45 years have passed since the inception of the Mad Max universe until Furiosa (2024). It was in 1979 when George Miller and Mel Gibson, two unknowns, shook the world of cinema. The low-budget post-apocalyptic epic Mad Max (1979) would eventually become a landmark film and the perfect vehicle to launch the careers of the director and protagonist. For Miller, this has been the project of his career as a director and producer. Furiosa is the fifth film in the franchise with a 30-year hiatus between Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985) and Mad Max: Fury Road (2015).

Before Furiosa, the constant in the saga was the character of Max Rockatansky at the center of the action. Now Miller shifts the focus to the character of Imperator Furiosa, whom we met in Fury Road with Charlize Theron. Basically, Furiosa is a prequel to the 2015 film and is at the same time what is known in film jargon as a spin-off. It is a derivative, a by-product, that has a life of its own and does not depend entirely on the original source to exist. Instead of Theron we now have Anya Taylor-Joy playing Furiosa and Chris Hemsworth in the role of the antagonist Dementus.

A Furious Vengeance

Once again we are in the dystopian universe where society as we know it no longer exists and everything is a perpetual war to survive in a world where natural resources are increasingly limited. Amid this chaos, the Green Palace of the Many Mothers is one of the few places where there is fresh water and food can be grown. It is in this oasis where Furiosa lives until a motorcycle gang kidnaps her and her adventure begins. The script by Geroge Miller and Nick Lathouris takes us through the odyssey of the girl who is torn from the safety of her world and thrown into the chaos of the wasteland.

The chapters of Furiosa take us on the path of revenge that the protagonist traces and her elaborate plan to kill Dementus and thus settle accounts for her mother’s death. As in all the films in the saga, the production design, staging, and impressive action sequences play a predominant role in the development of the story. The emotional background of the central characters of Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth is vital to sustaining the story and their motives are very well presented. At the acting level, both Tyalor-Joy and Hemsworth can be very effective and achieve good chemistry in the hero-villain dynamic.

Furiosa at first glance may seem like a negation of the previous Fury Road in terms of narrative pace. But in reality, we are facing a film that has a life of its own and that finds its own cadence. Furiosa is more volatile thanks to its constant changes of pace, but this works perfectly, the film hits differently, but forcefully.