Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga Speaks the Language of Epics
If you ever took a class on the Greek classics, you might remember that the epics of Homer are defined by their first words. The Odyssey is the story of a “man,” while the Iliad is a story of “μῆνις,” which is often translated as wrath, rage…or fury. The epics of George Miller barely need words at all, yet Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is the Iliad to Fury Road’s stripped-down Odyssey. The latter’s elegant straight-line structure is replaced with lush chapters, documenting the interconnected systems of post-apocalyptic nation-gangs through the years. Through it all, a Dickensian hero clings to this world’s seedy undercarriage. Reducing Furiosa down to a single word does it as little justice as it does the sagas it scraps, welds and reuses like its countless Frankenstein vehicles. But understanding George Miller’s Fury Road prequel as the story of war—of sprawling futility, driven by the same cyclical cruelty that turned its deserts into Wastelands—makes it far more than a satisfying origin story. (Though, it’s that too). Furiosa speaks the language of epics fluently, raging against timeless human failure while carrying a seed of hope.
While any structure would be more complex than a pair of perfect car chases, Furiosa’s script necessarily evolves to match its more expansive narrative. That said, Miller and co-writer Nico Lathouris still aren’t here to coddle us with over-explanation or endless Easter eggs. I don’t want to know how the world fell, or how Furiosa got her name. I want to meet a piss-wielding boy named Piss Boy.
Characters named Scrotus, Toe Jam and Smeg patrol the roads; janky flying machines fully free Fury Road’s Pole Cats from gravity; a gruesome maggot farm scars us in its brief seconds on screen. The filmmakers know that the best details are plot-irrelevant and the best plot is what happens to someone we care about. What we learn, we learn through the eyes of Furiosa, from the moment she’s ripped from the Green Place of Many Mothers as a child, to the second before she tears out of Immortan Joe’s Citadel, smuggling Fury Road’s stowaways.
As Furiosa grows from traumatized child (Alyla Browne) to damaged adult (Anya Taylor-Joy), she survives the slave-labor bowels of the Citadel, claws her way into a position aboard a trade caravan and waits for the perfect moment to enact revenge upon her initial captor, the chaotic, power-hungry biker warlord Dementus (Chris Hemsworth). Where Immortan Joe has the detached power of a god, Dementus is a nutty rascal whose manic cruelties swagger through a world built to be his playground. Both men think the healthy, willful novelty Furiosa would make an excellent addition to their inner circle, as a successor, a trophy or something in between.
Pushing back on the various men who hunt them, Browne and Taylor-Joy’s performances work in stunning tandem, steadily heating the steely young girl’s resolve until it turns molten. Browne coils and pounces, while Taylor-Joy’s physicality is more refined and sure-footed. You can even feel the influence of Charlee Fraser, who leaves a strong impression in her brief scenes as Furiosa’s mother. All three beam stares into the screen that would set celluloid on fire. Every hard edge Furiosa has in Fury Road is sharpened here, and every moment of tenderness given deeper roots. Furiosa might actually speak less in this movie than in Fury Road, which makes what her two performers pull off even more impressive. When you match the most powerful eyes in the business with Miller’s evocative framing (Furiosa is shot a bit like Galadriel’s brush with evil in Lord of the Rings—somewhere between avenging angel and Frank Miller cover), you get all the character you need.
Furiosa is also defined in contrast to the villains she resists and the rare allies she sticks her neck out for. This is part of Miller’s more grandiose vision, one of broken systems and the people they consume. These systems collide when Dementus drives his motorcycle chariot (which, yes, someone is eventually lashed to like the corpse of Hector) straight into the uneasy trade alliance between Immortan Joe’s fertile Citadel, the munition-heavy Bullet Farm and the black gold of Gas Town.