Furiosa is the fabulous fifth installment in George Miller’s long running Mad Max Saga, propelled by a breakthrough performance by Alyla Brown, followed by a magnificent star turn by Anya Taylor-Joy.
Both play the role made famous by Charlize Theron in Fury Road, but since Furiosa tells the origin tale of the female renegade warrior before meeting up with Mad Max, it made sense to recast the role.
Alyla Brown plays her as a child, before Anya Taylor-Joy takes over. a transition made even more seamless because Miller apparently used Artificial Intelligence to blend the two actresses together for a while.
Confused? You won’t be, as long as you allow yourself to be taken along by the genius of George Miller in his latest cinematic trip (co-written with Nick Lathouris).
Fury Road was one hell of a ride, almost literally so, while Furiosa takes more detours, but the result once again is visually stunning, while the story this time around is a little more emotionally more complex.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga takes place after the world as we know it has ended. Young Furiosa is taken away from the Green Place of Many Mothers by fate and some bad men. She is captured by a gang of bikers led by Warlord Dementus (Chris Hemsworth). On their way through the desert they reach the Citadel, ruled by Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme) and his many warriors.
While the two tyrants battle for power, Furiosa has to endure numerous tribulations, while also trying to find a way to go home.
Compared to Fury Road, this heroine’s journey follows a somewhat more conventional and recognizable arc which allows us to get the character a little better. At the same time the movie also has enough world building and breathtaking action scenes to give people seeing it on IMAX more than enough bang for their buck.
Whether trying to be all things to all people makes Furiosa better or worse than the technically brilliant but also a tiny bit one dimensional Fury Road, or basically just as great, will be decided by the individual viewer.
I certainly loved it, but that is also because I think Anya Taylor-Joy is one of today’s greatest actresses - from The Queen’s Gambit to Last Night In Soho she’s been great in everything, as far as I’m concerned.
And the role of Furiosa certainly plays to all her strengths: sharp as a knife with words, but also very convincing both as a sheer physical presence and a kick-ass action star. She really is a force of nature here!
Meanwhile, Chris Hemsworth hams it up for all its worth, and this is definitely one of the roles he will be remembered for. There are also great supporting turns by Tom Burke as Praetorian Jack (the closest to a Mad Max character this movie has) and Charlee Fraser as Furiosa’s mother.
I won’t say that this gritty revenge drama is a particularly happy film - it’s also about the horrors of war, death and destruction, with many acts of intolerable cruelty depicted on screen - but in a way it is perfect for this time. Or the world has finally caught up to George Miller’s dystopian cyberpunk vision of humankind’s future.
Either way this is blockbuster filmmaking at its finest. I give it a nine out of ten.
Note: Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga premiered at Cannes on May 15 and is released worldwide next week.
As a bonus for paid subscribers a preview of Megalopolis by Francis Ford Coppola.
Megalopolis is the new movie by living legend Francis Ford Coppola. At the ripe old age of 85 the director of Apocalypse Now and The Godfather has finally managed to complete a dream project that’s been in the works for 40 years.
It ‘only’ cost him about 120 million dollar of his own money, raised in part by selling part of his very successful winery estate.
According to Coppola it’s an epic Roman fable set in modern day America, with the imagined city of New Rome filling in for New York.
Adam Driver plays the genius architect Cesar Catalina, who has great and progressive plans for a city that is in need of rebuilding after a recent disaster.
However, he finds himself opposed by the ruthless mayor Franklyn Cicero, played by Giancarlo Esposito, who is stuck in the past and only cares about the politics of greed and partisan warfare.
In the midst of their struggle is Cicero’s daughter Julia, played by Nathalie Emmanuel, a young socialite who falls in love with Cesar.
The movie has a great supporting cast, that includes Aubrey Plaza, Jon Voight, Shia LeBeouf, Dustin Hoffmann and Laurence Fishburne.
So far the movie has yet to find an American distributor, even though it has already been sold to a number of European countries.
Megalopolis had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival and will be released theatrically in France in September.
The reviews have been pretty mixed so far, but I still think it’s one of this year’s major titles to look forward to.
Here’s the trailer: