George Miller's Furiosa a great looking but strange prequel

By Jim Bray
August 15, 2024

The Mad Max saga continues, without Mad Max, in director/writer George Miller's latest epic, Furiosa. And though it's pretty weird, and sometimes very cruel, it's well worth at least a look.

Furiosa is set before the last Mad Max outing, Fury Road, and stars Anya Taylor-Young as the title character, with Chris Hemsworth, sounding more Australian than he probably does even in real life, as her main nemesis, a pompous and rather socialist warlord called Dementus, who has dreams of dominating the wasted lands of the wasteland.

But before Furiosa meets Dementus, we find her living in the kind of perfect, idyllic green world the eco-nuts dream of, an oasis from the wasteland where there's lots of water, plenty of animals, and all the electricity needed comes, apparently, from a few lazily-spinning windmills that obviously survived the eco-apocalypse that destroyed the world.

Fortunately, that's about all the eco-beating-over-the-head we get, though there's plenty of "misogynistic" stuff to come as well, when Furiosa finds herself prisoner in a land operated and dominated by the alpha males, who keep women around to have babies and/or provide milk. Kind of like, I daresay, the "progressives" think the 1950's were like…

Fortunately, all this political crapola is really mostly just a part of the setting, and takes a back seat to the action. This is good, because there's plenty of action on hand and it's about as over the top as one would expect from a Mad Max franchise entry.

Mostly, the movie follows Furiosa as her life journey takes her from paradise to absolute hell as she's kidnapped from "The Green Place of Many Mothers" (which says about all you need to know about it) and dragged into a life in which she witnesses the violent death of her mother at the hands of Dementus and his rag tag band of strange misfits and toadies.

The story unfolds in a decidedly episodic manner, which is echoed by the "chapter stops" built into the film that break it into sections. Furiosa goes from one outrageous challenge to another as she a: tries to get home without leading the marauders back to destroy it and b: copes with the situations she's in – from the Citadel to Gastown and other islands of supposed civilization peppering the wasteland.

If you remember Fury Road (I saw it, but remember very little), you probably know if she makes it back to "Multiple Mom'sland" but it's still worth seeing how it all happens – right down to how Charlize Theron's Furiosa got disarmed originally.

It's comic book stuff at best, not that there's anything wrong with that. On the other hand, there's a lot of brutality happening here and some of it is quite over the top. That said, it's a just Mad Max movie and this one seems to fit in the franchise well.

It's gorgeous to look at, too. And it sounds just as good, though a tad bassy in places – a common point I make with some Warners titles. The picture is nothing short of stunning, from beginning to end. Apparently, it was shot digitally on a 6K camera system, and it really shows! The detail is as sharp as you can imagine, colours are rich and deep and the overall picture just pops off the screen.

One downside to this is that it looks as if there's a lot of CG work here and the picture is so clean and detailed it shows, whereas it should be seamless. And that caused a bit of cessation to my suspension of disbelief. Still, it's a fantastic image and I'm adding it to the library of great 4K discs I use when reviewing TV's.

Ditto for the audio, as mentioned. The track is Dolby Atmos, which is backward compatible to Dolby TrueHD 7.1, which is backward compatible to TrueHD 5.1. My theatre is still 5.1, so that's how I heard it.

And boy, do you hear it! The sound field fills the room, using all its channels very well. I did mention a bit of excess bass, but it isn't nearly as much as in some other discs I've reviewed, so my neighbours stayed home rather than coming over to picket.

The 4K disc comes by itself in the box, with no Blu-ray disc included, though there's also a download code. That means the picture has to share space on the disc with the extras, of which there is pretty good selection. Fortunately, the movie's picture doesn't suffer from having to play nicely with the supplements – which also look very good, by the way.

First up is "Highway to Valhalla: In Pursuit of Furiosa," which is a nearly hour-long and very good "making of" documentary in which cast and crew opine and we get some pretty nifty looks at the production itself, with lots of behind-the-scenes footage. I'd like to see more "making of" docs like this one.

"Metal Beasts & Holy Motors" is a look at the film's design, including the outrageous vehicles (oh, yeah - I loved Dementus' motorcycle-powered chariot!) as well as the many unique props and costumes. This doc also includes interviews with those involved.

"Furiosa: Stowaway to Nowhere" looks more closely at one of the many action sequences. Speaking of which, some scenes in Furiosa are reminiscent of Indiana Jones, while some remind me of other films. In fact, there are many, well, to be kind, "homages" to other classic films here. I hope they're homages, because that's much kinder than them merely ripping off other classic films. Heck, at one point they even use the Gyorgy Ligeti "Monolith" music (actually, called Requiem) from 2001: a Space Odyssey.

"Darkest Angel: Anya Taylor-Joy as Furiosa", not surprisingly, is pretty self explanatory, as is "Motorbike Messiah: Chris Hemsworth as Dementus".

I've never been a diehard Mad Max fan, though I enjoyed the second and third installments very much. With this prequel, director/co-writer George Miller gives us another fun – and sometimes quite disturbing – look at his vision of a post-apocalyptic society in which mayhem is the rule rather than the exception. It features good performances, a great look and even though the seams show sometimes, great effects.

It's well worth a look if you're into these films, and I didn't think I'd say that when I first sat down with it.