Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
There may be another actress under 30 with a more varied and exciting set of credits than Anya Taylor-Joy, but if there is, it’s hard to think who. And now, to the chess prodigy she played in the hit TV drama The Queen’s Gambit, to the possessed 17th-century Puritan in The Witch (2015) and the abused 1960s nightclub singer in Last Night In Soho (2021), she adds them a post: apocalyptic warrior queen. It was probably only a matter of time.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, which had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival last night, is an absolute stunner from start to finish, a worthy prequel to the fast-paced 2015 blockbuster Mad Max: Fury Road. It is utterly stunning on the eye, definitely loud to the ear and a thousand watt shock to the mind. I loved it.
Taylor-Joy is fantastic as Furiosa, the alpha female with a lot to be angry about, as is Alyla Browne who plays the title role as a girl.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival last night
Taylor-Joy is fantastic as Furiosa, the alpha female with a lot to be furious about. Anya Taylor-Joy at Hotel Martinez during the 77th annual Cannes Film Festival
It’s utterly stunning to the eye, decidedly loud to the ear, and a thousand-watt jolt to the mind. Elsa Pataky and Chris Hemsworth attend the premiere of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
But as always, the laurels belong to Australian director George Miller, who has now turned 80 and yet remains firmly in charge of the petrol-soaked dystopian world he created 45 years ago in the original Mad Max.
Here a voice-over tells us that ‘gangs are plundering the country like locusts’. Frankly, it would be disappointing if it wasn’t. Miller needs marauding gangs as other storytellers need lovelorn lovers.
Unobtrusive and unapologetic, he feeds on classic Westerns like John Ford’s 1956 masterpiece The Searchers to set up the story of feisty young Furiosa, kidnapped from a peaceful oasis by deranged Hell’s Angels types who notice her sabotaging their bikes. Ultimately, as her formidable mother (Charlee Fraser) frantically pursues across a parched desert, she falls into the hands of the charismatic, messianic warlord Dementus, thrillingly played by a barely recognizable Chris Hemsworth as a cross between El Cid and Charles Manson.
You don’t have to be a car enthusiast to enjoy this tantalizingly crazy vision of rival hordes of motorcyclists waging war over oil
If you like top-notch escapism presented with tremendous swagger, this film is worth two and a half hours of your time
Miller needs marauding gangs as other storytellers need lovelorn lovers
Chris Hemsworth plays the warlord leader, Dementus, who he described as ‘a very violent, insane, brutal person born from the Wasteland’ (pictured)
You only have to scan the cast list to see how much fun Miller and his co-writer Nico Lathouris had with this: The Organic Mechanic, The People Eater, Rakka the Brackish, The Octoboss, Smeg, Fang, Scrotus, Treadmill Rat. And as if there wasn’t enough to do for motorcycle enthusiasts, there is also a Mr Norton and a Mr Harley.
Not, I should add, that you have to be a car guy to enjoy this tantalizingly mad vision of rival hordes of motorcyclists waging war over oil and whatever else they can find to fuel their enmity – I am not . Indeed, I have admitted before that I don’t know Jim Davidson’s Harley Davidson. But if you cherish top-notch escapism presented with enormous swagger, then this film is worth two and a half hours of your time.
Back to the plot. Furiosa finds a courageous ally, Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke), who promises to teach her the secrets of the “road war” as she attempts to escape this hellish landscape and return to the Green Place of Many Mothers, whence she came. But she also has revenge in mind. “You have a single-minded cruelty about you,” Jack tells Furiosa approvingly. It’s a line that exemplifies a script written with intelligence and humor. “There is no shame in hatred,” Dementus says later. ‘It is one of the great forces of nature.’
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is a worthy prequel to the insane 2015 blockbuster, Mad Max: Fury Road
There may be another actress under 30 with a more varied and exciting range of credits than Anya Taylor-Joy, but if there is, it’s hard to think who
Creator George Miller returns to direct this origin story for Furiosa, played by Charlize Theron in the previous film
Hatred and the drive to control this wasteland is what drives Dementus into a war with his enemy Immortan Joe, with Furiosa and Jack caught in the thundering crossfire.
We first met Joe in Mad Max: Fury Road and although he’s now played by a different actor (Lachy Hulme, following the 2020 death of Hugh Keays-Byrne), he once again looks, if you can imagine, out as Hannibal Lecter crossed with the late Peter Stringfellow. I know this is another cross, but the film itself is some kind of crazy hybrid: Western, Biblical epic, science fiction fantasy, Top Gear on steroids, with a look as if the design brief had been handed to Salvador Dali.
Miller admitted this week that the set of Fury Road ten years ago was a deeply unhappy place, marked by the tension between co-stars Charlize Theron, who played the adult Furiosa so excellently, and a recalcitrant Tom Hardy. Thank goodness Miller didn’t choose it. This is event cinema at its best, the hit of the Cannes Film Festival so far.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga hits UK cinemas on May 24.