Was there a bigger surprise for me when 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road was somehow up for Best Picture at the Academy Awards? I mean, there was no chance it was going to win, and in the years since, the Oscars love to toss a nod to a popular movie that was very well done but won’t actually win, something like, say Top Gun: Maverick. But man, I couldn’t object to the movie getting a nomination. Considering it was basically a two hour car chase, the fact that it kept my attention the entire time and on the edge of my seat says something.
Considering that movie, despite the title, was really about Charlize Theron’s Furiosa, getting her backstory seems like a good way to go from there.
As a child living in the Green Place, young Furiosa (Alyla Browne) sees a couple bikers have discovered the place, and her efforts to sabotage their rides get her captured and returned to their leader, Dr. Dementus (Chris Hemsworth, doing his best psychotic madman since Bad Times at the El Royale). Furiosa’s mother (Charlee Fraser), meanwhile, followed and managed to kill the bikers who had seen the Green Place before they could tell Dementus where it is. During an escape, Furiosa is captured while her mother is killed by Dementus in an effort to get one of them to talk and tell him where the place of abundance is.
However, Furiosa won’t talk. Indeed, she doesn’t say much throughout the entire movie, so Dementus eventually gives up and gets the idea to try and capture the Citadel of Immortan Joe(Lachy Hulme). That plan goes poorly, but other plans go better, forcing a detente between Joe and Dementus. Part of that includes a trade of young Furiosa to Joe to keep the peace, and while she is initially set up in one place within Joe’s hierarchy, she finds another path for herself, largely under the tutelage of Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke), as she grows up to become Anya Taylor-Joy. She still dreams of getting back to the Green Place, and she wants revenge against Dementus. Fury Road shows how one of those goals turned out. Will she get the other one here?
So, the problem with any prequel is the ending may be a foregone conclusion. I know, for example, that Furiosa and Joe need to survive the movie. Furiosa will lose an arm at one point. These are known factors from another movie set later on, and writer/director George Miller doesn’t much care about continuity. He just wants to tell a different story in his weird post-Apocalyptic setting with muscle cars. Fortunately, he is very good at directing action scenes and stunts, and the production design and even the color filter give his setting the sort of look many will try to copy and few will actually be able to do so. In that sense, it reminds me of Dune Part Two.
It helps that Hemsworth gives such a colorful performance as Dementus, a guy who in some ways makes Immortan Joe seem like a good option. Both Browne and Taylor-Joy give good performances as Furiosa, but there may not be much to the character here, much like Mad Max himself in the movies that feature that character as the “protagonist.” The plot here is arguably just an excuse for various action set pieces, but I don’t mind that if all if true. This movie is a blast, not quite on the level of Fury Road, but certainly a worthy addition to the Mad Max series.
Grade: A-
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