George Miller has created a nice franchise with the Mad Max world, based in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. After many years away from the franchise he came back with a vengeance in 2016 with the critical and box-office smash Mad Max: Fury Road. It won 6 Academy Awards and the hearts of film fans everywhere.  Now he follows it up with Furiosa: A Mad Max  Saga, based on one of the characters from Mad Max: Fury Road. It may be as good if not better than the last film.

Furiosa (Anya Taylor Joy, Alyla Browne) is a little girl from the Green Place of Many Mothers at the beginning of the film. Like any kid, she gets into mischievous situations. While out exploring with her friend she comes across a group of bikers who have killed one of her group’s horses. She ends up captured and her mother Mary Jo Bassa (Charlee Fraser) has to come to her rescue. The bikers are running for their lives from her mother, but they eventually get to Dementus (Chris Hemsworth) He likes and keeps her as his very own daughter. He brings her along on his conquests, but once he ends up in a war with Emoreton Joe (Lachy Hulme) she finds her way into his camp. She becomes a member of a war rig crew with Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke) and starts to plot her vengeance on Dementus for the previous pain and suffering of her mother and the many other infractions she has against him.

With Mad Max: Fury Road George Miller redefined what he created back in the 70s and 80s with the original Mad Max Trilogy. What that means is he set a new aesthetic for this new series of films. That rolls over to Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga as well. The mix of visual effects and cinematography is seamless in this film. The gorgeous orange hew most of the movie rivals that of the last two Dune films by Denis Villeneuve.  Miller moves the camera around, but everywhere he films looks absolutely breathtakingly beautiful.  Filming in these locations couldn’t have been fun, but all of that hard work was not for nothing. This is one of the best-looking films I’ve seen all year and it is sure to garner awards buzz for the visual effects team and cinematography for Simon Dugger. I was blown away by how incredible this film looked.

One thing that I liked about the story structure was it was different from that of Mad Max: Fury Road. That film was a ball-to-wall action from beginning to end, but this movie has a story structure to it. The film had chapters letting viewers know where the story was at a specific time in the narrative.  Chapters titled 1:The Pole of Inaccessibility, 2:Lessons From the Wasteland, 3:The Stowaway, 4:Homeward, and 5:Beyond Vengeance were all perfectly named as far as the time in the film that they took place in. The audience knew exactly what was going to transpire to some extent in these sequences. This story structure was a fantastic way to tell this crazy batshit origin story for Furiosa, and her nemesis Dementus.

Speaking of Dementus, Chris Hemsworth gave one of the best if not the best performances of his entire career as this man who changes personas from White to red, and Dark. Each persona has a different more deadly mindset than the other. He is dead set on ruling the Wasteland at any cost necessary. He strong-arms his way into Gas Town and feuds with the Citadel and the Bullet Farm. The other two cities that are in the Wasteland. Hemsworth is over the top in the best way possible. He made me laugh and hate him all at the same time. I know this may be recency bias, but he’s one of the best villains I’ve seen in any film in a long time. He’s on the level of Darth Vader, Hannibal Lector, and Heath Ledger’s The Joker. That’s how good I feel Hemsworth is in this movie. He basically steals the movie from Anya Taylor Joy from my perspective.  That’s a good thing in the overall context of this film.

Another of the standouts from Mad Max: Fury Road was the score by Tom Hokkenborg aka Junkie XL. He’s back with another score for Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. Throughout all the intense scenes of action, his score is pulse-pounding, to say the least. I felt like I was in a rock concert the entire time the movie was taking place. His score is one of the best parts of a film that is filled with great things. I hope he gets some love come awards season next year.

One of the best parts of the Mad Max franchise is the practical effects and action sequences. This movie is filled with jaw-dropping action scenes. One in particular that I was blown away by was a scene involving Furiosa and Praetorian Jack going to Bullet Town and getting ambushed by Dementus and his men. Everything you could imagine went on from gunfights to crazy car chases and violence galore. These scenes showed how far Miller could go with his creativity with the action choreography.  This sequence added an extra layer of craziness that this movie already had and upped its anti even more. Just during these scenes, there was also a lot of character development between this trio.

Miller does one of the best things from any other director I’ve ever seen: he creates characters with weird and wacky names and places them into the world he created. Two that I got a kick out of were the sons of Emoreton Joe Rictus Erectus (Nathan Jones) and Scrotus (Josh Helman). These two had some funny banter and were a hoot every time they came on the screen throughout the film. One more carryover from the last movie was Organic Mechanic (Angus Sampson). He was better in the last film, but he was a nice addition to this prequel because he added glue that helped tie these to films together as a cohesive unit. Sampson is always welcome when I see him in a film or television series. The cast, well deservedly, named by each character they play in the credits is very long and expansive, to say the least. 

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga stars one of the best young actresses in the business and I would watch anything Anya Taylor Joy is in that being said I think she’s the weak spot in this movie. I feel like she didn’t do a bad job, but she wasn’t as good as Charlize Theron in this role. The other actresses who played the character were commendable as well, but none of them could measure up to Theron for my liking. She was believable in this role to me. I loved Taylor Joy in Queen’s Gambit, The Menu, Last Night In Soho, and many more. I just don’t think she had the extra oomph she needed to play this character. That might be a hot take to some, but it’s how I feel about it right now. Maybe I’ll change my mind in later years. I still love her as an actress and I look forward to what she has coming out next in her career.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Sage was one of the best movie-going experiences I’ve had all year. It’s visceral, bloody, action-packed, and absolutely gorgeous to look at. The visual effects, cinematography, and score are all huge pluses and should get considered for many awards later this year and next at the Academy Awards. The cast is solid with a lot of great supporting performances,  but Chris Hemsworth steals the show as count em three variations of Dementus.  He is one of the best villains I’ve seen in decades on the level of some of the greats of all time. The action set pieces are jaw-dropping and the intensity of this film never let up. Miller crafted a story I’ll keep coming back to over and over again. It’s that good of a film. Dare I say it might be better than Fury Road? I know blasphemy,  but I genuinely felt that when I walked out of the theater. I loved this film despite my one quibble about Taylor Joy.

4 ½ stars

Dan Skip Allen