Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
Films & TV
“Miller’s Mad Max world is a striking achievement of immersive sound and cinematography, and Furiosa repeats the visceral impact of this world without abatement. The roar of engines, the burnt palette of the desert, and the constant clash of metal make the viewing experience a bombardment. Go see it on the big screen,” says Dr Peter Kline from St Francis College
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is the latest installment of George Miller’s Mad Max series, a collection of action films set in a post-apocalyptic and dystopian Australia. The Mad Max world is a wasteland of war, competition over dwindling resources, and survival through brutality and revenge.
Furiosa is a prequal to Miller’s 2015 Mad Max: Fury Road. In Fury Road, we were introduced to Furiosa as she attempts to emancipate herself and five other women forced to work as sex slaves of Immortan Joe, the warlord who controls the Citadel, the only remaining source of fresh water in the parched wasteland. Furiosa’s aim is to return with the women to the Green Place, a land of abundance ruled by women that is her childhood home.
Furiosa begins with the young Furiosa in the Green Place and tells the story of how she became a slave and finally a lieutenant of Immortan Joe in the Citadel. Captured by a biker gang and put under the possession of the warlord Dementus, Furiosa is thrust brutally and rapidly into the wasteland beyond paradise. She is initially rescued by her mother, but when her mother is captured, Furiosa is forced to watch her crucifixion. As part of a bargain between Dementus and Immortan Joe, Furiosa is transferred to the Citadel in order to become a sex slave. Disguising herself as a teenage boy who cannot speak, Furiosa works her way up in the Citadel as she plots her escape and her revenge against Dementus.
The best performance in the film is by Chris Hemsworth, who plays Dementus with a mix of sentimentality, brutality, and over-extended ambition. Furiosa is played compellingly as child by Alyla Browne who strikingly resembles Anya Taylor-Joy who plays her with equal pathos as a young adult. The only glaring fault with Taylor-Joy’s performance is her unexplained American accent that is implausible and distracts from the Australian setting of the film.
Miller’s Mad Max world is a striking achievement of immersive sound and cinematography, and Furiosa repeats the visceral impact of this world without abatement. The roar of engines, the burnt palette of the desert, and the constant clash of metal make the viewing experience a bombardment. Go see it on the big screen.
In one of the climactic scenes late in the film, we get a moment of filmic self-reflexivity that sums up the ambitions not only of Furiosa, but of the whole Mad Max series. After explaining to Furiosa that he, too, underwent the horrific childhood trauma of being taken away from loved ones who were then killed, leaving him with an insatiable drive for revenge, Dementus asks, “The question is: do you have it in you to make it epic?” Grief and the quest for revenge as the fuel for epic narration is as old as the ancient Greek epics. Miller certainly has it in him to give this perennial theme an Australian face in an age of political crisis and climate collapse. Furiosa takes us into a world where grief and loss are without the consolations of transcendence and therefore a world in which human passion, for better and for worse, is played out with exigent and unremitting force.
Does Furiosa rise to the level of Fury Road? Not quite, but it is not a fatal shortcoming to fall short of one of the best action films of all time. It is a worthy prequal that happily takes us right up to the beginning of Fury Road, setting the stage for the masterpiece.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, rated MA15+ and directed by George Miller, is currently showing in cinemas.
Editor’s note: Interested in learning more about mystical theology? Dr Peter Kline is teaching CT2002 Mystical Theology in Semester 2 2024. Please contact Linda Burridge at lburridge@ministryeducation.org.au) for more information or visit the St Francis College website.
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