What is the purpose of a prequel? You might say it is to further deepen the lore of a character, or to add context to the world that the prior film built. Perhaps it’s a supplement, a new adventure with fresh, exciting characters that feed into and enhance that next entry. Should it be its own standalone thing? One thing it must do, to this writer, is validate its existence and not depreciate whatever came before (or what will come after). It saddens me to feel that George Miller’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga doesn’t find enough of that merit; its over-explanation of lore and contextualization of the Furiosa character cheapening what makes the 2015 behemoth Mad Max: Fury Road such a feat of visual storytelling and enigmatic characterization.
The lush Green Place of Many Mothers opens Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, as a young Furiosa (Alyla Browne) plucks a succulent fruit from a tree branch. To the world of fire and brimstone that the Mad Max movies inhabit, this is a paradise, an inverse of the Wasteland, this being a biblical Garden of Eden and the fruit that Furiosa picks as an emblem of the first sin. Fresh water, clean renewable energy and a contingent of people that are so-called ‘full life’ for their cleanliness, having been unsoiled by the harshness of the apocalypse. Heck, in our modern climate of energy barons hiking the prices up at the cost of vulnerable lives, this is a paradise in every universe.
This “place of abundance” is where young teen Furiosa is kidnapped from by a gang of wasteland thugs trying to win favour with their leader, Dementus (Chris Hemsworth), an animated psychopath who revels in the chaos of the wasteland. Mileage varies on how much Hemsworth’s performance as Dementus works – unsure as to the necessity or effectiveness of the prosthetic nose and chin – but Miller seems to have finally unlocked Hemsworth. Giving him a role that harnesses his Australian patois, Hemsworth infuses the comedic sensibilities he showed in Thor with an affable sense of chaos energy as he rides his three-abreast motorcycle chariot while a toy bear, that once belonged to his deceased children, hangs loose to his groin, bouncing at the lurch of chariot wheels going over human skulls.
This review was first posted on June 12th 2024. Full review linked below.
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