You can't discuss George Miller's latest action spectacular, Furiosa, while ignoring Mad Max: Fury Road, and this is a constant point against this prequel. The fifth "Mad Max Saga" is otherwise a superior piece of high octane cinema, but the spectre of one of the great action movie legends always haunts it.
It's customary for a Mad Max movie to be stripped of all narrative fat. Furiosa is as lean as any in the premier car chase film series. Again, we're thrust into post-apocalypse Australia, where again bands of marauders pit souped-up death machines against one another in a series of weird and wild chases. This time, we get a backstory for Anya Taylor-Joy's titular heroine. A character who was originally created as a glorified action figure (and I don't mean that as an insult) in Fury Road is given a customary tragic backstory. Like all tormented badasses, she's been scarred by childhood trauma and has dedicated her life to revenge. The prequel stuff is nothing we're not intimately familiar with already. Elsewhere, Chris Hemsworth gets to let loose as a warlord in the style of Tina Turner's Thunderdome character. He's the most welcome new addition in a film that never adds much to its predecessors. Miller doesn't exactly dream big in the story department, but then again, he never really has with these films.
His genius is, and always has been, in his imagination. In the 45 years since Mad Max, Miller had taken the bones of his original cult biker gang flick and with every successive entry, grew the Mad Max series into a thing of insane, sublime vision. Fury Road was the culmination of this trend. With it, Miller was able to bring his idiosyncratic gas-powered post-apocalyptic wasteland to its apex. This in itself-the final expansion of Mad Max-was what gave Fury Road its weight of import; its awesome power. Nearly ten years later, Furiosa continues where Fury Road left off without expanding in any new direction.
A lot of the familiarity of Furiosa comes from the fact that we revisit the same characters and locations as Fury Road. Now, visions that were so awe-inspiring are taken for granted. I remember being staggered by the scale of the Citadel during the opening of Fury Road. Now, it's just a nostalgic setting. The characters that seemed so brazenly imagined are now just old friends. Complicating matters further is the fact that these visionary CGI wonders have gotten a lot... um... stranger looking. It's true that Furiosa is a beautiful piece of visual storytelling. It's also true that it looks noticeably faker than its big brother. Goopy digital backgrounds are ubiquitous and often ugly. This world, one so similar to Fury Road's, is distinguished only by its relative falsity.
One thing that doesn't shrink in the face of Miller's 2015 masterpiece is the action. It too is augmented by lots of digital effects, but when it comes to the chase scenes, Furiosa uses CGI to build, create, and intensify. When it comes to the question of whether I'd recommend seeing Furiosa in theaters, all I need to say is that doing so will give you two or three of the most amazing action scenes ever filmed. The sharp, suspenseful, brilliantly creative stunt extravaganzas for which George Miller is known are present in full force. It's everything you expect from a Mad Max film. Just as violent, dangerous, and completely GONZO as any other.
To say that Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is "more of the same" is both its greatest strength and biggest weakness. Yes, as a piece of action filmmaking, Furiosa is a remarkable technical achievement in popcorn entertainment. However, Mad Max: Fury Road reached the platinum-tier of action films because of its landmark ambition. It was an enormous, risky endeavor, and one that will last while its safer, less ambitious prequel fades away.
78/100.
It's customary for a Mad Max movie to be stripped of all narrative fat. Furiosa is as lean as any in the premier car chase film series. Again, we're thrust into post-apocalypse Australia, where again bands of marauders pit souped-up death machines against one another in a series of weird and wild chases. This time, we get a backstory for Anya Taylor-Joy's titular heroine. A character who was originally created as a glorified action figure (and I don't mean that as an insult) in Fury Road is given a customary tragic backstory. Like all tormented badasses, she's been scarred by childhood trauma and has dedicated her life to revenge. The prequel stuff is nothing we're not intimately familiar with already. Elsewhere, Chris Hemsworth gets to let loose as a warlord in the style of Tina Turner's Thunderdome character. He's the most welcome new addition in a film that never adds much to its predecessors. Miller doesn't exactly dream big in the story department, but then again, he never really has with these films.
His genius is, and always has been, in his imagination. In the 45 years since Mad Max, Miller had taken the bones of his original cult biker gang flick and with every successive entry, grew the Mad Max series into a thing of insane, sublime vision. Fury Road was the culmination of this trend. With it, Miller was able to bring his idiosyncratic gas-powered post-apocalyptic wasteland to its apex. This in itself-the final expansion of Mad Max-was what gave Fury Road its weight of import; its awesome power. Nearly ten years later, Furiosa continues where Fury Road left off without expanding in any new direction.
A lot of the familiarity of Furiosa comes from the fact that we revisit the same characters and locations as Fury Road. Now, visions that were so awe-inspiring are taken for granted. I remember being staggered by the scale of the Citadel during the opening of Fury Road. Now, it's just a nostalgic setting. The characters that seemed so brazenly imagined are now just old friends. Complicating matters further is the fact that these visionary CGI wonders have gotten a lot... um... stranger looking. It's true that Furiosa is a beautiful piece of visual storytelling. It's also true that it looks noticeably faker than its big brother. Goopy digital backgrounds are ubiquitous and often ugly. This world, one so similar to Fury Road's, is distinguished only by its relative falsity.
One thing that doesn't shrink in the face of Miller's 2015 masterpiece is the action. It too is augmented by lots of digital effects, but when it comes to the chase scenes, Furiosa uses CGI to build, create, and intensify. When it comes to the question of whether I'd recommend seeing Furiosa in theaters, all I need to say is that doing so will give you two or three of the most amazing action scenes ever filmed. The sharp, suspenseful, brilliantly creative stunt extravaganzas for which George Miller is known are present in full force. It's everything you expect from a Mad Max film. Just as violent, dangerous, and completely GONZO as any other.
To say that Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is "more of the same" is both its greatest strength and biggest weakness. Yes, as a piece of action filmmaking, Furiosa is a remarkable technical achievement in popcorn entertainment. However, Mad Max: Fury Road reached the platinum-tier of action films because of its landmark ambition. It was an enormous, risky endeavor, and one that will last while its safer, less ambitious prequel fades away.
78/100.
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