DESERT POWER 

GEORGE MILLER’S FURIOSA (2024) 

Master director George Miller threads many needles in his prequel-sequel wasteland aria, ‘Furiosa.’

What is it about the desert that is so intoxicating? Why does such a desolate place, devoid of life, draw us in? From Lawrence of Arabia (1962) to The English Patient (1996) to Dune (2021), the desert has intrigued filmmakers for its expanse, hostility and cinematic vastness. What director can resist a sweeping dolly, helicopter or drone shot of a lone figure traversing the ridge of a windswept plain or dune? Not Stephen Spielberg, who closed Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) with a final set piece at the city of Petra in Jordan, nor Chad Stahelski, who opened John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023) in the same region. And how could one forget how acute the death must have been for Mathieu Amalric’s  villain Greene in Quantum of Solace (2008), when Bond throws him a can of oil and predicts how far he can walk the Chilean desert until his debilitating thirst compels him to drink it.  

The absence of civilization and impossibility of life hang heavy in desert stories, making for ripe post-apocalyptic mythology. It is a blank canvas, and while physical production is more difficult, it opens up endless story possibilities. “Why do you like the desert, Major Lawrence”?, the titular leader of David Lean’s 1963 masterpiece asks him. “It’s clean,” he responds. Time to get dirty. 

One of the most imaginative examples of filmmaking imagination possible in the desert is the Mad Max Mad Max series by visionary and time-tested director George Miller, now in his sixth decade of filmmaking. Newcomers to his filmography may be delighted (if also momentarily confused) to learn it also includes Babe (1995) and Happy Feet (2006). Now, the 5th installment in the Mad Max franchise, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024), his tasks are daunting and many, including the toughest: threading the needle that stitches together a new chapter into an old story while giving us even more new visual and technical imagination upon which to feast. 

The Mad Max stories tell of a post-apocalyptic wasteland, where bands of survivors search and kill for fuel, water and weaponry. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) was the fourth in the series, and has become famous both for its critical acclaim and its story of labored love that brought it to fruition. It has been called by some a perfect film, and and won 6 Oscars. It was tightly wound, closely edited and spectacularly executed by all actors and crew under his direction. Heading into Furiosa, expectations are high. Miller is challenged to one-up Fury Road, providing new and novel thrills, while also hitting a paradoxical target: to go back in time. The story is a prequel, so neither society or technology may advance; quite the opposite. 

Miller has never been one to recede from a storytelling challenge. An animated penguin musical? A social hierarchy allegory featuring a piglet? A plot with a three thousand-year timeline? Game on. In Furiosa, the resulting effort is not only interesting, magnetizing and thorough – it is also deeply thoughtful, providing reason for every stunt, color and line – and ends with a final needle pull right into the thread of Fury Road. 

When Charlize Theron brought the character to gritty, adult life in Fury Road, she tells us she was taken as a child from her mother and her home, a faraway land called the Green Place. An Eden somehow sheltered from the barren desert, the Green Place had water, trees, and women not bound by sexual slavery. Its inhabitants lived in peace. But were always ready for war, as Furiosa’s taut opener shows.

We begin Furiosa, as foretold, with this kidnapping. And if we thought she was fierce, the apple doesn’t fall far. Her mother, Mary Jabassa (a fiercely tuned Charlee Fraser) skillfully takes down desert thugs one by one. The young Furiosa shows clever defenses and scrappy wit, recalling the small, dusty wild child, accurately named “Feral Boy” from Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981). She then finds herself in the possession of the darkly zany and grooming-challenged warlord, Dementus, played with relish by Chris Hemsworth. AWOL Thor of the Dunes, you could call him, and you might wonder if his band of marauders has unionized to demand benefits, it is so large in numbers, brimming with improvised weaponry and “apocalypse-meets-plumber” attire. 

Dementus seeks to upend the order of the wasteland and eventually rise up against Immortan Joe, the cultish antagonist of Fury Road, played as his younger self with similar menace by the actor Lachy Hulme. The franchise suffered a loss in the passing of Hugh Keays-Byrne, the original Joe, in 2020, in between Fury Road and Furiosa productions. Hulme performs admirably, but there was something about the pitch of a dictator’s desperation, and fluid, motor-like growl that belonged to the Keays-Byrne performances. What can you do. Sometimes happiness is a dictator called Joe.  

Miller and his team summarized the Fury Road plot elegantly: it’s “a chase and a race.” In Furiosa, we have something akin to a Greek myth, with more story and iconography of life, death, and the brutal struggle between them. A hero suffers tragedy, evolves into herself, learns her trade and embarks on a journey of revenge – call it a slower pace with a longer trace. Side characters are given more to say and do. And Miller takes his time with the script, enjoying the two decades or so he has to work with (versus the two fleeting days of Fury Road.) 

Three actors play Furiosa – a fabulous Alyla Browne as Young Furiosa; a current ‘it’ girl whose star continues to rise, Anya Taylor-Joy, does the heavy lifting as Furiosa in her mid-20s or so; and the venerable Charlize Theron plays our hero all grown up in Fury Road. None of these versions talk much. One imagines sitting next to Furiosa at a dinner party, asking her to pass the crab cocktail, and receiving simply eye daggers in return. When the film transitions from Browne to Taylor-Joy, a match cut helps us do the math, but the overall transition is fluid and careful, easing us into the new age and the new look. The youngest performer has studied the middle performer, who herself has studied the older performer, and the through lines show.  

For those who enjoyed Austin Butler doing Stellan Skarsgaard in Dune Two, growling with the accent of his fictional baron father, here is a second serving, with Taylor-Joy doing Theron, a bit of Dark Knight-style husk rounding out the two- and three-word phrases she utters. John Wick has her beat, with only 380 words in the fourth chapter, while she has a whole 30 lines of dialogue. But she moves with the agility of a cat and the grit of a boxer. For an actor stepping in shoes filled by Theron, possibly the finest female action star of all time, it is no easy assignment. “I wanted to be changed,” she told the New York Times, about doing the film. Taylor-Joy brings the mystical stoicism we saw in The Northman (2022), adds a dash of serious spunk evident in The Queen’s Gambit (2022), and a high pain tolerance, and we get a smoothly heroic performance. Perhaps a bit too smooth. The anguish of Theron’s take on Furiosa, the bleary eyes of the punished and weary – these are missing from Taylor-Joy’s performance. 

Where Furiosa reaches higher than its predecessors is in its artistic sensibility, both literary and visual. The story is grounded as an epic. The images are vast and sweeping, composed clearly and interntionally. Readers of ancient history will enjoy a few references to Homer’s Iliad. Dementus’ crew kills Furiosa’s mother and captures her, as when Hercules kills Hylas’s father, and then Hylas becomes Hercules’s companion, echoing Dementus killing Furiosa’s mother and then her going with him. Later, when Dementus drags Praetorian Jack’s body around in a circle, just like Achilles dragged Hector’s body behind his chariot. And there’s a brief but obvious Trojan Horse scene. Before one of Dementus’ attacks, the Guardian of Gastown is high in a tower, painting a recreation of a painting called Hylas and the Nymphs (1896) by John William Waterhouse, which features a single male figure and several nude and nubile young women in a river. Although our hero is female, in Miller’s post-apocalyptic future, women only have two choices: nymphs and breeders, or warriors and botanists. Furiosa adds a third option by moonlighting as a black thumb (auto mechanic) once transferred to the service of Immortan Joe. (And a trade that comes in handy later when she needs a hand.)  

Miller and his team use these references to lay a foundation of story and stakes, and layer atop it some of the most striking visuals in cinema today, the majority of which achieved through practical effects. (The visual effects and animation are used sparsely, and aren’t great. Too many budget line items for souped-up Valiants and Harleys.) It’s a rare and welcome example of how practical effects can more powerful in achieving the imagination of a team of artists. And they are put to work in creating images we’ve never seen before, like a rotating ball-and-spike fan of death. A three-motorcycle chariot. Sand skiing. 

Powerful storytelling and unforgettable imagery – that combo is why we return to Miller. Where else can we see a heavily modified, black Holden FJ Coupe (called “Cranky Black”) with hood-mounted artillery and 227 pounds of torque, driven to destruction by a Greek-style hero with questionable dexterity, in pursuit of a bearded psycho trying to take over the Australian desert? And on top of this buzzes a script that blends gear head culture with indie magazine slang to form a post-apocalytpic Urban Dictionary: organic mechanic, black thumb, blood bag, breeders, chrome, full-life, guzzoline. Imagine Wordle with these dudes.  

Furiosa won’t win as many awards as Fury Road – things get a bit slow and shaggy in the middle, there is a bit too much service of the franchise, and some “best hits” feel wedged in just for fans, like the late inclusion of the Coma-Doof Warrior. What’s that? Oh, it’s the blind, terror-mask-wearing rogue jamming on the flame-throwing guitar, atop the Doof Wagon, from Fury Road. Rock on. 

But there are few directors with the artistry and imagination like Miller, with the power and precision to deliver us a narratively compelling and technically masterful wasteland aria. When the world falls, will we call the desert home? And will we have a white-robed freedom fighter, Kevlar-suit-wearing Keanu or pissed off one-armed gear head to help us out? We can hope. “There is no hope!” shouts Dementus during a blustery diatribe. Well, we can cling to some, since there’s already talk of a sequel to Fury Road. Hope springs eternal, shiny and chrome.