Riot’s Reviews: Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
There’s just something special about dystopian, post-apocalyptic content. It’s been an obsession particularly for western civilizations ever since they were established. For the nations lucky enough to not devolve (yet) into the hellscapes that plagued the 20th century, dystopian literature served as a metaphorical warning against specific ideologies that tend towards disaster and chaos. As time rolled on and film began to take over the story, it evolved more into a morbid curiosity and tool for entertainment. Enter the “Mad Max Saga,” a dystopian world run on religious devotion to mechanics, violence, cannibalism, and an all-encompassing drive to survive. Full transparency note: I’ve never seen any of the original Mad Max trilogy. From what I’ve heard over the years, none of them are universally loved. At the very least, they are polarized between people who really love them and people who are indifferent. As far as I can tell, Mad Max: Fury Road was the first film to change that perception. The sheer commitment to practical effects, combined with carefully crafted cinematography and off the chains stunts brought a whole new generation of Mad Max fandom into the light. For myself, I saw Fury Road as a standalone masterpiece, so color me confused when it was announced that a prequel story about the titular character, Furiosa, was in development. So how does Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga hold up to its predecessor?
The best I can say on this is that I’m torn. Using the metrics I usually do, there’s nothing really inherently wrong with this movie. Its main characters, Anya Taylor-Joy (Furiosa) and Chris Hemsworth (Dementus), turn in very strong performances. Taylor Joy exemplifies a hardened and determined character who is doing everything she can to deal with her past trauma and the boiling, revenge-fueled rage inside of her, warring with the desire to kill her tormentor and her longing to get back home. It’s a lot of emotions to contend with when her character is mostly mute throughout the film, making the performance all the more impressive. Her action sequences heavily rely on her agility and cunning, which finely fits the character established previously by Charlize Theron. Hemsworth really shines as the charismatic, vicious, and clearly out of his mind antagonist. His character journey, as a fanatic despot that can’t seem to do anything else but conquer everything in front of him, makes logical sense to the world of Mad Max and makes for one of the best antagonists I’ve seen in a while. The shots/sequences are beautifully filmed much like is predecessor, which is fascinating enough considering the majority of its setting is merely desert. The costume design is on point and the audience is again treated to some fascinating new vehicle models. The uneasy, slightly disturbing feeling you’re supposed to get from the various wasteland inhabitants and the horrible things they do to each other is accomplished without getting overly gory or violent (even though there is still plenty to be had). There is a very long and particularly intense chase sequence midway through the film that really sets the tone for everything else in the movie. The story has a ton of depth and emotion, complete with gnarly action sequences that are strong enough to consistently hold the audience’s attention.
So what went wrong? Hindsight being 20/20 we now know that Furiosa was a spectacular box office flop, much like The Fall Guy was (very strong comedy/action flick, check out the review here). Even with an excellent summer release date, the audiences just didn’t show and as far as I can tell, it all boils down to one simple point: nobody asked for this movie. You can have all of the great character development/arcs that you want, but if nobody is interested in the backstory of the lead at the onset, what is the point of seeing it? We essentially learned everything we needed to know about Furiosa from the first movie and full transparency, Theron accomplished more by way of showing her emotional trauma than Taylor-Joy did. Blame it on the scripts if you want, but even the “grand conclusion” of this movie was frankly underwhelming compared to what the whole rest of the film had to offer. Its poetic justice is poignant, but still felt unsatisfying. Furiosa also suffered from the same phenomena as what I imagine audiences felt watching The Hobbit series. Furiosa strayed farther into special effects and CGI than Fury Road did and while it was obviously necessary for a lot of the action sequences that would be impossible to pull of practically, it just didn’t look right. I think I was able to forgive The Hobbitmore because they were dealing with fantasy characters and there is something about CGI’d, real-world action sequences that are just never going to be up to snuff. Call it the limitations of technology, I just can’t imagine it will ever really look right.
This feels wrong to even say, but the movie actually suffered from too much backstory. Taylor-Joy is the type of actress that will put butts in seats, so to advertise a film with her as lead and then fail to introduce her into the story until darn near halfway through the movie is asinine to me. Does all of the backstory for young Furiosa matter? Sure. But this ends up playing into another negative aspect of the film: it’s too damn long. Now, this is not entirely the fault of Furiosa as previews these days are over-abundantly time-consuming (it was a full 30 minutes before the 2 hour 30 min runtime even started), but this ties back into my previous point about too much backstory. It was meant to show how much of a monster Dementus was, but that is easily accomplished very early on in the story. Making her history more succinct and getting the audience to the point where Taylor-Joy could take over sooner would have done a lot to make the movie drag less than it did. I had far too many moments wondering when things were finally going to wrap up to the point that when it did, I had already emotionally distanced myself due to boredom.
Riot’s Rating: 7.1/10: This review is coming out late so there’s no time to save the box office. It’s worth a stream when you have the time though.
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