Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga – Not as Bad as you think?

It has been almost 10 long years since Fury Road was magnificently released into theaters. Usually when sequels take this long to come out, it feels a little too late for it. Sin City and Avatar instantly come to mind. I’m sure there are several more examples I could give you, but really, they all have the same thing in common. Too little, too late.

I feel like Mad Max on the other hand is timeless. The wait was 30 years before Fury Road came out, what’s 9?

The original three films had its own mythos, while Fury Road setup this whole new world for the Mad Max universe. One that was beyond him as the titular character, and could possibly expand to other unique characters, much like what they want to do with John Wick.

Furiosa takes what was introduced and greatly expands on it, delivering an even bigger and wider look at this dried up world, with its rich with interesting characters, and new exciting lore.

To be honest, I wasn’t really all that excited to see Furiosa when the trailer dropped, I couldn’t really put my finger on why. A prequel about how Furiosa got to where she is when we are introduced to her in Fury Road seemed slightly pointless. We kind of learned everything we needed to in the first movie. Thankfully, this movie is more than just hey, wanna know how she lost her arm?

This film gives you more than just an in-depth character backstory, it fleshes out more of what this three kingdom empire has to offer.

A lot of the more interesting bits for me was Chris Hemsworth’s character Dementus. He’s almost like an Alexander the Great type of character, a roman emperor, gathering his horde of bikers, looking to conquer new lands and gather them into his ever-expanding army.

It’s such an interesting character, that only you can find in a Mad Max film. He is very charismatic and outright likable, at times. You can see why people would follow this guy.

But on the same hand, he is also ruthless and brutal with his hunger for power that you also detest him at the same time. Especially when he does something unimaginably cruel like say Negan from The Walking Dead.

Before breaking down the story, I first want to talk about the sad news of this movie bombing at the box office. I honestly don’t fully get it. When Fury Road came it, it was beaten at the box office by fucking Pitch Perfect 2.

This time, it’s fucking Garfield with Chris Pratt sleepwalking his way through another terrible voice acted shitty animated movie.

You can always tell nowadays how well a movie is going to do by the amount of people who are in the theater when you go. Dune Part 2 did very well, and the theater was packed, this time the IMAX theater had barely 5 people show up.

While I’m on the topic, for some reason the sound just wasn’t hitting me the way it did in Dune Part 2. In that movie you could feel the impact in your chest, Furiosa had none of that even as things were blowing up, guns were firing, I wasn’t feeling it. It was loud and you could feel the vibration on the floor and/or seat at crucial times, but nothing like Dune Part 2’s superior sound design.

I don’t know if it was the movie, the theater or what. I might as well of just been seeing it in a regular theater and saved myself the 21 dollar ticket price.

Ticket price. Maybe that’s why Furiosa didn’t do well. The ticket price is too high and Max Mad, anyway you try to cut it, just isn’t for normies. Piss boys that pour piss into an overheated engine while yelling for it to take their piss, not for normies. It scares them away, opting to see trash like The Garfield Movie instead. That’s my working theory.

Maybe it was because it took almost 10 years since Fury Road. Miller was dealing with lawsuits for money he thought the studio owed him. To COVID getting in the way of production. Everything was getting in the way of this movie ever coming out.

And I do feel that this is a perfectly done prequel, but maybe one that should have come out 4 years ago and one that should have come out before even Fury Road.

But, thankfully it’s out now, so how about we talk about it!

Mad Max films have such strange story structure. The way Furiosa opens, there’s no opening credits, nothing. We are quickly introduced to Furiosa as a child with her younger sister Valkyrie I believe she was called.

Not sure she was ever mentioned in Fury Road, I was planning on rewatching Fury Road when I got home, but instead I popped in the Mad Max game from 2015, that I never got around to finishing.

That game was the first to actually introduce the character Scrotus, who we see in the movie. God the names in this are hilarious.

Young Furiosa was picking fruit with her sister when they discover wasteland bikers cutting the head off a horse.

I’m not really sure why no one hasn’t discovered The Green Place, it seems like it could be pretty easy to spot in a barren wasteland full of nothing but sand dunes. But what do I know!

Furiosa stays behind to sabotage their bikes while her sister quietly runs off to tell the others.

But Furiosa is caught and taken hostage.

Not to worry, Furiosa’s badass mom hears the warning whistle and darts off to save her kid. The bikers make it out of The Green Place, heading for their large camp to present her to Dementus as proof The Green Place exists.

Furiosa manages to sabotage the bike she’s on with her teeth, while her badass mom picks them off from afar with a sniper rifle.

The way all of this is paced is fantastic, there’s no real music from what I remember, just the rumbling of the bikes as they try to get away. There’s so much tension, I can’t believe folks are talking about how it drags from the start, and you could cut parts of this. What the hell is wrong with people?!

It’s The Critical Drinker’s fault. Every yokel now who watches his shit videos think they’re film critics. He’s single handily made every Peter Griffin in the world think, hey, I can do that!

A test to show you how to spot a hack fraud like Critical Drinker, as them for a strong female lead and how they always give you Ripley from Aliens as their example. It’s like spotting the asshole on Twitter because they’ll always be the ones with the blue check mark next to their idiotic username.

But I digress.

It’s a race to stop these bikers from getting Furiosa to the camp and with only one left alive that seemed like better odds, but by the time her mom can get a beat on him, he’s too close to the camp and can’t get a good shot at him as he’s using Furiosa as a shield.

Furiosa does get the better of him though, getting free and using the bike chain to slice his throat open, unable to tell about The Green Place.

Furiosa is taken to Dementus, who is actually nothing but kind to her. He does later string her mom up and has her tortured in front of her to spill the beans on The Green Place, but aside from that he has been nothing but a cool dude, even giving her his now dead child’s teddy bear that he keeps on him at all times.

He is such a fascinating character. They really do play him like this roman leader, trying to conquer Egypt. In any other movie, he might actually be the protagonist, the hero of our story.

But this isn’t his story, but one of revenge!

The movie is broken up into chapters, which seems fitting as Mad Max has always kind of been told like a campfire tale. Like this legend in the wasteland, we don’t know what’s true or embellished, we just know that in the end they are stories told about a hero, something kind of lacking out there, full of leather clad cannibals.

Some time passes as Dementus and his biker horde ride through the wasteland, looking for new gangs to incorporate into the group, while seeking out The Green Place.

That’s when they run into a fallen war boy with an arrow sticking out of his head. He thinks this is Valhalla as he has the silver mouth thing they do before sacrificing themselves.

With him is a flare gun that he uses to signal for help, but Dementus uses it to shoot the ground coating everything in a red mist, turning his parachute cape blood red, along with his hair and beard.

He is now Dementus the Red. He goes through a few changes in the film and at this time it starts his red era.

The fallen war boy shows them the way to the Citadel, the kingdom of Immortan Joe and his half-life war boys populate.

This is another great scene, as Dementus shows up arrogantly, thinking if he offered the people freedom, more water and food, they’d abandon their leaders and flock to him.

Immortan Joe has a reality check for him asking Dementus to pick out a war boy, any war boy he sees. Picking one means a trip to Valhalla, suicide bombing into the biker horde, leaving Dementus with his tail between his legs, retreating to safety.

Dementus now sets his sights on another more attainable goal, capturing Gastown.

Again, another great scene where they overrun a war rig shipment headed from Gastown back to the Citadel. He then uses his men to dress up as war boys, making it look like they’re under attack so Gastown will open their doors.

Dementus negotiates a deal with Immortan Joe to run Gastown, but doing so means he hands over Furiosa to be another one of Joe’s wives. But once Erectus, one of Joe’s sons takes a liking to her, Furiosa quickly escapes.

She spends a while in hiding, trying to pass herself off as a boy. But she ends up working up the ranks in the pit crew that makes all the vehicles.

That’s when she meets Praetorian Jack, the driver of the war rigs to collect the bounty from the other kingdoms. Basically, Furiosa’s job in Fury Road.

He’s also kind of like our Mad Max stand in and not to mention Furiosa’s love interest. I really liked this aspect of the movie, as I didn’t expect it. The only thing you really get from them as a couple is a loving forehead bonk.

But they plan on leaving together to find The Green Place. Meanwhile, Dementus is having trouble ruling over Gastown, with its people rioting against him.

Given his greed and lust for more power, he sets a trap for the war rig at the Bullet Farm, where he has also secretly taken over. Furiosa manages to get away, but Jack is still trapped, forcing her to go back and save him.

Again, another fantastic scene, as we have this war rig charging through Bullet Farm, trying to escape.

It looks like Jack and Furiosa got away, but Dementus shows back up in his 6 wheel monster truck, crushing Furiosa’s arm and flipping their car.

In a fit of rage, he takes Furiosa to watch as he straps Jack to a bike and just drags him around in circles until he lets his dog eat the rest.

During the dust cloud all the dragging kicked up, it acts as a smoke screen for her to get away, severing her own arm to get free.

Here is a cool part, but Mad Max is in this, but only briefly. He spots Furiosa on death’s door and takes her back to The Citadel.

Now it’s war, as Immortan Joe and his army go after Dementus, now named Dementus the Black.

Here is where some of the complaints come in that I agree with. So instead of showing this 40 day war, we only see the aftermath of the piles of bodies and twisted metal left after the war is at its end.

Furiosa sits the war out, as she makes her robot arm. When it’s complete, she seeks out Dementus as he flees, now only having 5 people or so left in his once great horde.

Furiosa makes quick work of them, setting her sights on Dementus, but instead of killing him quickly, she takes her time to taunt him.

Like any myth or campfire story, it’s left up in the air as to what really happened to Dementus. Some say she outright just shot him in the back of the head, while other tales say she ended him the way he ended his mother’s life or Jack’s life.

The supposed true story however is so outlandish that I won’t spoil it here, you have to go see the movie. And this movie needs all the help it can get.

I don’t really understand what is going on with movies these days, The Fall Guy being the latest giant blockbuster bomb, which is now on demand, two weeks after release.

Will Furiosa be streaming next week? It’s possible, I really wouldn’t put it past the studio. If anything, this movie I know will do great as something you can rent. It’s just a shame since this is a movie made for the big screen. This is a movie why you want to see it in theaters and yet, folks are showing up.

It came out in theaters at the perfect time, nothing was really competing against it and yet no one showed up.

Maybe a name change would help, call it Furiosa: Road Warrior. Instead of having folks upset going into a Mad Max movie with no Mad Max, maybe try hiding it, so when they see it, they take pause, wait is this a Mad Max movie?

I give Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga a SEE IT rating.

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