Witnessing Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
A less novel but worthy post-apocalyptic road trip.
It's worthy to witness Mad Max: Fury Road for its audacity to tell a post-apocalyptic road rage venture reliant on visual storytelling and minimal dialogue. Furiosa tries the same recipe plus an origin tale with enough space to grow its characters, using a bit more dialogue in the mix.
It's almost impossible to compete with Fury Road, as a brutal race and action romp. Furiosa is wise to not try it head-on - but this is also where its shortcomings lie. Fury Road was a road rage masterpiece, Furiosa excels as an action movie, but it can't reach the same impact because its predecessor-sequel did just about everything first and better.
Furiosa opens with an audio collage of statements meant to explain the apocalypse, but remains too vague for the effort to count. The picture is not clear enough to detail how the Earth became scorched, but it stands in contrast to Fury Road where the intro monologue was Max trying to make sense of a dying world.
When a character muses, "As the world falls around us, how must we brave its cruelties?" the simple poetry is more effective than the prior vague choir about socio-politics and resource collapse. With Max's intro there was not much expectation of understanding the world - he is a lonesome scavenger trying to survive.
The first proper scene shows Furiosa plucking fruit from a tree, in a green patch of plentitude and plenitude not seen in Fury Road. The biblical allusion works - Furiosa looses her innocence by witnessing the real state of the world because she wandered too far, at the edge of her Eden where scavengers prey.
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Mad Max: Fury Road may have been action-driven and lacking on complex characters. The minimalist storytelling - barely any detailed characters and explicit worldbuilding - landed at the extreme where viewers ride on without in-depth lore. Furiosa does the same, shyly expanding her world by showing more "communities" but never detailing their way of life. Again, minimalism worked better for Fury Road because the pacing was only concerned with the road, with minimal expectation for the rest of the wastes.
As with the prior movie, I appreciate the mix of apocalyptic realism with fairytale seasoning. Furiosa and her community live in an oasis of greenery, fresh water and natural food, a post-apocalyptic cliche, but plenty effective. Men and women share all professions and live in harmony in what may be an Earthly Eden. Since the present series evades explaining how humans survived nuclear war, the natural communal living space is the right cliche at the right time. Max's world is harsh, but this fairytale mystique makes it more alluring. Furiosa and her peers speak Australian English and something Latin-inspired, and there's no need to know how, at least for an origin story - giving the community its own language infuses it with a fantasy quality that sparks curiosity and makes the world both familiar and alien.
The anti-patriarchal bent is just as clear, but spread out a bit to make space for the hero's coming of age road trip. Dementus is not Immortan Joe, but their modus operandi is similar enough to be called slavery and savagery. No surprise, Furiosa's home is an egalitarian society, portrayed as pristine, thriving through equality.
All tribes lead by man survive on a status quo of savagery, leader worship and raiding. All seem incapable of change and hold women subservient unless they can prove savage enough to earn the men's fear.
Perfectly fit, Dementus tries to turn Joe's servants against him by speaking of slavery and freedom, by promising a dignified life, and how their fate depends on their willingness to take it. Of course, tis the gift of a tyrant - Dementus' promise is illusory and begets slavery and violence. The tyrant is wise to use the language of freedom against others like him. No one, including his own cohort which profits from his rule, may point that out.
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There are narrative quirks, too easy to pick out. At one point, Furiosa disappears but remains among her captors, and somehow no one recognizes her thenceforth. The vagueness of the Australian wasteland is intentional as before, but here it creates more narrative dissonance: the villainous tribes, all patriarchies, aren't aware of Furiosa's heavenly home, though they're experts on road scavenging gear. Their main occupation seems to be plotting against each other, but not scouting far enough to discover lush places.
There's a bit of shyness in only telling Furiosa's story. Fury Road was supposedly about Max, though Furiosa was far more interesting than him. Here, there's a better stand-in for Max, Praetor Jack, another capable wasteland runner. Jack takes some space away from Furiosa as she occupied Max's story in the first. Jack is an ounce more developed than Max, otherwise he is simply Furiosa with more muscle - ultimately, he's used as narrative contraption to make the hero pine and suffer for a love interest.
On the subject of spoiling mystique, Immortan Joe is less of a menacing tyrant now, thanks to being more vocal and present than in the first movie. Furiosa doesn't go for maximalism, but the shroud of secrecy which can make heroes and villains intriguing is thinner. This would not be an issue if we'd know more about Immortan and his Citadel - as it is, there's no attempt to build any community or tribe lore-wise. Another point which worked better for Max, because the road rage was the story and expectations for complex lore were low.
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Literary brevity and excellent visual storytelling gave the first movie its own identity, divined and accepted by viewers who enjoy not knowing everything lore-wise. Furiosa is in a soft bind, because it does the same but lacks the novelty of Fury Road and its action sequences do not top the latter. This prequel wants to experiment with more dialogue, but extra verbiage can detract from implicit characterization, and the final recipe is less spicy. Fury Road has the ineffable "je ne sais quoi" of visual storytelling, unapologetic road trip and minimalist worldbuilding - Furiosa has all that minus the novelty.
Fury Road's "Witness!" and "I live, I die, I live again" weren't just cool mantra. They're war prayers saying how subjects in a certain "community" are brainwashed into accepting violence and death for the glory of an oppressor. Furiosa has nothing so charming - Dementus' speech is poignant, but less memorable, and I think there was a conscious effort to not try to "compete" with the previous movie's meme-like playfulness.
Furiosa wants to expand on the mystique of the first, but ends up flat on the consistency of its world. Furiosa's home would be great to know about more, but the story meanders through other locations and tribes, barely detailed and feeling insubstantial. Characters abound, but none gets a proper history except the hero. She and the adversary meet in the end for brief verbal sparing, a welcome moment of tension between hero and villain, without essential revelations beyond Dementus' established nihilism.
Ultimately, Furiosa is not inferior to Fury Road, just a bit of a different breed lacking the newness of its predecessor. Fury Road holds the advantage - it brought a cult classic into the present with vigorous visual storytelling, lacking character depth but not heart.
Point is, Furiosa was already a hero in Fury Road. Her origin tells a similar story, but with too many characters, forgettable or not developed enough in a script which seems shy to do so instead of being intentional, as the first. Like Fury Road, it may have been impactful with a similar minimalist vibe and putting visual storytelling first. As it is, it may stand on its own better detached from its sequel. Furiosa has almost everything it needs - a fantasy-inspired post-apocalypse, cool drifter-heroes to love, impressive stunts. Its major quirk is lacking Fury Road's novelty, and the only reason it's not a phenomenon as the Mad Max reboot.