Mediocre? Perhaps. Just a Little Furious about Furiosa
Rather than dying historic on the fury road, it came to a sputtering halt before self-imploding
My sister and I have a standing agreement that, if the internet goes bonkers over a film or series, even one we’re not completely interested in, we should always give them a try. This was born out of two reasons:
1. We, unfortunately, tend to dislike something the moment it becomes popular. Popularity isn’t an indicator of high, or low, quality, and there’s usually a reason as to why certain stories, games, and products become an online sensation. Rather than deny ourselves certain experiences, we’re outgrowing this mindset and learning to enjoy even the most mainstream of content.
2. There was a period of time we missed out on amazing films simply because we weren’t buying into the hype, letting our first impressions cloud our judgement. This happened, for example, with Pacific Rim, believing it to be just another Battleship. This also happened with Mad Max: Fury Road.
To say we were in awe after watching Fury Road is an understatement.
Immediately becoming one of my favorite movies of all time, George Miller and co. crafted a heart-wrenching narrative steeped in a sentiment of hope, however vague and distant it may be. From the breathtaking visuals of a grim wasteland to the thrilling score by Junkie XL, the film is an experience.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is not an experience.
Overall, Furiosa is not a bad film.
I left the movie theater thinking, “Okay. Three out of five stars.” The beginning was amazing, immediately immersive, and I was left wanting more of Furiosa’s mother, Mary Jabassa. Each performance is well-done, the cinematography is almost as good as Fury Road’s, and I was pleasantly surprised at how well Anya-Taylor Joy fit into the titular character (also, cue gasps of shock when Lachy Hulme stepped on-screen as Immortan Joe, replacing the late Hugh Keays-Byrne. Uncanny.)
However, some of the more technical aspects could’ve been a bit better, especially when compared to its predecessor.
*Spoilers for both Furiosa and Fury Road *
THE PACING
Ironic, considering that one of the first concepts behind Fury Road was the idea of a continuous chase lasting throughout the entire story. However, the rhythm seems better paced in the first film. Here, the entire film spans from Furiosa’s kidnapping to the night before the events of Fury Road. There’s so much to process in the lifetime of a thirty something woman, and the film constantly jumps between montages and chase scenes that begin to feel a little repetitive, despite the constant forward leaps in time.
DIRECTION AND CINEMATOGRAPHY
I’m not well-versed in the language of cinema, I can only say that something didn’t feel as smooth.
The film jumps from scene to scene in such a quick manner, it feels off. Imagine slowly blinking but there’s a new image before you each time you open your eyes. It felt reminiscent of the dramatic zoom-in gag in Bob’s Burgers.
And while the film retained similar colors and hues, especially regarding the landscape, it didn’t feel quite as beautiful. The Wasteland is a grim setting but it can, at times, be awe-inspiring. We don’t get the same kind of contrast between yellows of the sand and blues of the sky in Furiosa. I can sort of understand it, in the sense that the Wasteland was more of a character in Fury Road while here, it functions more of a backdrop.
CONTINUITY
This one is a doozy, to be sure. I felt the same confusion watching Furiosa as I did with The Hobbit trilogy, where nothing makes sense despite the filmmakers’ desperate efforts to connect it to its previous installment.
Through Fury Road, we know Furiosa was taken from her home, presumably by Immortain Joe, and has been away for 7000 days. She drives the War Rig towards the exact location she recalled the “Green Place” was in, and eventually finds the Vuvalini, who recognize her by name and mourn her mother.
Yet Furiosa gives us Dementus, played by Chris Hemsworth, a mentally unstable bike lord who takes her in as his adopted daughter, referring to her for the rest of the film as “Little D.”
If this is the man who upended her entire life, why is she then so hell-bent on revenge against Immortan Joe in the future?
We’re introduced to a host of familiar characters — Rictus Erectus, the People Eater, the Bullet Farmer, the Organic Mechanic, Joe himself — yet the film introduces another son to Joe: Scabrous Scrotus. In the official wiki for the Mad Max franchise, it’s stated that his first heir is Corpus Colossus, an intelligent yet physically disabled character present in Fury Road, portrayed by Quentin Kenihan. However, he’s absent from the prequel, most likely due to the actor’s passing in 2018.
Yet I spent most of the film expecting Scrotus to die, to vanish into the Wasteland, anything to explain his absence Fury Road. Why is he even here? Apparently, Scrotus was the main antagonist in the 2015 Mad Max videogame, a story that falls outside of the franchise’s timeline; makes sense, seeing as Scrotus is killed at the end of the game.
Furiosa also introduces a recurring element of stars. In the Vuvalini’s culture, stars are symbolic: they use them as a wish of good luck and a farewell, “Stars be with you”, and Furiosa ends up tattooing a star map on her left forearm to guide her way back home, an eerie act knowing she’ll wind up losing that limb.
Yet these stars are never relevant in Fury Road, even after Furiosa reunites with the Vuvalini. Despite having sacrificed her left arm, Furiosa seems to know the exact direction from the Citadel towards the Green Place, including the amount of time it would take to reach it. So why bother emphasizing this symbol in the first place and giving her lack of an arm such a drastic backstory?
The film’s climax comes to a head when Dementus, through a series of poor decisions, drives the Bullet Farm and Gas Town to the ground, having mismanaged both in his desperate attempt at a takeover. Yet Fury Road begins with an intact trifecta of settlements, Gas Town and the Bullet Farm in perfect working-order when Furiosa is tasked with retrieving supplies from both places.
How are they perfectly rebuilt and in working order, enough to supply the Citadel with resources, if Furiosa literally ends the night before the events of Fury Road?
It’s a small thing but this lack of continuity breaks the immersion one might have of the film when these events and characters don’t line up to what we know of them, especially when presented as a prequel that should set up the entirety of the following film.
Alright then, let’s finally address the elephant in the room:
FEMINISM
Is Furiosa a feminist film?
There’s been conflicting opinions recently on what constitutes a feminist movie:
· Is it solely the number of women on screen? Is it the women who worked behind the camera?
· It is whether the story is representative of all women, thoughtfully taking into account all forms of intersectionality?
· Is it that women are shown to be multi-faceted creatures, just as any human being is, having highs and lows, good and ugly moments?
· Is it the audience’s response to the film, beloved by all or at least met with some resistance by female-hating groups who are thus helpfully proving the point of the story?
For all intents and purposes, I’d argue that Mad Max: Fury Road is, indeed, a feminist film. Seemingly without effort, it was a well-constructed story that criticized capitalism and the scarcity of resources, war, ecological collapse, and the hold a male-dominated society has over women’s autonomy (or people’s autonomy in general, seeing as how Max is reduced to a “blood bag”). It’s no wonder that director George Miller immediately handed the reigns over to his wife, Margaret Sixel, to edit the film.
Despite what the marketing for Fury Road implied, our protagonist is Furiosa and not the eponymous Mad Max (whose name is only mentioned until the very end of the film).
As soon as the plot is turned over to the female characters, it becomes a story about women’s bodily autonomy and escape from a patriarchy that manages to survive past a post-apocalyptic world. The “Wives” of Immortan Joe all have names, goals and separate personalities, and are shown to be more than pretty bodies exploited by a power-hungry tyrant.
There’s Angharad, called “Splendid” by Joe, Capable, the Dag, Toast the Knowing, and Cheedo.
One of Fury Road’s greatest strengths lies in the character of Angharad. She falls into a leadership role amongst the rest of the wives and holds just as much weight as Furiosa within the plot. More than a headstrong, capable woman despite her advanced pregnancy, Angharad presents a different philosophy that guides her actions to escape both Joe and the desolate nature of the Wasteland. She advocates for life, understanding that even the war boys are a product of Joe’s charisma and lifestyle, letting her pursuers live though it may backfire on them later.
After she dies, the Dag and Cheedo mourn her by recalling how she would call bullets “anti-seeds”: plant one and watch something die. To truly liberate themselves within this violent wasteland, they must struggle with compassion and peace even in the face of pain and death. They teach themselves to be soft as an act of defiance in a world that begs them to brutalize not only each other, but themselves.
For example: Once the War Rig gets stuck in a bog, Nux points out they can pull it out by rigging the vehicle to a dead tree. He and Capable break the chain on his wrist to use as leverage and he runs past her, but not before planting a quick kiss on her cheek. Who, within the walls of the Citadel, could’ve taught him such tenderness? In all likelihood, it must’ve been Capable herself just a few scenes prior upon finding him in the back of the War Rig.
In a surprising moment of kindness, she stop Nux from hurting himself, caresses his face, and comforts him after failing to capture her. Capable’s reaction is immediate, and we can see she doesn’t need to dig deep inside herself to find empathy towards a man who, until that moment, was her enemy.
The Wives also choose to exploit their own bodies and femininity when it comes to protecting each other, even someone as fierce as Furiosa.
Capable constantly cares over Angharad, shielding her from broken glass and physically holding her up whenever she can. Angharad blocks Joe from shooting Furiosa by placing herself between them, knowing full-well he would shoot her but not her pregnant belly. Toast wrenches the wheel from Joe during the film’s climax to protect Furiosa and the other Wives. Even Cheedo, also known as the Fragile, plays this up to a hundred by tricking Rictus into carrying her over to Joe’s vehicle to help Furiosa get to safety.
Yet this empathy and compassion are never pitted against Furiosa’s deep-seeded anger and quest for vengeance. In fact, they’re two sides of the same coin, co-existing in this nightmarish hellscape.
For all intents and purposes, Furiosa’s the muscle: a brutal physical fighter with a keen eye and an unwavering endurance. She’s in full control of the War Rig, commands the respect of both her crew of war boys as well as the Wives and Max himself.
When working out the character of Furiosa, Charlize Theron consulted with director Miller at every single point, coming up with her own ideas on how to interpret the character. One of said ideas was to completely shave her head as she worked up a backstory for Furiosa, thus becoming one of the boys.
“If you become us, then you’re not a threat.”
It may be controversial to say, but Furiosa lacks a complete female point of view despite focusing on the backstory of one of the most impressive female leads we’ve head in recent decades.
The film seems bent on prioritizing the men in Furiosa’s life.
It’s not just Immortan Joe anymore; this time we’re introduced to the mentally-unstable Dementus as the source of her trauma. It’s his lackeys who try to expose the Green Place and kidnap Furiosa from her home; it’s Octoboss, one of his allies, who tortures her mother to death (yet has no issues turning against Dementus for shamelessly killing some of his own men); and it’s Dementus who eventually trades her like a disposable pawn in his search for power.
Theron explained Furiosa’s drive as “this overwhelming feeling of wanting to take ownership of her life through all this stuff like revenge and wanting to go back to a place of safety.” It’s not until she’s in a position of power as an Imperator that she can seize the opportunity to steal Joe’s possessions, including his wives, as a big fuck you.
If Dementus was the one behind her kidnapping, why bother going on a wild goose chase in Fury Road?
It’s unfortunate but Immortan Joe is nothing if not reasonable and level-headed throughout Furiosa. Despite showcasing his power over his fanatical war boys, he always seems to choose the option with the least casualties, even if it means surrendering more resources and power to Dementus.
It’s not like I was desperate to see Joe enact violence on Furiosa, kidnapping and branding her, but he’s such a non-player throughout the entire film, one has to wonder how he acquired so much power. In fact, he’s so moderate in his decisions, Joe comes off as the one person to give Furiosa a voice after her kidnapping, enabling her to become a road warrior, and listening to her judgement before the final attack against Dementus.
And this emphasis on Dementus takes a turn for the worse when the plot goes into a vengeance-makes-you-empty-inside spiel by equating Furiosa to him.
I was reminded of the backlash The Last of Us: Part II received after its release in June of 2020. Though some fans have come around and appreciated the wild turn in storytelling, one major complaint was how the game sacrificed its beloved characters and the bittersweet yet moving ending Part I had in order to peddle a lukewarm message about how revenge makes you as bad as the person who hurt you (and that’s not even going into how Neil Druckman, as an Israeli-American, was inspired for Part II from his own experience with “violent thoughts” after watching footage of the 2000 Ramallah Lynching.)
In a scene that goes on for far too long, Dementus mocks Furiosa’s pain, blathering on and on about his own empty quest for vengeance just to feel something, and he boasts how nothing she does to him will be enough to satiate her anger. Coming off of Fury Road, a film with little dialogue and even less exposition, this conversation drags on with Dementus making it all about himself, going as far as telling Furiosa to make his death something epic.
Any prequel, especially one that directly ties into an existing story, must set up future conflict. Like watching the Star Wars prequels, the audience knows the ending must be bittersweet: establishing the downward slide events must take into order to set up future hope.
It makes sense for Furiosa to explore the reasoning behind its titular character’s anger and embitterment. In Fury Road, her arc is to find peace through liberation, breaking free not just of Immortan Joe but the hellish shackles established within the Wasteland. She learns to trust and rely on others, both Max and the Wives, with the goal of reaching a “Green Place” with a thriving matriarchy after being dragged across a desolate desert and stripped of her humanity.
These are not lessons she needs to take from the events of Furiosa; if anything, the film’s goal should’ve been to set everything up, even if it leaves us with a broken Furiosa.
Yet the film not only gives her a brand-new villain to focus her efforts on, but it also fails to establish any reason she would have to free the Wives from their confinement; her retaliation against Joe has now been rewritten and in no instance did we see a connection between her and the Wives other than a brief greeting.
As we were leaving the movie theater, my sister commented: “You know how there was a huge hoopla because Fury Road was marketed as this big, male, action film but it turned out to be about women? This feels like the opposite.”
In her own story, Furiosa’s most important relationships, both negative and positive, are with men. So much so that the film includes instances of narration from an omniscient male character, the History Man, who acknowledges in the very end that everything we’re watching was whispered to him by Furiosa.
Why couldn’t she tell us herself? Or else, why not have Miss Giddy do it, caretaker to the Wives in Fury Road and a possible History Woman based on the text tattooed over her body? Even Max Rockatansky makes a brief cameo as a random loner who finds Furiosa in the desert near the climax of the film, dragging her unconscious body to the safety of the Citadel.
Is the sisterhood in the room with us?
Fury Road was a story about community, but specifically female solidarity. Yet Joe’s Wives are completely nameless and voiceless in Furiosa. They’re helpless in front of Joe and his followers, one of the Wives giving birth in the film and promising to deliver a “full life” after her baby is born physically deformed. They don’t even serve as a source of comfort or familiarity for Furiosa when she’s locked in with them.
The first women she meets in the film, and there’s no sisterhood to speak of.
In fact, it feels suspiciously as if George Miller wanted to kill off any sentiment of women helping women within the first ten to fifteen minutes.
After Furiosa gets taken, her mother chases after her kidnappers, kills most of them, and manages to infiltrate Dementus’ camp during a sandstorm. She kills off two guards and is about to kill the woman Furiosa had been entrusted to, but she cries out something like “Please! I’m a mother too!”. Mary Jabassa lets her live and leaves with Furiosa, but no sooner they’re out of the tent, the woman immediately betrays them to Dementus, thus driving the final nail in their coffin.
Again, we knew that Furiosa would have to be successfully kidnapped, and we knew her mother would die in the race to rescue her, but did this event truly need to hinge on a woman selling out another woman despite asking for and being granted mercy?
No, not all women are saints, we have many flaws and can be just as culpable as men in the spreading of gender norms and violence, but this felt more like slap in the face to the feminists who initially flocked to Fury Road and the effortless way it portrayed hope found within a sisterhood.
Fury Road is embedded with a deep philosophy about what it means to be human and how we find betterment in ourselves despite the worst of circumstances surrounding us. Take a look at the quote which closes the film:
Where must we go, we who wander this Wasteland in search of our better selves?
Seeking hope, love and riches outside of ourselves can be a hopeless effort. Finding our better selves isn’t solely an internal process; giving to and aiding others, especially those who hurt us the most, reveals more about ourselves than our fellow man.
It’s why there’s a direct parallel between Furiosa searching for the Green Place in her memory, searching for it outside of the Citadel and in the world beyond their post-apocalyptic Australia, when it was always behind them, caught in the grasp of a dictator. It’s only until they return with the surviving Vuvalini that the Citadel can thrive. The Many Mothers she looks for are right there in the form of Joe’s Other wives, forced into milking for his war boys, until they’re set free and choose to open the hatch for the water supply.
Yet in its prequel film, there’s such a callousness to the lack of, dare I say, strong female characters, Furiosa herself being the only one with enough agency and wits to escape Rictus’ sexual advances and shedding her hair (temporarily, mind you) to become one of the war boys.
It felt deeply reminiscent of the “I’m not like other girls” kind of energy.
Finally, we have Praetorian Jack, played by Tom Burke.
His role in the story is as small as his name, entering and exiting the film without so much as an emotional beat, his death lacking the courtesy of happening on-screen. As soon as he stepped onto the screen, with Burke’s good looks and dashing command of the War Rig, it was clear he was going to be the romantic aspect of the film, much like Capable and Nux.
One of the best sequences in Fury Road is when the group must drive through a canyon controlled by a bandit group called the Rock Riders, fighting off both the gang as well as Immortan Joe. Not only is it a magnificent scene with one of the best tracks in the score, it’s also pivotal for the relationships in the story, setting the tone for the rest of the film.
At the beginning of the sequence, Furiosa and Max are still at odds with each other, with Max holding the Wives hostage at gunpoint just to have room on the Rig to survive. Halfway through the sequence they’re working together, communicating silently as they hand each other guns and ammunition, watching each other’s back.
The track for this part is called “Brothers in Arms” for a reason: Furiosa and Max are the brothers in arms. They form a deep partnership out of desperate survival and for the rest of the film, Max sits shotgun to Furiosa, being trusted with the Rig whenever she can’t drive, their bond cementing at the very end as he willingly gives her his blood.
I think it’s fair to read into their relationship as a potentially romantic one, but it’s confirmed by Theron that they were never meant to be romantic partners, and the idea was never in the works.
In Furiosa, her relationship with Jack is very clearly a romantic one but, unlike the “Brothers in Arms” sequence, we never see how their bond develops. Though they also get trapped in a similar situation — a War Rig being ambushed forcing them to rely on one another — the sequence ends with both still antagonistic towards each other. Jack offers Furiosa an olive branch, seeing the potential in her, and claims he can teach her the art of war on the road. There’s a brief transition and by the next scene, she’s already been promoted to a Praetorian.
What did he teach her?
How did they bond over it?
Did he have to vouch for her, seeing as she’s walking around with luscious locks that give her gender away? For that matter, were there any consequences to her escaping as a child and posing as a war boy?
Who knows? All we know is that they’re in love and she invites him to escape with her.
Though Jack’s death is bittersweet but lacks any real depth or emotion to it, he doesn’t appear to be that tragic a loss to feature in Furiosa’s quest for vengeance. It definitely triggers something in her, prompting Furiosa to fashion her mechanical arm and shear her hair once again before chasing after Dementus, but a full forty-day war has to pass for her to take any real action against him.
In the end, Praetorian Jack seems like an unnecessary addition to the trauma conga line plaguing Furiosa’s life. I’ve seen many people draw comparisons between her attitude towards Jack and her behavior towards Max, and how the former informs the latter. Personally, I don’t think this is the case; instead, it felt as though the filmmakers simply had to give her a love interest by sheer virtue of being a woman, even if he was never meant to survive.
Furiosa is, overall, a disappointment.
It both ends on an incoherent high note, completely derailing her motivations at the beginning of Fury Road, whilst also landing on a low note, where even the History Man can’t seem to decide whether the events told are real or not as we’re given different deaths for Dementus before settling on an odd scene where his living body is used to nurture the peach tree grown from Mary Jabassa’s peach pit.
What more can I say, other than: at least it beats the graphic novel where rampant abuse is graphically drawn, there’s an unpleasant attempt at an abortion, and Furiosa literally chastises the Wives for not appreciating the life they have with Joe.
A much better experience indeed.
Mika is a Mexican writer and translator, pretender, pet-lover, and a mess at 1 in the morning.
