Review: Furiosa Feels Like a Fury Road Expansion Pack

How do you follow something like Mad Max: Fury Road?

When director George Miller finally unleashed the nearly 30-years-in-the-making fourth installment of his long-dormant post-apocalyptic action franchise in 2015, it was instantly declared one of, if not the greatest action movie ever made. Recasting Tom Hardy as the titular traumatized Wasteland badass Max and introducing Charlize Theron as Imperator Furiosa, a one-armed female warrior trucker who became the film's breakout character, the Australian filmmaker totally revamped his old stomping grounds into an astounding spectacle of death-defying stunts, visionary worldbuilding, vehicular carnage on a grand scale. It's an undisputed masterpiece, and Miller could have retired on the spot without anyone doubting his greatness as a true solder of cinema.

Miller followed up Fury Road with something completely different. In 2022, he released Three Thousand Years of Longing, a modern-day fantasy romance starring Idris Elba as an immortal djinni and Tilda Swinton as the mousey scholar who releases him from his bottle. The film was smart and spellbinding, but nobody saw it. Even then, Miller could have called it quits, one last vanity project in the hole.

But the Wasteland beckoned. The 15-year scripting process for Fury Road generated a plethora of background material on the Mad Max universe, including a whole other screenplay's worth of backstory for Furiosa. Theron apparently used this script as reference material for her character while making Fury Road, and there had even been plans to shoot both scripts back to back, Lord of the Rings-style. You can feel the shadows of this plan in the finished film, in which Hardy's Max occasionally feels like an interloper in what is predominantly Furiosa's tale.

Now, after another near-decade wait, Furiosa's solo act is finally here. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is a prequel, recasting Anya Taylor-Joy as a younger version of the warrior woman. The film begins in the Green Place, an Edenic refuge hidden among the wastes of post-apocalyptic Australia. Furiosa, played as a young girl by Alyla Browne, is stolen from her home by bandits while attempting to protect the sanctuary from them. Her mother (Charlee Fraser) gives chase to rescue her daughter and to eliminate the intruders — "No one must know of this place," a friend warns. The rescue does not succeed, and Furiosa is now an orphan in the clutches of the charismatic biker warlord Dementus (Chris Hemsworth), who rides a motorbike chariot, curls his mustache, and executes people by drawing and quartering them with motorcycles. Furiosa must find a way to survive and return home — that and avenge her mother.
From there, the film branches out, following Furiosa as she grows older and navigates the Wasteland. She escapes Dementus and falls into the service of the wicked Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme, replacing the late Hugh Keays-Byrne). Women are a scarce resource in this sick new world, where society has not exactly collapsed but certainly devolved. The fortunate (read: beautiful) ones become part of Joe's harem and breed him babies that come out deformed. The unfortunates live in pits and scrape maggots from dead bodies to farm as food. The details in Miller's hellish universe remain as vivid as they were in Fury Road, yet the world is largely the same — we're merely seeing more of it, almost as if Furiosa is an expansion pack to Fury Road.

Driven by vengeance, Furiosa refuses to accept her fate as a kept woman, escaping the harem and disguising herself as a mute boy working in Joe's citadel. Both Browne and Taylor-Joy, who played another wily, resentful captive in Robert Eggers' Viking drama The Northman, effectively transmit her rage and grit as she fights to survive. She becomes a laborer, then a vehicle mechanic, then a driver of Joe's War Rig, all while planning and executing various escape attempts. It sometimes feels like we're watching her rank up and take on quests: a solo raid on the Bullet Farm here, an escort mission to Gastown there. Is she leveled up enough to unlock the Boomstick and take on the Green Place quest line?

Eventually, she gains the trust of Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke), another driver who becomes a role model and companion. They make plans to find the Green Place together, but Dementus, now in control of the oil-refining fortress of Gastown, has other plans. Hemsworth is really entertaining here, transferring the swagger of his Thor into an unhinged bushranger that would make Ned Kelly blush. His takeover of Gastown forms a B plot that fleshes out the film with bloody Wasteland politics, and it's here the film stakes its clearest and possibly least-flattering distinction from Fury Road. Where the previous film was tightly plotted and focused on a single high-stakes mission, Furiosa feels stretched out and overburdened by the additional lore. Action sequences feel smaller-scale and less ambitious, although they're still more impressive than most Hollywood directors can manage, especially a particularly memorable War Rig raid sequence. Locations and characters that gained mystique through omission of detail and power of suggestion do not necessarily feel more interesting when they're actually visited — the Bullet Farm sounds much more impressive before we realize it's just an open-pit mine, although it still serves as a good spot for a climactic set piece battle.

Maybe the shock of the new has dulled a bit. The world of Mad Max: Fury Road felt wholly new and original, an antidote to the franchise fatigue of Hollywood circa 2015. That's not necessarily helpful to Furiosa — rather than tell a new story in the same universe, it is just more Fury Road, down to the end credits showing scenes from the last film, already etched into myth. But more Fury Road is nothing to complain about. Miller's kinetic style and peerless production design still make his Wasteland one of the most indelible and fascinating cinematic settings of recent decades. At 79, the director has shown he's still more than capable of shepherding his behemoth franchise, and with further films planned, there's hope that whatever concludes it goes beyond Furiosa — perhaps even beyond Fury Road.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. Starring Anya-Taylor Joy, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Burke, and Lachy Hulme. Directed by George Miller. Written by George Miller and Nico Lathouris. 148 minutes. Rated R. Check for showtimes at miaminewtimes.com/miami/movietimes.