Welcome to the Thunderdome! I’m Alex and I’ll be your guide today through the wastelands of Australia! This is an apocalypse and we will be prepared for whatever may come our way. In this matter of Furiosa, we start years back and get to see it all play out in 5 acts. Coming prior to Mad Max: Fury Road and her first appearance, we open this film with Furiosa as a child. We will be doomed to see how she becomes the wasteland warrior Charlize Theron played so beautifully on screen. But before we can even appreciate Anya Taylor-Joy’s version of the fierce warrior queen, we get to appreciate Alyla Browne’s version. She’s young, but not innocent. It’s clear quite quickly that this girl is smart, educated, and ferocious. She has zero issue killing and she’s barely double digits. But that’s the apocalypse for you! One must be prepared to defend oneself and one’s people. She must protect them. “No one must ever know.” Baby girl is already ruthless and I am here for it! Her mother attempts to rescue her from her captors, but this is a Mad Max movie. No one is making it out happy.
Furiosa is now the property of Dementus (Chris Hemsworth) and boy howdy, give this man more villain roles!!! The fake nose was awful and off-putting, and IMHO could have just been skipped, but perhaps they needed Chris to be a little uglier. I don’t think it was necessary, but that’s me. In moving past the nose, I reiterate: GIVE THIS MAN THE VILLAIN!!! Hemsworth plays the role so perfectly. With a little bit of goofiness, you look past the true villain standing in front of you. We know Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme) is a bad guy, right? Or at least, if you’ve seen Fury Road, you know he’s the big baddie. So who is the good baddie and who is the bad baddie? That’s how we dichotomize. We have to know who we can be behind and who we have to hate. Well, in this movie, they all suck. And unfortunately, Furiosa learns it the hard way. She is eventually traded hands and ends up with Joe’s harem. So she can either be stuck with the man who killed her mother or be with the dude who needs a bunch of women because no one can produce a healthy baby. Three strikes and you’re out? Well, Furiosa would rather be out now, thank you very much. She slips the grasp of Joe’s son and figures out how to make her own way.
And she does that quite damn well. She easily makes herself useful due to her size and gumption. And she lives. Not only do they shift well into using Anya, but the beautiful use of her hair as a time marker was amazing. She’s growing up. She’s living what life she can live. But her heart? Oh, that’s a whole other matter. Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke) catches her eye. He’s in charge of transportation between the oases. Dipping now into the political aspect of the wasteland, we have three known central oases. The Citadel is run by Immortan Joe, then there’s Gastown where vehicles can get their gasoline or whatever silly apocalypse word they use, and lastly, Bullet Town, and I’ll let you assume what they get there. These three hubs are it, or so they think. But their relationships with each other are essential and traveling between all three for business means danger. Eventually, Furiosa and Jack end up as a team and it’s clear, again from that hair time marker, that they work well together for quite a while. But like I said at the end of the first paragraph, this is a Mad Max movie. No one makes it out happy.
Dementus is making big moves, taking over Gastown and moving for Bullet Town. The lovers get caught in the action. Again, Hemsworth plays the villain so brilliantly and ruthlessly in his stupid, goofy way. I have to give this movie all the flowers for how it handled this romance. They are deeply committed to each other and it might not be easy for some people to see because there isn’t lots of kissing or sex. But nothing will pierce your heart more than hearing her whisper “My Jack” and him whisper back “Fury” before the gut-wrenching end. I’m sorry if your media literacy needs work, but this is one of the better love stories I’ve seen in recent years and I’m begging for more of this. I don’t need sex to know people love each other. Let’s focus on real emotional connections and less on t*ts and a$$, yes?
Furiosa loses the arm but makes it back to warn Joe, and of course, others don’t want to listen to her. I mean, come on! As if she hasn’t clearly made herself a useful part of Joe’s empire and y’all still don’t want to listen to her because she’s a woman? Well, she does what she needs to do and gives the rest of the women a new chance. And now we’ve seen the beginning of who we will come to meet in Fury Road, which honestly feels even more perfect of a name after hearing Jack call her Fury.
In regards to runtime, it’s a slog. Two and a half hours is a long time for constant exposition. There’s a lot to learn and it moves fast. But, I loved it. It’s visually stunning. Like Fury Road, the saturation of the brilliant dusty Outback makes the screen burst with color. Mostly red and orange, but the playing with light and shadows makes this a visual treat to watch even for 2.5 hours. The acting was top-tier across the board. I’ll watch anything Anya or Chris appear in, but hats off to Burke especially. We don’t get much of Jack, but the actor brought him to the screen fantastically and it made for a truly gut-wrenching love story. And I can’t ignore the subtle Charlize love either. I can’t confirm if it’s her voice or possibly even integrated shots of her, but there’s one spot in particular where they are working to blend those two actresses and it’s wonderful. I don’t know if another film will follow, I’d imagine probably not because what would the story be? But also, if I know anything about Hollywood, they love a follow up so I suppose we’ll see. In the end, this prequel is a fitting entry into the Mad Max universe and if they can find a way to do another one well, I would gladly watch and review, at the very least so I can brush up on more Aussie slang. For now, g’day mates!
Oh, FURIOSA debuted on HBO on Saturday, August 24, and can be seen on additional play dates – Tue, Aug 27 @ 5:28 pm EDT on HBO 2; Thu, Aug 29 @ 9:00 pm EDT on HBO; Thu, Aug 29 @ 9:00 pm EDT on HBO Latino; Sat, Aug 31 @ 7:55 pm EDT on HBO 2; Mon, Sep 02 @5:29 pm EDT on HBO; Mon, Sep 02 @ 5:29 pm EDT on HBO Latino Wed, Sep 04 @ 3:24 pm EDT on HBO 2. Plus find it on Max.
