Furiosa: a Mad Max Saga Is a Real Departure for the director of Babe, Happy Feet and Happy Feet Two

Who knew he could direct action as well as family movies about funny talking animals?

I’ve never seen Mad Max: Fury Road for a very personal reason: it was the movie of the moment when I was laid off from The Dissolve. So my neurodivergent brain, which never gets over anything, will always associate George Miller’s rapturously received Mad Max prequel with one of the most difficult periods of my life and the end of my time as a salaried employee of a respected pop culture website and the beginning of the terrifying wilderness that has been my career as a freelancer, podcaster, site owner and uniquely incompetent and unsuccessful small businessman. 

But I also haven’t seen Mad Max: Fury Road for a much stupider reason as well. Reviews made it seem so intense, so exciting, and so overflowing with mind-blowing spectacle that I wondered if I would be able to handle it. 

What if Mad Max: Fury Road was so harrowing and extreme that I suffered some manner of excitement-induced heart attack while watching it? That would really fuck my life up if it did not flat-out end it. 

What if I couldn’t handle that much awesomeness? What if I had to shut it off after a half hour because it was all too much? 

Looking back, that was staggeringly idiotic. During my traumatic childhood, I protected myself from the world’s cruelty by building up my defenses until I had a solid brick wall around me that wouldn’t let anyone else in. 

After all, if I let someone into my life, they would discover what a pile of crap I was and desert me. Then I’d be miserable, so it was better to reject everyone and everything preemptively. 

So I developed defenses that are absurd when I really examine them. I’m a professional film writer, after all. I’ve been doing this shit for twenty-seven years. I think it’s safe to say that I am capable of handling watching what I’m sure is a fucking amazing movie like Mad Max: Fury Road. 

I have an understandable aversion to movies and television shows depicting child abuse, extreme violence, particularly of the sexual variety, and movies that are so depressing they drain you of the will to live. 

But I think I can handle a movie being mind-blowingly awesome. I know this because I saw Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga last night and did not suffer any manner of adrenaline-related cardiac arrest. I did not have to leave the theater after twenty minutes because it was all too much. 

In fact, I quite enjoyed the experience! It was great. I can see now why everyone lost their shit over Mad Max: Fury Road: George Miller is an absolutely amazing filmmaker with an unmatched genius for world-building and choreographing motor mayhem. 

Miller proved that with his direction of Happy Feet Two, and he proves it again here. 

Furiosa: a Mad Max Story provides an origin story for the avenging angel Charlize Theron, unforgettably played in Mad Max: Fury Road, a movie I will now see now that I know that doing so will not kill me. Will it thrill me? Yes, yes, it will. If it’s even half as good as everyone says it is, then I will be blown away. 

Furiosa begins with its pint-sized heroine being torn away from her peaceful childhood in the Green Place of Many Mothers, a matrilineal world of abundance, by the forces of Dementus (Chris Hemsworth) to a desolate post-apocalyptic wasteland. 

Dementus is a warlord with a prominent prosthetic proboscis who rules over his minions as a cult leader. He promises to shepherd his followers to a promised land of abundance in exchange for total obedience. 

Furiosa is ripped away from a protector who would do anything to keep her safe and kill anyone who would harm her. She is a world-class badass and the mother of an even badder motherfucker but she’s ultimately outgunned and outnumbered by Dementus’ forces of evil. 

Furiosa is being marketed as an Anya Taylor-Joy vehicle that reimagines the critic’s darling and fan favorite as an unstoppable action heroine as mighty as she is tiny. 

Yet Taylor-Joy doesn’t appear in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga until an hour in. 

For the film’s riveting first act, Furiosa is played by prodigiously gifted child actress Alyla Browne. Browne looks uncannily like Taylor-Joy. They share impossibly big, soulful blue eyes. 

Browne plays li’l Furiosa as a little girl with the soul and bravery of a gladiator. Her warrior of a mother obviously taught her well, and she was herself an expert in the perilous art of staying alive in a post-apocalyptic world full of elements all madly competing to kill you. 

Dementus takes a creepily paternalistic attitude towards Furiosa despite being responsible for her mother's death. The psycho with the Jimmy Durante schnozz sees Furiosa as a potential guide to a world other than the sun-blasted hellscape he inhabits, but he also recognizes something special in her. 

In this barren desert of a future, she’s a human oasis of dignity and self-respect. The scraggly survivors who encounter Furiosa largely assume that she is both a boy and mute when the reality is that Furiosa, like Mr. Ed, will never talk unless she has something to say. 

Furiosa is a zealot monomaniacally intent on escaping the Wasteland she has been thrust into and returning to the paradise that she was born into. 

Furiosa is about a woman who has suffered trials of Job yet refuses to be a victim. Everything that she endures makes her stronger and more preternaturally resilient and resourceful.

This includes being traded by Dementus to the ghoulish Immortan Joe as a wife. 

Our steel-willed heroine disguises herself as a boy and grows up to be a skilled mechanic overseeing the building of a heavily fortified “War Rig” capable of delivering supplies without being destroyed by raiders. 

Furiosa forges a pragmatic bond with Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke), a handsome driver who wins her favor by not being as transparently evil as every other man she has ever encountered. 

Furiosa is such a badass that losing an arm in a horrific fashion barely slows her down. She simply fashions herself a nifty new metal one and goes about her life’s goal of wreaking vengeance on the monster who destroyed everything she cares about. 

Furiosa grows into a woman who is physically unassuming but ferocious. Taylor-Joy embodies a riveting combination of vulnerability and strength. She has the haunted air of someone who has seen and suffered through things no one should and come out a stronger but inexorably scarred figure. 

Furiosa is the rare film that can be called an adrenaline-pumping thrill ride without being sarcastic or hyperbolic. Miller shows here why he’s one of the all-time great action directors, right up there with Sam Peckinpah, John Woo, and Neveldine/Taylor. 

It’s remarkable how much life is left in this franchise forty-five eventful years after the release of 1979’s Mad Max, the movie that started it all. 

My only real quibble with Furiosa is that at two hours and twenty-eight minutes, it’s a little too long. However, Miller tells a big story on an epic scale, so while it fundamentally earns its length, there’s nevertheless something to be said for leaving the audience wanting more. 

That said, I am excited about the prospect of Miller directing another Mad Max movie. I’m also excited to finally see Mad Max: Fury Road and revisit Mad Max, The Road Warrior, and Mad Max: Beyond the Thunderdome. 

Thank God there’s nothing to keep me, a Jewish man, from enjoying those movies or rooting for their hero. 

It turns out that the new Mad Max movies aren’t too awesome to handle, and, in hindsight, it was pretty fucking stupid of me to think that might be the case. 

Four stars out of Five  

Help me navigate the apocalyptic wasteland that is financing my upcoming dental surgery by contributing to the GoFundMe for it over at https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-nathans-journey-to-dental-implants