Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

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For a while now, I have heard a lot of people talking about this movie saying things like "don't expect what you're used to" and "don't expect 'Fury Road' quality". As we know from my 'Fury Road' review, that one is, hands down my favourite chapter in the batch, so I went in expecting something a bit less, even though the character Furiosa was one of the best parts of 'Fury Road'. Sure enough, what I got was pretty much what I expected after doing a bit of a marathon of the previous films. This one is just executed a little differently.

Considering the fact that the film is called 'Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga', I can't say I'm entirely surprised that the film was divided into chapters, covering the origin story of Furiosa, including where she really came from, her relationship with Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme) of 'Fury Road' villain fame, and of course, how she got to be just as bad ass as she was in the previous film. Here, however, Charlize Theron makes no appearance, and a younger Furiosa is played primarily by Anya Taylor-Joy, who, I gotta say, does a pretty great job here, showing more of her acting flexibility.

It all starts when a group of raiders from the Biker Horde come across the Green Place of Many Mothers, capturing a young Furiosa (Alyla Browne) for their leader, Dementus (Chris Hemsworth), as a sort of disgusting prize, in that the girl is pure and "untouched." Her Mother, Mary (Charlee Fraser) makes an attempt to to rescue Furiosa from this guy, but ultimately fails, and her final act to her daughter is to give her a peach pit and sot of pass the torch along for Furiosa to one day find a new Green Place to start over.

Dementus soon adopts the unwilling Furiosa as his daughter, whom he gives the name "Little D," in hopes that she will eventually lead him to this fabled Green Place. From here, Furiosa sort of just goes along for the ride as Dementus seeks power over the main hubs of essentials in the area, namely Gas Town (where all the fuel is held) and the Citadel (where all the water is held, and as seen in 'Fury Road'). When Furiosa reaches the Citadel, that's kind of whee we see things start to overlap, and from there, the story goes on with Furiosa's origin.

I think for me, the biggest thing this movie actually has going for it is Chris Hemsworth's performance. I mean, as I watched the trailers for this, I would point out that it felt like Hemsworth was just playing Thor again without actually portraying Thor. But quite honestly, he was a fun villain to watch while never letting the viewer forget how brutal he could be. It's further interesting that they had him overshadow a guy like Immortan Joe; a man with many wives who wants a non-mutant kid, and will simply dispose of the mothers if a mutant is birthed. I think it was a "three strikes and you're out" deal.

In the long run, the film is fine, and there's not much for me to really criticize, feeling that anything I would attack would be nothing but a nitpick on my part. For example, I do think the film runs a little longer than it needed to, and it tried too hard to play on something like 'Dune', trying to be more epic than it really needs to be. 'Mad Max' movies were no more than two hours and provided some fairly solid action-packed rides. This was more substance over style, and while that sounds like a great thing, it didn't feel so "Mad Maxish."

Again, however, call it nit-picky on my part. There's really nothing at all wrong with this movie, and it does a good job with what it attempted as a stand-alone prequel. I could see watching this and 'Fury Road' back to back, and it being a solid time. As I've said before, these movies were never at the tippy-top of my list, so my opinion won't matter as much as a die-hard fan's would. But I can say that I still had a pretty good time with this, even though it has absolutely nothing on 'Fury Road'.

4/5

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