Theatrical Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) (1 Viewer)

[Joe Wong]

Saw this today. Agree that it's more like Thunderdome in terms of action, pacing and storytelling. There's less action (the ending feels anticlimactic compared to Fury Road's spectacular finish), it's a slower pace (not slow per se, but compared to the rush that was Fury Road), and the story has some deeper content.

Spoiler

I like that Jack wasn't really a love interest - it was more affection and appreciation.

What action there was, was splendid, of course - Miller is a master at vehicular mayhem. I love that he finds new ways of spicing up the attacks during the chases... this time with gliders and all manner of aerial stuff!

I was hoping for more coverage on why Immortan Joe holds Furiosa in such high regard at the start of Fury Road... but I didn't get much of that.

Also, when Furiosa is heading back to the Citadel, just before the maggot woman's abode, there's a shot of a man in leather gear and a souped up car high over the desert. I thought - is that Mad Max? If not, then certainly a reference to him. And then, sure enough, in the credits, there's a Mad Max (played by Jacob Tumuri).

Finally, it was fun to see Elsa Pataky (Hemsworth's wife) play a cameo in the opening. But later, one of the women who joined Dementus looked very much like Elsa, and I thought her character from the opening had been captured. It's not the same character, but the cast does list Pataky playing two roles!

 

[JoeStemme]

Folks wringing their hands over FURIOSA's disappointing box office so far shouldn't be surprised (I basically predicted this when FURY ROAD came out). To wit:
Fury Road made about the same as MAD MAX , inflation adjusted*.
The big difference is that both Fury Road & Furiosa each cost some 50 times what the original did.
Miller won't get to do another Mad Max saga film unless he reigns in the budget. And, as spectacular as these last two films have been, I wouldn't mind seeing another leaner, meaner Max film. (Thunderdome for example, cost about $35M in today's dollars)
* And, that's amazing considering that Mad Max made relative peanuts in the U.S. (under $9M)

 

[Wayne_j]

I'm going to see this today but the box office is showing why it is hard to predict box office these days. This reminds me of last summer when good films such as Mission Impossible (Good), and Indy 5 (Not great, but far from bad) significantly underperformed.

 

[titch]

My two cents: waaaay too long. By the time the last twenty minutes arrived, I wanted it to be over. Wasn't the invigorating reboot, that Mad Max: Fury Road was. It was just "more is more" all the way: mayhem, bikers, driving at crazy speed along roads and sand - but it felt like a retread. I kept thinking how much more exciting The Road Warrior was. And so much more CGI now, even though there were still plenty of stunts. But it's like John Wick: after the 4000th person has been dispatched, do you even feel anything, anymore? Jarringly, Anya Taylor-Joy's American accent really stood out from all the Aussies, when she started to speak. Won't be picking this up on 4K UHD.

Still, probably a gazillion times better than the (incredibly tired-looking) Deadpool & Wolverine, coming this summer, if the trailer represented what was on offer.

 

[TravisR]

I liked the movie alot but man, the sequence on the truck in the middle or so of the movie is great.

 

[Osato]

Put this in the box office thread too…

After ‘Furiosa’ Misfires, When Will Summer Movie Season Rebound?

'Furiosa' didn't live up to the hype of 'Max Max: Fury Road,' as evidenced by its box office debut.

variety.com

 

[Chuck Mayer]

The Stowaway sequence is as unbelievably good as any action sequence from the other films. Or any other film. It’s that good, and I’m thankful I saw it in IMAX.

 

[Osato]

The Stowaway sequence is an unbelievably good as any action sequence from the other films. Or any other film. It’s that good, and I’m thankful I saw it in IMAX.

Agreed. I enjoyed the film from start to finish. The only thing that was long was the 30 minutes of previews.. Yikes!

 

[Patrick McCart]

Saw this last night (Alamo Drafthouse, 4K DLP with Atmos). Incredible film, I think I like this even more than Fury Road. The way it's structured into five chapters makes it seem shorter than it really is and sort of reminds me of silent-era serials that were really more like a small series of shorter features than a bunch of shorts. One problem I have with action movies is the utterly dumb editing and staging where you have no idea what the hell anyone is doing or where they are. George Miller's talent for clear imagery and montage despite the action on screen being pure mayhem is really something to admire.

 

[jayembee]

One problem I have with action movies is the utterly dumb editing and staging where you have no idea what the hell anyone is doing or where they are. George Miller's talent for clear imagery and montage despite the action on screen being pure mayhem is really something to admire.

Definitely. There are too many films where the action sequences seem to be choreographed by the film's editor rather than the director and/or stunt coordinator.

 

[DaveF]

How are the reviews or general word of mouth on Furiosa? Friends saw it, hated it. Clearly not aligned with folks in this thread. But I’m wondering what the broad opinion is? People liking it or not?

I haven’t seen it; I’ll be waiting for disc or streaming.

 

[Osato]

How are the reviews or general word of mouth on Furiosa? Friends saw it, hated it. Clearly not aligned with folks in this thread. But I’m wondering what the broad opinion is? People liking it or not?

I haven’t seen it; I’ll be waiting for disc or streaming.

I liked it a lot but I think it’s varied at this point.

A friend stated he didn’t like it.

I’m glad I saw it in IMAX.

Should be the last one of the series based on box office results.

 

[Malcolm R]

Should be the last one of the series based on box office results.

Dunno. I would have said the same over the years about the Alien and Predator and Terminator franchises. They seem to keep trying.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

How are the reviews or general word of mouth on Furiosa? Friends saw it, hated it. Clearly not aligned with folks in this thread. But I’m wondering what the broad opinion is? People liking it or not?

I haven’t seen it; I’ll be waiting for disc or streaming.

I haven’t made my way out yet but the general consensus seems to be, if you liked Fury Road and thought that film was a masterpiece, that this is almost as good, a little more plot than Fury Road and similar if not quite as impressive action. It’s a bit longer, about 2 1/2 hours this time around.

If Fury Road left you scratching your head and wondering why some people thought it was the best action film ever made, this one probably isn’t for you. That’s sort of where I’m at but if I can see it easily I’ll still give it a shot.

 

[JoeStemme]

B+ Cinemascore for what its worth. I liked it, but, it's the least in the series for me.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Saw it today with my father, who introduced me to the Mel Gibson movies at an irresponsibly young age once upon a time. I want to say there were less than 20 people in our 11:30 AM IMAX matinee.

Furiosa has a different tone and pace than Fury Road so temper your expectations as it’s its own thing.

Yes, it feels very operatic. All of Fury Road takes place over the course of basically two days. This plays out over many, many years. And whereas Fury Road could have taken place 50 years or 500 years after the fall of civilization, here some of the older characters still remember the time before the fall. It doesn't straighten out the timeline inconsistencies between Fury Road and the original trilogy, but it does help clarify these two new movies' places in the timeline.

This movie felt like an event to me rather than just another movie too.

In a time when blockbusters increasingly feel more and more alike and interchangeable, nobody else makes movies that feel like George Miller's Mad Max movies. I'm sure there were plenty of visual effects in this movie, but the action sequences are both clearly choreographed and kinetically impactful in a way that action sequences where pretty much everything is done in a computer are not.

I stayed for the post credit scene / clip but I didn’t recognize what I was seeing.

Wasn't that Nux's dashboard bird bobblehead from Fury Road?

Because to me, Fury Road felt most similar to Thunderdome in placing Max in the middle of a new semi-mystical medieval-ish society, instead of the decaying remnants of 20th century civilization seen in the first two films.

This sort of splits the difference between Thunderdome/Fury Road and Mad Max/The Road Warrior in that respect. It's definitely a whole different society than existed before the fall, but there are glimpses of what came before.

Intriguingly, one civilization we meet early on has what appears to be modern-looking solar panels and wind turbines, despite society in the Mad Max universe collapsing sometime in the mid-eighties.

The performances are great. Perhaps by design, Chris Hemsworth sort of steals the movie from Anya Taylor-Joy. That said, I think Taylor-Joy captures the anger of Furiosa quite well. It's easy to see how we get from her to Charlize Theron.

Furiosa in this movie has the same problem Max did in Fury Road: When you're so taciturn, and the villains around you are so camp, it's hard to stand out.

But where the movie really shines is its ability to tell a story without much dialogue. Furiosa is a masterclass in building a rich and unique world filled with varied and wild characters without resorting to exposition dumps.

One of the things I really enjoyed about this one was the complexity of the storytelling. In Fury Road, Immortan Joe is an evil tyrant while Furiosa and the wives are heroic heroines. It's pretty straight forward, cut and dry.

Here, we see why Furiosa spent so much of her life in Immortan Joe's employ. Immortan Joe is an evil tyrant, but his society has rules and she was able to create a place for herself within it. And he was straightforward with Furiosa: Come with me, bear my children, and you will be safe and taken care of. Sickeningly immoral to be sure, but straightforward and out in the open.

Meanwhile, Dementus was also an evil tyrant, but his society was barely restrained chaos, a non-stop stream of bullshit spewed out of his mouth at all times, and he brutally murdered Furiosa's mother in front of her. It's easy to see why Furiosa found Immortan Joe to be the lesser of two evils.

Right from the opening, wonderfully-methodical but sprawling action sequence that takes Furiosa away from the Green Place, there's an elegiac and tragic tone to the whole thing that is arresting in a very different way than the mad hyper-charged bombast of Fury Road. I do think as a result it ends up feeling more emotionally removed than FR does, but that doesn't mean it's bad -- it's just different.

I still found myself extremely invested in Furiosa's journey however, which is especially surprising since I already knew how it ended. Both Alyla Browne and Anya Taylor-Joy are terrific in the title role. And while I'm not quite convinced that Taylor-Joy ages into Charlize Theron after a couple decades in the wasteland, the transition from Brown to Taylor-Joy midway through was remarkably seamless.

But that distance also speaks to the overall film: this is a high tale of the Wasteland, we don't have the immediacy -- and frankly the kind of open-wound, ground-level energy -- that Nux and the Brides give Fury Road.

But by losing the immediacy, we have a greater sense of context. The Wasteland here feels like it fits into a broader continuity of post-apocalyptic Australia. The Wasteland in Fury Road could have been anywhere, or nowhere.

That being said, I think this might be Hemsworth's best performance, and I don't know if it's all that close for a #2.

Part of that is the liberation that comes with not having to put on a foreign accent for this role. His American accent has never been great, and his faux-Shakespearean accent as Thor has its own limitations. Here, he's an Australian who gets to be Australian.

Dementus isn't just another roaring, mythic warlord of the Wasteland, as much as he tries to be (the running gag where he keeps giving himself different mythic epithets is GREAT) -- there's a desperation and sadness holding the character together that keeps bursting forth from his facade.

Yes, it's clear that he has a tragic backstory from late in the fall just like Max did, only it twisted him in a different way. You see it in his kid's teddy bear that he holds onto until very near the end, and you see it in the way he instinctively protects child Furiosa even as he does horrific things to her mother. I'm not so sure he would have traded her to Joe if he hadn't thought his people would have rebelled if they'd learned what he'd passed up.

He never was going to be an Immortan Joe, as much as he tries to be. He can talk the talk, but he never has it, and the scenes where his desperation pops out are tremendous.

I think the difference is that Immortan Joe wants to rule and wants dominate. Dementus just wants to feel something, and he'll chase whatever he has to try and feel something. There's a nihilistic quality to him that someone like Joe, so concerned with legacy, does not have. Dementus will take big swings because he doesn't have anything to lose. His own life isn't even especially valuable to him.

I also like that Tom Burke's Jack never has it in a different way -- there's a softness to him that lets you know this guy is fucked, even as tough as he is.

The truly brilliant thing about Tom Burke's performance is that Praetorian Jack knows he's fucked too, and has made his peace with it. He knows his story isn't going to have a happy ending, but in the meantime he chooses to act like a human being rather than one of the monsters of the wasteland. And his kindness and generosity are not in vain; they allow Furiosa to hold onto parts of herself that might have otherwise been sanded away. The victory of Fury Road couldn't have happened, for numerous reasons, without Jack's sacrifice here.

Anya Taylor-Joy is good and intense, in a different way from Charlize Theron.

I really appreciated that this movie didn't leave off essentially where Fury Road began. There are years of living in between, and Theron's Furiosa is in a different place than Taylor-Joy's Furiosa here.

I’ll be shocked if I see a better movie this summer. Not quite the masterpiece that FR is, but certainly a worthy companion.

Same. Although Furiosa and Fury Road are such an apples-and-oranges comparison that it's difficult for me to say which I think is better. Fury Road is definitely tighter, but Furiosa is more expansive.

Being the 5th best in this series is nothing to be ashamed of.

This one is definitely in the top three for me. Beyond Thunderdome is still the weakest for me, though that one was also expansive in interesting ways that marked a departure from its more intense, focused predecessor.

But it’s apparently budgeted as if it was guaranteed to be a runaway hit and I think that’s a big part of the problem, not just specifically with this film but Hollywood films in general. If this indeed cost the $165ish million that’s been rumored, that requires about a $500 million gross to break even, and there’s really nothing in the history of the series to suggest that that was a reasonable probability. And yet, they spent it anyway.

The one thing I will say about this one at least is that every penny is on the screen, as opposed to a lot of bloated budgets recently where the costs include several false starts or late in the game retooling. Miller knew the movie he wanted to make, and he made it.

If it's true that Warner Bros. opted to finance this one entirely in-house rather than pairing with a production partner like Legendary, that makes the budget especially insane though.

The takeaway from the studio executives and pundits on Monday morning (or Tuesday since it’s a holiday weekend) will be that no one wanted to see another Mad Max movie, or that no one wants action movies with female leads, and I think that completely misses the point. This movie will probably do $100 million domestically and at least that overseas. Clearly people want to see it.

There's also the context that box office in general, save for a handful of very few exceptions, has fallen off a cliff. Pre-pandemic, this would have had a $70 million opening weekend, easily.

I like that Jack wasn't really a love interest - it was more affection and appreciation.

More than even affection, mutual respect. Furiosa impressed him, and she's not a psychopath in a time and place that is chock full of them.

I was hoping for more coverage on why Immortan Joe holds Furiosa in such high regard at the start of Fury Road... but I didn't get much of that.

She delivered him Dementus, the biggest threat to his rule, on a silver platter at the end of this one. And came up with a particularly sadistic form of execution for him.

Also, when Furiosa is heading back to the Citadel, just before the maggot woman's abode, there's a shot of a man in leather gear and a souped up car high over the desert. I thought - is that Mad Max? If not, then certainly a reference to him. And then, sure enough, in the credits, there's a Mad Max (played by Jacob Tumuri).

Yes, great cameo. I believe Tumuri was Tom Hardy's stunt man on Fury Road.

Finally, it was fun to see Elsa Pataky (Hemsworth's wife) play a cameo in the opening. But later, one of the women who joined Dementus looked very much like Elsa, and I thought her character from the opening had been captured. It's not the same character, but the cast does list Pataky playing two roles!

And she's not the only one. Lachy Hulme plays both the younger Immortan Joe and Dementus's lieutenant who is missing an eyeball.

The way it's structured into five chapters makes it seem shorter than it really is and sort of reminds me of silent-era serials that were really more like a small series of shorter features than a bunch of shorts.

It's also a framework the facilitates the passage of time, breaking the film up into the major turning points of Furiosa's young life.

One problem I have with action movies is the utterly dumb editing and staging where you have no idea what the hell anyone is doing or where they are. George Miller's talent for clear imagery and montage despite the action on screen being pure mayhem is really something to admire.

100 percent.

 

[Patrick Sun]

Saw it last Thursday, but felt little for this film, which was kind of weird, as I enjoyed the earlier installments of the Mad Max saga. This spin-off just didn't quite hit the spot for me, I guess.

I was kinda rolling my eyes at all of the Dementus scenes, just too corny for this sort of movie, just needed more menace, and less gaslighting from him. Some of the shoddy green screen effects took me out of the film, oddly so. Perhaps it just wasn't a story I really needed for the back story of the titular character, who seems more like a passenger, and not the driver.

 

[Tino]

the transition from Brown to Taylor-Joy midway through was remarkably seamless.

Both young actresses were AI enhanced to look more like Taylor Joy.

 

[jayembee]

Yes, when Taylor-Joy was on Colbert last week, she talked about how they used AI to slowly change the younger actor's face to look more and more like Taylor-Joy's over the course of the character's aging.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

That’s both fascinating and also how you push a budget to a point where recouping the investment becomes an impossible task.