with her more.

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On that note, Anna Taylor Joy does a good job as a younger Furiosa. She doesn’t have much dialogue but she does great through facial and body performance alone. Chris Hemsworth is the highlight of this film though as the villain Dementus. He is clearly having a lot of fun and does a great job of hamming it up. His villainous speeches are thoroughly entertaining! The rest of the supporting cast do a wonderful job as well but special praise to Lachy Hulme as a younger Immortan Joe. He does a terrific job living up to the previous actor Hugh Keays-Byrne. One of the most important things of a Mad Max film is the action and there is certainly a lot of it. Every action set piece is a marvellous spectacle with its over-the-top violence and incredibly well-made wasteland vehicles.

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Unfortunately, the action scenes here just aren’t as great to look at as it was in Fury Road. This is because the CGI and colour grading are just not that well done in Furiosa. Fury Road did a majority of the action practically while CGI was used subtly to enhance the movie. Furiosa has a fair amount of action scenes that are not done practically. We have action set pieces that are entirely CGI or scenes that contain lots of green screens. These CGI are very noticeable and can pull you out of the movie. The colour grading is just orangey for the most part and looks way too clean for an apocalyptic movie. Visually, Furiosa just doesn’t look as nice and the cinematography never quite mesmerises me. 

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Junkie XL returns to compose the music for Furiosa. His score for Mad Max: Fury Road is one of the most amazing things ever. However, his music score is so incredibly underwhelming in Furiosa. It doesn’t help that the action scenes are oddly silent when they would greatly benefit from an epic soundtrack. Junkie XL feels wasted this time. The movie also lacks the kinetic and fast-paced editing that you would expect from director George Miller but here it just feels generic. The movie is also 148 minutes long (28 minutes longer than Fury Road) and you definitely feel it. There are a fair amount of moments where the pace is quite slow and the last 20 minutes of the movie does drag a bit.

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Overall, Furiosa is still an enjoyable movie but it doesn’t quite live up to Fury Road. Still, it is impressive that George Miller was able to make this when he was nearing 80 years old. I am still looking forward to a Tom Hardy Mad Max sequel that will blow me away again because Furiosa doesn’t quite do that. 



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