Film Review - Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is the newest entry in the Mad Max series and George Miller is once again in the directors chair but this Furiosa story is a prequel to the 2015 entry Fury Road and sees a young Furiosa (Alyla Browne and then Anya-Taylor Joy) kidnapped from her home in the Green Place to be the prisoner of Dr. Dementus (Chris Hemsworth) who later battles it out with a younger Immortan Joe (Lacey Hulme) for control of the Wasteland while Furiosa seeks her righteous vengeance against Dr. Dementus.

Furiosa was a film that I had mixed feelings about before going to see it as I wasn’t the biggest fan of Fury Road in 2015 despite its rave reviews, for me it felt too much like the many many many imitators that came after the smash success of 1981’s Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior plus this film would not see Charlize Theron return to the role that she did such a good job with in that previous film but the previews for this film did do enough to make me interested.

And I was glad they did as this is a great time at the cinema, it’s not my favourite film of the year (Dune Part Two is and it’s not even close) but this is up there so far, Miller’s direction is very different than in Fury Road but I felt more effective as unlike Fury Road which was essentially a 20 minute chase scene extended to a 2 hour movie this one is willing to take its time a lot more to tell its story while still giving you the high energy kinetic action fans of this series expect and I liked that difference.

Also this movie is full of fun performances and it was great to spot some Australian actors in the cast particularly John Howard, Angus Sampson and Lacey Hulme who I liked more as Immortan Joe than the late great Hugh Keays-Burne who played the role in Fury Road, I also spotted young Quaden Bayles from Miller’s previous film 3,000 Years of Longing in a brief role and it was good to see him as well.

But before I talk more about Hemsworth I have to mention both Browne and Taylor-Joy as the young Furiosa, both do a great job sometimes with just their body language and facial expressions at embodying this role and doing Theron proud as I didn’t miss her in that role in the same way I missed Mel Gibson as Max when watching Tom Hardy play that character in Fury Road.

But as for Hemsworth he is simply fantastic here and he is clearly having a great time playing this character and it shows on screen, he’s equally amusing and menacing with his ocker accent and along with the Harkonnens in Dune Part Two is my favourite villain on screen this year.

Before I wrap this review up I must talk about this part of the film that to me felt like a disgrace and that is the near erasure of the involvement of Village Roadshow Pictures from the making of this movie, their logo and branding did appear on the initial previews but on the later previews and then the film itself it was nowhere to be found and may I just remind everyone reading this:

Roadshow Gave Warner Brothers this series TO BEGIN WITH!!!!! As when they were looking to take the original Mad Max film to overseas markets in 1979 they went to Warner Brothers as at that time they had a distribution partnership with them here in Australia and WB later produced Mad Max 2 and Beyond Thunderdome in the 80s and then Warner Brothers and Roadshow co-produced Fury Road together in 2015 in what felt like to me a full circle moment but with this movie, just Warner Brothers and before that here in Australian cinemas, the fucking Universal logo as WB at the end of 2020 took a near 50 year old distribution partnership with Roadshow and flushed it down the Dunny.

And given that Mad Max is predominantly a brand that means most to Australia as compared with the rest of the world it is very disappointing personally that Roadshow’s involvement with this movie has been swept away like this and before some think “That David Zaslav’s done it again, what an utter clown” the ending of the WB/Roadshow distribution partnership wasn’t his doing, it was something he inherited when he took over the studio in 2022 and I sincerely hope he puts it back together as that would make me a very very happy boy.

With that out of the way that was Furiosa and it is the most fun I’ve had in the cinema so far this year with a more engaging story, great action and fun performances, 3 and a half out of 5.