I Just Saw

I just saw Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga and it was good. It’s certainly better than any of the recent Star Wars “sagas”. A prequel to 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road, it tells the story of that film’s female lead, Furiosa, who in this one begins as a little girl in the Green Place of Many Mothers, one of the last places in the postapocalyptic Australian outback – referred to as the wastelands – where green things grow and nature’s gifts are in abundance. One day she’s kidnapped by members of a biker gang who take her to their leader, Dementus (Chris Hemsworth), part false prophet, part tinpot dictator, part motorcycle gangster and warlord.  

Following the death of her mother, Furiosa ends up in the Citadel, a strange medieval community carved out of rock formations where Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme) and his inner circle rule from the apex, controlling the water. Joe purchases Furiosa in a deal with Dementus where the latter gets to rule “Gastown”, a fuel refinery, and from there Furiosa begins her quest back home, growing into a young woman played by Anya Taylor-Joy. 

It goes without saying that the action and chase scenes coupled with the world-building are first-class. Director George Miller’s rasion d’être in his Mad Max films has always been these elements, of course. The narrative is punctuated by chases that are brilliantly staged and scored, an oil rig’s klaxon in particular used to great effect in stirring excitement. As the Mad Max films have gone on they’ve moved further and further into fantasy. The original 1979 film was set in a world in decline, while the latter entries are very much post the old world order, with feudalism and tribal states having succeeded modernity in the wastelands. 

Easily the best thing about the film, though, is Chris Hemsworth as Dementus. This is the performance of his career thus far, and although he’s been good elsewhere, I didn’t realise he was capable of the vivid work that he does here. The character roars and stomps about like Herod while displaying a Falstaffian garrulity. By turns camp, disturbing, and tragic, the last remaining vestige of his soul symbolised by a teddy bear chained to his apparel that once belonged to his “little ones”, Dementus is the standout in the wastelands. He holds your attention like nothing else when he’s on screen, even through the big prosthetic nose that Hemsworth wears. He’s a figure out of classic literature, almost. 

Furiosa is unfortunately, then, the least interesting character in the film, despite being the protagonist for whom it is named. The script is trying to position her as the “Mad Max” figure this time, almost mute and taciturn, but as much as Anya Taylor-Joy does her best it doesn’t work because the character doesn’t have the mythic heft of either Mel Gibson’s or Tom Hardy’s Maxes. 1981’s The Road Warrior ends with the line, “That was the last we ever saw of him. He lives now, only in my memories…” Max was enigmatic and complicated, a noirish loner crossed with an errant knight. Furiosa in this film just doesn’t have that mysteriousness, that legendary feeling. 

Partly it’s because the film has a bad case of prequelitis, as most prequels do, especially in our current glut of them. We see Furiosa from early childhood, so there’s no mystery about her, nothing to wonder on when it comes to discerning her trauma. Mad Max: Fury Road, as I recall, handled this beautifully with Hardy’s Max’s trauma only hinted at with the image of a little girl disappearing under a truck. Since this film is essentially a biography of Furiosa, it needed to have her talk a lot more or find some way for her to establish herself as an actual person, to hint at moral complexity, yet it feels reluctant to give her any depth or even vulnerability.  

Genre films at the moment seem to do this thing where they’re afraid to give heroines actual character lest it conflict with making them “relatable”. Call it Captain Marvel (2019) syndrome, where the writers are more concerned with making her a #GirlBoss than a complex persona. Say what you like about older movies, but Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor felt like human beings, heroic yet flawed. 

Away from Furiosa herself, the plotting of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga can be extremely ropey. Once Furiosa finds herself in the Citadel and placed among Joe’s harem she escapes and disguises herself as a boy, while apparently no one bothers to check where she is or questions why there’s now a new, oddly androgynous young male among them. Nor do her new colleagues in the Citadel’s community of mechanics notice her developing body, even though they sleep in the same room on bunks. The film has a scene where she pees in a jar and is caught by someone who asks why she does this (since as “one of the guys” she should be okay with going anywhere), in answer to which she shrugs. Uh-huh.  

I was also annoyed that the only reason Furiosa wasn’t saved as a child was because her mother took mercy on a woman in Dementus’ camp. As if a hardened warrior hellbent on saving her child – and even more importantly in a larger sense, protecting the Green Place from destruction – would fall for “I’m a mother too”. Even if she didn’t want to kill her, she could have bound and gagged her. It doesn’t make the woman a #GirlBoss to make her weak and gullible. 

Despite these problems, the film is never boring and frequently a lot of fun in the detailed world and action that it depicts. Since it’s divided into chapters I like to think of it as short stories from the same world as opposed to a direct follow-up to Fury Road. Despite the aforementioned plot point, the first chapter with Furiosa as a little girl is fantastic, strange and exciting and emotional. Chris Hemsworth is superlative throughout, his feudal wars with Immortan Joe – himself an engaging and intelligent warlord character – so good I wish it was the focus of the film. This Mad Max saga is definitely worth watching despite its creaks and groans. 

Rating: 3/4