George Miller returns to the wasteland without Max Rockatansky. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is the fifth film in the franchise and the first built around someone else — a prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road and an origin story for its one-armed Imperator. It runs 149 minutes and carries the tagline “Fury is born.”
Trailer, via Warner Bros..
Anya Taylor-Joy Takes the Wheel
Anya Taylor-Joy plays Furiosa, taken from the Green Place of Many Mothers as a child and driven up the ranks of the Citadel. Alyla Browne plays her younger self. Miller cast Taylor-Joy after watching an early cut of Last Night in Soho and auditioning her with the “Mad as Hell” monologue from Network. He passed on de-aging Charlize Theron because the technology still leaves “an uncanny valley” effect.
Chris Hemsworth’s Dementus
Chris Hemsworth plays Dementus, the warlord whose Biker Horde abducts Furiosa and who later rules Gastown. Hemsworth grew up on the Mad Max films and had applied for the title role in Fury Road in 2010, losing it to Tom Hardy. He cut his calorie intake in half to portray resource scarcity.
The returning Fury Road players:
- John Howard as The People Eater
- Nathan Jones as Rictus Erectus
- Angus Sampson as the Organic Mechanic
Tom Burke joins as Praetorian Jack, commander of the Citadel’s first War Rig and the friend Furiosa makes along the way.
A Decade in the Wasteland
The film tracks Furiosa for more than a decade, from the kidnapping to her rank of Imperator. It opens in a solarpunk green paradise and moves fast into the dieselpunk the franchise is known for. George Shevtsov’s History Man narrates. Archive footage of Theron and of Hugh Keays-Byrne as Immortan Joe closes the film.
there’s a kind of timelessness to her, there’s a mystery to her, and yet she’s accessible
That is Miller on Taylor-Joy, and it is the bet the whole film rests on.
What the History Man Cannot Fix
The narration is the film’s weak spot. The History Man explains a world that plays better unexplained, and every line of exposition costs the wasteland some of its dread. Miller’s instinct elsewhere is to show, not tell.
Why Furiosa Holds
Furiosa works because Miller refuses to make it a copy. The decade-long span gives the character a life Fury Road only implied, and Hemsworth’s Dementus is the loosest, strangest thing in the franchise. The archive footage in the final scene is a tribute that also admits the film cannot quite close its own loop.
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