George Miller’s newest addition to the Mad Max series, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, has critics and fans alike rejoicing. While the film hasn’t made a smashing success at the box office thus far, the general reception its receiving is overwhelmingly positive. I am not one of those adoring fans or critics who rejoiced at the film, and quite frankly I found it very boring. Why didn’t Furiosa work? Allow me to explain.
Prequel/Sequel Syndrome
My biggest concern going into this film was that it’s a prequel about a pre-exisiting character. That right there takes away about half of the suspense. We know Furiosa will survive any obstacle she faces, as she’ll eventually meet Max in Mad Max: Fury Road. This makes the action fall very flat, as there are no stakes for our main character. With the established Furiosa as the main protagonist, it’s also hard to care about anyone else. When a new character or one of the countless maniacs of the wasteland dies, it doesn’t hold much weight.
The other concern I’d had with the film is the fact that it’s a follow up to Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road, one of the best action films ever made. What made Fury Road such a successful and entertaining action film is the simplicity of its story. Max, Furiosa and others run from a large group hunting after them, then precede to run right back in the same direction. This allowed for an epic display of practically non-stop operatic action, allowing human emotion and drama to seep through in its quieter moments. With Furiosa, it seems like Miller focused on the drama first, then the action, which leads to some very forced and obvious sequences of dialogue.
Lackluster Action
In Fury Road the action propelled the plot forward, or otherwise encroached on the story completely. The endless truck chase served greatly as a plot device, and made sense in the context of the story. It always stayed close in on the action, making the film fun and suspenseful in equal measure. The action in Furiosa is sporadic instead of consistent. This makes these sequences of calibrated chases and gunfights feel out of place or otherwise unnecessary. It really just feels like a video game, which is funny, because there is a Mad Max video game, and it’s great!
I will say that the opening sequence is extremely well done and rather gripping. Miller at least knew to hold off on the spectacle until the later acts of the film, starting with a bare bones cat-and-mouse chase sequence. From there, however, things fall apart. With such a long runtime and far too many plot points, the action seems like an afterthought to whatever the main story is supposed to be. Instead of exciting, these scenes become exhausting, especially since we’ve seen this type of thing done before, and better.
The Story, or, Lack Thereof
When a film is over two hours long, it better not waste any time. This film wasted lots of time. In trying to create a resonant and deep emotional origin story of a great character, it seems Miller and crew got carried away. The story is usually not the most important part of an action flick. It’s not because good stories can’t be told with great action, but rather that action movie stories themselves have become overtly cliche. Usually, the action genre is based on one thing: revenge, and this film sure is based on revenge.
The big issue with the storytelling is that it gives so much away. In Fury Road, a lot was left up to the imagination. We knew very little about our characters motivations or stories. The rest of the world, while spoken of, was never shown. This leaves the audience wanting more, whereas Furiosa wants to spoon-feed audiences as much information as possible about the wasteland. We meet a “younger” Immortan Joe, and learn the ways of his followers. We also see the Bullet Farm, Gas Town, and The Green Place. With the addition of new characters and locations, as well as the recycling of others, this “epic” feels overstuffed and undercooked.
Characters ?
Besides Furiosa, who doesn’t get much further characterization than Charlize Theron’s version in Fury Road, the additional characters fall extremely flat. The biggest addition of course, is Chris Hemsworth’s cartoonish “Dr. Dementus”. Dementus is a sadistic, cocky, and very loud-mouthed gang leader. (Its all very original, yes, I know.) He is, by design, dastardly, and it’s all very show-boaty in an off-putting way. What made Immortan Joe a great villian is how serious, cold-blooded, and at times, emotionally vulnerable he was. The writers lazily tried to give Dementus an emotional pay off right at the end of his story, but it was too little too late.
The other big addition to the cast is Tom Burke as “Praetorian Jack”, the doomed love interest of Furiosa. As obvious as the ring master Dementus is, at least he added entertainment value. Jack and Furiosa have an extremely similar arc to Max and Furiosa in Fury Road. Jack is the one who works for Immortan Joe, and Furiosa is the one who has to learn from him. What made the relationship between Max and Furiosa so interesting was the lack of romance. Adding a romantic interest who’s bound to die is an uninspired addition to the plot, one already overflowing with pointless subplots.
The End Goal
Whenever a series is rebooted or continued, it begs the question: why? What purpose does this serve the over-arching story that has come before? Do we need a new version of such a film for younger audiences? NO! There were three films in the Mad Max series, with Fury Road coming years later as an exciting nod to the original series. I get that Furiosa is a fan favorite character, but the film feels as though it added nothing to her character as a whole.
We see how she gets to where she is when we see her in Fury Road, yes. But does it matter? Not very much. It’s a by-the-numbers and expected story of revenge. A young Furiosa is kidnapped, her mother is murdered, and when she comes of age she must get revenge. This shouldn’t matter. Theron’s performance and the way her character is handled in Fury Road is brilliant. It leaves some things to the imagination while letting subtext do a lot of work. To sum it up: Furiosa has no left arm. We see how she loses her arm in Furiosa. Showing us how she lost her arm feels cheap, obvious, and totally tacky. A great metaphor for the entire film.
