疯狂的麦克斯：弗瑞奥萨

Title: Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Year: 2024

Country: Australia, USA

Language: English

Genre: Action, Adventure

Director: George Miller

Screenwriters: George Miller, Nico Lathouris

Music: Tom Holkenborg

Cinematography: Simon Duggan

Editors: Eliot Knapman, Margaret Sixel

Cast:

Anya Taylor-Joy

Chris Hemsworth

Tom Burke

Lachy Hulme

Nathan Jones

Josh Helman

Alyla Browne

George Shevtsov

John Howard

Angus Sampson

Elsa Pataky

Charlee Fraser

Hugh Keays-Byrne

Lee Perry

CJ Bloomfield

Matuse

Clarence Ryan

Quaden Bayles

David Collins

Rating: 7.7/10

Nine years feel a shade too long for a prequel of a veritable blockbuster success, George Miller’s FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA continues with his virtuosic action sequences and features a fearless, stolid Anya Taylor-Joy as the younger titular heroine, who steals the show from Mad Max himself in Miller’s MAD MAX: FURY ROAD (2015), in the person of an indomitable Charlie Theron.

However, Miller’s latest turned out to be a box office disappointment despite it received thunderous applause from Cannes and is acclaimed unanimously by the critics. Is the outback wasteland a less fecund goldmine than we should give it credit for? What is the crux of the problem here?

Here, Miller’s apocalyptic desert-scape looks never more expansive and awe-inspiring. The production value of the film’s three main locations - the Citadel, the Gastown and the Bullet Farm - is imposingly magnificent. Let alone the center-piece of a car-chasing escapade centering on a barreling War Rig, which can produce a pure adrenaline rush far more potent than any FAST & FURIOUS braggadocios thanks to its astonishing stunt work, well-grounded choreography and meticulous editing. So hardware-wise, FURIOSA is well on a par with its 2015 predecessor.

Then plot-wise, as a heroine’s beginning story, FURIOSA is heading toward its known destination - how she ends up as Immorten Joe’s (Hulme) chief commander of the War Rig - without much surprise. And what makes her tick is her personal vendetta to Dementus (Hemsworth with an objectionable prosthetic nose), a warlord of a biker horde, who abducts her when she was a young girl (Browne) and murders her mother (Fraser, a warrior figure of almighty fortitude). But the plot becomes flimsy when the mother is summarily executed without even interrogating her about the whereabouts of the green place, now that Dementus has both her and Furiosa captured. Is that not the purpose of everything has happened so far?

Also, Furiosa’s female identity makes no whatsoever signification in the film. Were she a boy, that would not make any difference in the process, other than it would save her from being thrown into Immorten Joe’s harem. Her rapport with Praetorian Jack (Burke, a real cool demigod of self-possession and solemnity) never has the chance to transmute into something deeper. Critically, it pains audience to watch Taylor-Joy’s slight figure and spindly arm are tossed into the zippy, violent locomotion, bemoaning how she would’ve ever evolved into a mighty fighter like Theron.

It is refreshing to see Miller forgo the epic showpiece of “The 40-Day War” between the bikers and the War Boys (which is only glanced as a backdrop for the voice-over) to leave the climax exclusively between Furiosa and Dementus, settling their scores in a more personal way (only if Hemsworth could’ve asserted himself as a more competent actor, he has no gimlet eye of a real villain, his wordiness is rather distracting, there is no conviction or cadence in his peroration, which only makes Taylor-Joy’s reticence more egregious, who is offered less to perform, yet must come in for the consequence of being a box office poison afterward). It is an anti-climatic devise that cuts both ways, which could be construed that it doesn’t conform to the rules of how a successful blockbuster should be.

A fascinating case of an audacious but abortive enterprise endeavors to bring its cult aesthetics to mass consumption, FURIOSA only proves that FURY ROAD is a flash in the pan which is blessed with that perfect balance of being symphonic and gut-bucket. A hefty price-tag isn’t really beneficent to Miller’s wasteland dystopia. Were his rumored MAD MAX: WASTELAND, another prequel, ever to be green-lit, going wilder in spirit but less extravagant in display should be just what the doctor ordered. Not forget that not every aesthetic has the same appeal.

referential entries: George Miller’s MAD MAX: FURY ROAD (2015, 8.1/10); THREE THOUSAND YEARS OF LONGING (2022, 7.0/10).