A prequel film can be a difficult thing to justify. Since audiences already know the character's fates, there must be a compelling reason to tell more story. And even if the story is there, a film’s stylistic choices or technical execution may be too different or fall short of audience expectations.
2024’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga faces this very uphill battle, but succeeds wholeheartedly in justifying its existence as a prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road. The film is a sprawling tale of vengeance and hope that brings something both familiar and new to this post-apocalyptic world and gives us even more reason to care about the character of Furiosa.
A Stylistic Evolution
George Miller has always been a visually distinct director, with the Mad Max franchise as his crown jewel, pushing the boundaries of action filmmaking and visual storytelling over the past 45 years. But with Furiosa, Miller trades in the series’ typical action trademarks for a more reflective and sweeping epic.
Make no mistake, the action is still in top form. But Miller has no interest in simply “playing the hits;” he wants to bring something new to his expected style. This new, but familiar stylistic evolution means maintaining some key components of his filmmaking tendencies, while changing others.
For example, action designer Guy Norris created death-defying feats for the stunt team that more than measure up to those from Fury Road. However, composer Tom Holkenborg (also known as Junkie XL) makes sparse use of melodic materials and Fury Road motifs, with this film’s score driven primarily by industrial soundscapes made of distorted guitars and warped orchestral instruments. Similarly, Miller’s trademark undercranking is ever-present in Furiosa but with slightly longer shot selections as opposed to Fury Road’s frantic, fast-paced editing.
At 149 minutes (nearly 30 minutes longer than any other film in the franchise), Furiosa spans 15-20 years of milestones that have shaped the titular character's life, breaking the formula of focusing one moment in time. Miller even separates the events into chapters to thematically distinguish these moments.
These chapter divisions work alongside other technical and story elements to create the overall feeling of the film as a fable. The film’s highly stylized cinematography and coloring (even by Miller’s standards) place the viewer in an environment that feels unnatural and less grounded than Fury Road. A narrator (“the history man”) periodically speaks via voiceover as if recalling an ancient tale. Even the film’s visual effects often look uncanny and over-the-top, as if calling attention to its place outside of reality.
But what is this storybook fable about, and what does it have to say in the context of the Mad Max franchise?
Actions and Words
“As the world falls around us, how must we brave its cruelties?”
The film begins with a young Furiosa being kidnapped from her home (“the green place”) and held captive by the warlord Dementus and his gang. Soon after, Dementus finds himself battling for power in the Wasteland with Immortan Joe, and the film follows Furiosa’s encounters with the two of them, all while she attempts to find her way back home.
A delightfully unhinged Chris Hemsworth portrays Dementus, one of the most talkative characters in the entire Mad Max franchise. Everything from Hemsworth’s strange voice and demeanor to his makeup and costume creates a unique aura compared to other Mad Max characters. Whereas many antagonists in the series have simply brought an imposing presence to the role, Dementus rallies others around him with rousing speeches full of empty promises. It’s clearly performative, but in a seemingly hopeless Wasteland, words can have power...for a time. However, the longer we spend in this fallen world, we realize that actions speak louder than words. Dementus’ power and following deplete over time as his words slowly catch up with his actions (and inactions).
Furiosa, on the other hand, is a woman of few words. Alyla Browne and Anya Taylor-Joy each play Furiosa at various stages of her life, retaining the stoicism and ruggedness originally brought to the character by Charlize Theron in Fury Road. Browne, playing a young Furiosa, turns in a star-making child performance, wearing her heart on her sleeve despite little dialogue. Halfway through the film, Taylor-Joy seamlessly takes over as an older Furiosa, world-weary and battle-worn, but retaining her fiery spirit and determination. Taylor-Joy’s eyes and posture speak volumes as she experiences love, loss, fear, and anger, wonderfully fusing Browne’s young Furiosa with Theron’s take on the character from Fury Road.
Furiosa survives, adapts, and distinguishes herself from the antagonists by her actions. Dementus tries to compare Furiosa’s survival instincts and ruthless quest for vengeance to his own, but as an audience, we see that their actions and motivations don’t align. Unlike the self-centered, all-talk Dementus, time and time again Furiosa makes decisions to help and save others, a trait we see her carry on from this film’s ending directly into the events of Fury Road.
Suffering Produces Hope
As the film comes to a close, Dementus and Furiosa’s similarities in circumstance but differences in behavior leave us pondering the two distinct ways in which they react to the harsh world around them.
“There is no hope!” Dementus screams to his followers during a particularly brutal moment in the film. “Not for them, not for you, not for me.” But Dementus fails (or just refuses) to recognize that hope isn’t dependent on one’s current circumstances and rarely leads to immediate gratification. As we see in Furiosa, hope is often built from pain. After all, suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. Every hardship Furiosa experiences is building something new in her, moving her beyond vengeance (the film’s final chapter title) and creating an internal stream of purpose amidst the surrounding wastelands.
So as the world falls around us, how must we brave its cruelties? With hope. We carry a seed of hope for the restoration of a better world and a dedication to being a part of that restoration. Furiosa carries a fruit tree seed throughout the film, representing that very hope – not yet realized, but sure to come. And when that seed is finally planted, it quite literally grows from the pain of her past.
A distinct prequel aspect of Furiosa (and an understandably frustrating aspect to some viewers) is that we don’t get to see those hopes fully realized until Mad Max: Fury Road. Though an emotional catharsis is most certainly present in this film’s ending, the big payoff doesn’t arrive within its runtime.
But that very fact makes this such a powerful prequel. We can watch her hardships with assurance, knowing that everything she went through, everything she fought for, everything she dreamt of, wasn’t a waste. We can watch Furiosa with the foreknowledge of who she’ll become and what she’ll do. We can watch Fury Road with a new, deeper understanding of her selfless quest and relentless spirit.
The events of this film lay the emotional groundwork – her suffering, her perseverance, her character, her hope – for the promise of what comes in Fury Road.
“See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” - Isaiah 43:19