Mad Max: Fury Road has been mentioned positively on this website a few times, as I consider it one of the best action movies of the 2010s. I’m not a die-hard Mad Max fan who grew up watching the original Mel Gibson movies, so I wasn’t bothered by Tom Hardy’s performance or by the not-so-subtle messaging of the film because the action was incredible, and the world-building was as engaging to me as any of the other films in the franchise. While I would still claim The Road Warrior as my favorite in the series, Fury Road is a dazzling action movie with just a few flaws. When the credits rolled and Max (Tom Hardy) blended into the crowd after having helped Furiosa (Charlize Theron) overtake the citadel and claim victory, I was eager for the next adventure Max would embark upon and any new freakish weirdos he would encounter in another crazy environment. After all, that’s been the way each movie has operated since The Road Warrior: Max arrives at a random settlement and, despite being rather standoffish or antagonistic towards people, he does the right thing in the end and helps the needy people as the wandering hero that he is.

Unfortunately, that hope was quickly dashed as the director, George Miller, confirmed within a short amount of time that the next movie in the franchise wouldn’t be about Max—you know, the character whose name is in the franchise title. No. Instead, we’re going to assume that the character who was at the center of Fury Road and whose story was already told was so interesting that we needed a backstory for her. “Furiosa is getting her own movie!” they shouted to the soon-to-be empty theaters, expecting fans to clamor with elation and excitement at the prospect of a Mad Max movie without Max in it. As the Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story meme is constantly quoted, “It’s a bold strategy, Cotton. Let’s see if it pays off for ‘em.”

Nearly a decade after Fury Road came out, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga was released. With a budget of $168M, it only pulled in $174M worldwide at the box office, which means it was a bomb. It was a harsh lesson for Hollywood that you cannot easily replace the main male character in an iconic franchise, which shares the name of the character, with a girlboss—a lesson they, apparently, didn’t learn because it just happened again with From the World of John Wick: Ballerina. Did Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga deserve to lose as much as it did, though?

Pros

Action scenes look great
George Miller’s visual style still pays off in the presentation
Vehicle designs and sets are creative
More world-building with visits to locations that were only mentioned in the past
Acting from returning and new cast members is convincing and entertaining
Soundtrack, though somewhat muted and reusing tracks from Fury Road, is still good
Brutal and violent as these movies should be

Cons

CGI effects occasionally do not look good
2.5 hours long
Sound editing isn’t as good as Fury Road, and much of the action lacks the same punch as a result
The return to the Fury Road setting loses a lot of the mystery and impact of the previous film
An unnecessary story that does nothing to make Furiosa more interesting than she already was—she wasn’t that interesting
Ending feels awkward and rushed in its attempt to connect with Fury Road
Duh, there’s no Max in this “Mad Max Saga” movie, so the title feels even more revealing and stupid to the problem this movie has

Plot & Thoughts

The world has ended, society has collapsed, and humanity struggles for its existence in the barren wasteland, but a young Furiosa (Ayla Browne) is living out her happy days as a child in an idealic oasis called the Green Place. That is, until some bandits discover the haven and kidnap her. They almost make it back to their camp with her and the directions to the Green Place, but Furiosa’s mother follows them and takes most of them out with her sniper rifle, and Furiosa manages to dispatch the last survivor before he can divulge any information to the bandit leader, Dementus (Chris Hemsworth). Furiosa’s mother almost saves her, but is eventually captured and killed in front of Furiosa at Dementus’ command. Dementus claims Furiosa as his new daughter and eventually crosses paths with Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme) at the Citadel. He attempts to make a deal with Joe after a short confrontation, leading to him giving up Furiosa as part of the bargain. Seeking revenge for her mother’s death, Furiosa manages to hide among the followers of Immortan Joe. As she ages and turns into Anya Taylor-Joy, she works her way up the ranks of importance, waiting for an opportunity to strike at Dementus.

All the best aspects of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga were fundamental in making Mad Max: Fury Road a good action movie. The way the action is shot is vivid and creative, with some cool camera angles and impressive stunts. There are a lot of explosions and gritty car chases. The violent moments are intense and visceral. The world continues to feel alive in a gritty and unpleasant kind of way while still being visually creative and intriguing with its numerous odd and occasionally revolting inhabitants. The soundtrack is emotional and dramatic. In short, I liked the movie in isolation and based on its own merits, but…

All the praise does not change the fact that I have a few significant issues with this movie, not least of which is that I didn’t need or want it in the first place. Even though I liked Furiosa in Fury Road and I liked her story, I didn’t necessarily think she was the most interesting character. She had a relatively straightforward story and was surrounded by characters that were more interesting than her, villains included. Why the filmmakers thought that the reason people liked Fury Road was her, and why they thought she was an interesting enough character to deserve a prequel to flesh her out further, I cannot fathom. The decision to focus on Furiosa—instead of creating a new story with Max in a new location with various freaks to combat—unfortunately ties this movie to Fury Road and thus makes it difficult to critique it without comparing it. It even shows clips from Fury Road in the end credits, so it’s practically inviting comparisons.

Fury Road is a better movie by leaps and bounds. The pacing is certainly better because it takes less time for the central conflict to be established in Fury Road than it takes for Furiosa to change actresses in this movie. At two and a half hours long, there are portions of Furiosa that drag and meander, especially because it doesn’t feel like there is a central conflict for the first half of the movie. Compare that to Fury Road or The Road Warrior, where everything is established quickly in the first act as to who the heroes and villains are and what their goals are. Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome takes longer to get to its central conflict because there is a betrayal in the middle to reveal the true villains, but the main characters are still interacting with each other regularly. In Furiosa, Dementus just comes in and out of the movie at times, and we don’t always have an understanding of where he is, unlike previous villains. While I still like Hemsworth’s performance, Dementus ends up coming across as an undercooked antagonist whose goals are never fully established.

When the movie finally ends, it does so in a rather abrupt, summarized manner to set up the beginning of Fury Road, which makes the time that Furiosa was in a commanding position for Immortan Joe seem much shorter than I had expected. Originally, I thought that she had been planning and plotting for years on how to get away, and then the wives of Joe came to her, asking for help just prior to Furiosa’s plan being executed, and she decided to take them with her. But this movie, in its summarized epilogue, suggests that she brings this escape plan to the wives. It’s not necessarily a flaw, but I bring it up because this is an example of how a story that I created in my own mind from the first movie is undone by the prequel clarifying something that I didn’t need clarified. Not a flaw, but it’s a side effect of prequels that can still negatively impact my experience of a movie like this.

Another particular detail that I found to be better in Fury Road was its sound editing and score. Furiosa still has some of the same music from the previous film, but how that music is used during the action and dramatic scenes falls flat at times. A lot of the big moments lack the impact that Fury Road had, and it’s mostly due to the sound not paying it off.

The main problem that Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga has is obvious, though. It’s in the title. There is no Mad Max in this Mad Max movie. The fact that the filmmakers or producers or whoever slapped the clarification onto the title suggests they didn’t have faith that the movie would do well at the box office without the name recognition of Mad Max to let people know what to expect. As I said, I’m not one of those die-hard fans who believe you can’t make a Mad Max movie without Mel Gibson. However, a movie without Max, when the franchise is built around the character, is a tough sell. It’s not impossible to do something like that, as Joker was a good and successful movie without Batman, but you have to choose your characters and locations wisely. This makes it even stranger when there is a character in the middle of the movie who acts as a surrogate for Max—he even has a very similar wardrobe. It’s as though the filmmakers couldn’t make up their mind on whether or not to do this movie without its other titular character.

The decision to focus on a character whose story felt complete didn’t make me excited to see this movie. In addition, the decision to return to the same locations as before loses a lot of the mystique of the world and the other characters in the process. Even though it’s cool to see the places that were only mentioned in Fury Road (Bullettown & Gastown), I would have been fine never seeing them and letting them be a mystery, specifically tied to that movie. In other words, I didn’t need Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga to exist.

TL;DR

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, in isolation, is a cool action movie with impressive stunts and explosions. George Miller is clearly still capable of directing an action movie and making it look incredible. He is also still capable of creative and unique designs for his characters, vehicles, and locations. However, since Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga forces itself to be part of a franchise, it must be compared and contrasted with the other entries, and thus, it falls short of expectations. When compared to Fury Road, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga does a lot of the same, but not as well. The sound editing falls flat. Some of the mystique of the world and its inhabitants is lost or simply clarified too much. The villain and the conflict are not fully developed. And the movie goes on for too long. In short, it’s not a bad movie, but that doesn’t mean I’ll ever watch it again.

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