✯✯✯✯✯

When Mad Max: Fury Road opened in 2015, it felt like the perfect jumping point for George Miller to expand what we’d known so well about the world he’d created for the Mad Max films as we know it. But there’s no character who stood atop everyone else in the same way that Charlize Theron’s Furiosa had done so: especially right next to a new iteration of Max Rockatansky. The character herself had become a star in her own right, and this nearly decade-late prequel that explores her origins cements the iconic status of Charlize Theron’s character in all the best ways possible.

In Mad Max: Fury Road, it was established that Furiosa (now portrayed by Anya Tayloy-Joy) had been taken away from her own homeland which was known as “The Green Place,” meant to be a safe haven for Immortan Joe’s mistreated wives. Told in five distinct chapters, Furiosa explores the title character’s own childhood from when she was taken away from her homeland by raiders of the Green Place, to be a prize for their Warlord Dementus (Chris Hemsworth), down to the formation of the action heroine we recognize now. It’s perhaps one that feels far more sprawling than Mad Max: Fury Road which preceded this film, but George Miller’s own vision of such a world only carries the same ambitions as what had once been achieved since the first Mad Max film, to create the feeling of watching an epic.

Being nearly ten years since the release of Mad Max: Fury Road, it’d be easy enough to worry about whether or not Furiosa would bring forth the same sort of energy once again. But Furiosa was never going to carry that same euphoria as Fury Road, nor did it ever need to. Instead, the film finds its greatest successes in the willingness to explore how we understood the world as we’d been reintroduced in Fury Road. It’s an approach that I think really gives you a better feel for such a world, but it also gives more dimensions to some of the most iconic screen presences that we’d already seen in Fury Road at that.

Of course, with this film being the story of Furiosa, everything here feels far more closed-off compared to the straightforward chase scenes that were achieved ten years prior in Mad Max: Fury Road. But George Miller still directs all these moments like he’s got nothing left in his system. Which might very well be the most important thing in making sure that this world is as entrancing as it’s always been; it’s always been something that George Miller has been striving to perfect from the start of his career all the way till now. And not only is it still dazzling, but the energy present feels like it’s still coming from Miller’s youth.

Every minute of that is also felt in how we’re revisiting a familiar character. Furiosa herself had become a distinctive screen presence as portrayed by Charlize Theron, but Anya Taylor-Joy fills in those shoes perfectly. She might not have the same stoicism that has made Theron’s performance so distinctly remarkable, but she fits perfectly as the image of a younger iteration of the same character. It fits to capture the sort of person whom she was in her own youth, but also in how Taylor-Joy’s role is one that captures what’s left of Furiosa’s own innocence prior to her kidnapping by the Warlord Dementus. On that note, Chris Hemsworth is always chewing the scenery as the villain of this Furiosa’s saga, in what may be his own career best role too. There’s never a moment where he’s not entertaining, but at the same time it’s also a distinctive screen presence he brings forth in here.

Perhaps it’d be hard to try and bring forth the same feeling that you’d remember having experienced from seeing Mad Max: Fury Road in theaters for the first time. But I don’t think that I needed George Miller to try and bring exactly that once more when telling a story that was centered around arguably the best new character in said film too. Comparisons to Fury Road are not really going to do this movie any favours, especially as I think that the film does more than well enough to exist on its own terms. It’s clear that Miller wants to make this feel like a perfect entry point for new viewers to the Mad Max series at that, and it stands very strong.

Watch the trailer right here.

All images via Warner Bros. Discovery.

Directed by George Miller
Screenplay by George Miller, Nico Lathouris
Produced by Doug Mitchell, George Miller
Starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Burke, Alyla Browne
Premiere Date: May 15, 2024
Running Time: 148 minutes