Australian filmmaker George Miller, who is now nearly 80 years of age, returns with Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, his fifth film from a saga that began with Mad Max, a film he made on a shoestring budget way back in the late 1970s in the Australian state of Victoria. That first film—despite its modest beginnings—became the foundational stone for the brutal Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior in 1981 that helped put Australian cinema on the map. The more family-friendly Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome followed in 1985, which starred pop queen Tina Turner and Mel Gibson in his last outing as the character Max Rockatansky.
Thirty years later, it was Tom Hardy who played Max in the 2015 visually stunning sequel Mad Max: Fury Road, which grossed over $375 million worldwide while bagging six Academy Award wins, primarily in technical categories such as Best Film Editing, Best Production Design, and Best Costume Design.
Now, with Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Miller has built upon the visuals and themes that made Mad Max: Fury Road such a monster hit. Starring Anya Taylor-Joy as Imperator Furiosa and Chris Hemsworth as Warlord Dementus, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga has been met largely with glowing reviews of which you can catch some snippets of below.
JUDGEMENT
“Like a war over gas in a post-apocalyptic landscape, the franchise-fatigue debate rages on, with multiple factions claiming that sequels, prequels, and superhero films are killing the cinematic landscape, while others claim the smoke doesn’t lead to fire, and the entire battle is overblown. The latest salvo in the war — which is to say, the latest prequel extending a decades-long franchise — is Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, a prequel nearly a decade in the making. But where long experience with franchise logic would lead us to expect director George Miller to offer up a louder, bigger retread of its predecessor, the groundbreaking Mad Max: Fury Road, Miller dares to ignore that expectation. He blazes a brave, exploratory trail with a searing film that refuses to play by any of the tried, tested, and tired rules that franchise films follow.” Polygon, Rosie Knight
“But don’t misunderstand. Any concerns that Miller, in his 80th year, decided to put on his grandfather slippers and settle down for a nice, quiet character study are wildly misplaced. Nobody does emotionally trenchant, character-driven, nitro-powered action like him. There is, once again, an astonishing standard of stunts and visual effects sustained throughout these 148 minutes, with at least six audacious set-pieces — including a three-day chase across a desert, and a staggering airborne assault on a War Rig — that must be seen to be believed. Quite often your eyes will not fully comprehend what you are watching, or how it could be possible. After 45 years in the business, George Miller is still showing everyone how it’s done. What a privilege to witness him.” John Nugent, empire online
“No one knows how to do scale better than Miller. Margaret Sixel and Eliot Knapman’s editing is breathtakingly seamless—quickly building both rapport between characters and gnarly deaths with equal tenacity—to the point that DP Simon Duggan’s eloquent photography of these desolate death valleys, matched by composer Tom Holkenborg deafeningly propulsive score, wholly immerses you in way that isn’t needlessly showing. Each large set piece feels necessary, aware of space and story, and brimming with a camera that takes delight in knowing exactly what kill shot or angle of the many battles we want to take in as it swoops between lunging bodies, massive infernos, monster trucks, big rigs, and over sand dunes.” Robert Daniels, rogerebert.com
“Furiosa is divided into chapters. At various junctures, we’ll be whisked months or even years into the future, but the storytelling never feels choppy. There is always a new chase or fight sequence to keep the audience’s attention. Director George Miller combines speed, grace and explosive violence, emulating Sam Peckinpah westerns and even, at times, the work of Charles Dickens – Furiosa is a bit like a young Artful Dodger, using her wits and courage to stay alive.” Geoffrey Macnab, Independent
“Miller is undoubtedly one of the best blockbuster filmmakers working today, possibly of all time, by nature of sheer imagination and scale alone. In an age where studios encourage filmmakers to make their action films quickly and cheaply (no matter how badly it might impact the VFX professionals or other crew members working on them), Furiosa proves that a better world is possible, one where a film exists with greasy, dirty fingerprints all over it – evidence that humans were behind every explosion, every sawn-off shotgun, every scuffed combat boot. The mammoth scale and vision of Miller continue to delight, and Furiosa absolutely deserves to be seen as big and loud as possible, a feat of technical prowess and cinematic ambition that only comes along once every few years (if we’re lucky!)” Hannah Strong, Little White Lies
“The apex of the action is the ‘Stowaway to Nowhere’ sequence that forms the centerpiece of the film. Lasting 15 minutes of screen-time, it took 78 days and hundreds of stunt workers to capture, a gruelling endeavour worth every bead of sweat, every drop of gasoline. In it, the new, improved War Rig (“Bigger, faster, stronger, further!”) is again besieged by all manner of colourful characters wielding outlandish weaponry as they cling to kamikaze vehicles. Miller, at his most inventive, catapults the attackers at the speeding War Rig from every angle (yes, that’s a motorbike dangling from a swooping parachute), and treats long-time MM devotees to several of his signature crash zooms into the clenched faces of drivers.” Jamie Graham, Games Radar
