Welcome to a new kind of Mad Max… not the pure action rumpus of Road Warrior or Fury Road or the heroism storyline of Beyond Thunderdome or the… whatever the original film was. This is more of a lengthy epic with (some) actual dialog across a wider timespan. 

It’s a prequel to Fury Road, recasting Charlize Theron with Anya Taylor-Joy to tell a Furiosa origin story. We start with the Green Place and progress through a timeline where we see how she becomes an Imperator for Immortan Joe. In between, she has scuffles with – and makes war on – a new wasteland baddie played by Chris Hemsworth. 

This is a nearly 2 1/2 hour film… which is quite long for a movie about vehicular manslaughter. And the first 30 minutes of it were pretty grim, to be honest. I was getting worried this Fury Road follow-up was going to be a stinker. But once they got past the very initial setup, the film started to improve. And then improve some more… and wound up pretty great.

This film takes place across twenty years, actually casting a child actress as Furiosa before moving onto Anya Taylor-Joy. In such, it’s a much more episodic film (including chapter titles) without as much of a singular narrative through-line the other films have. 

The funny thing is, it’s not so much a Furiosa origin story as it is a history of the the civilization Immortan Joe and his cohorts established. The Citadel, Gastown, and The Bullet Farm were all mentioned in Fury Road and we get to see a slice of their history in this film. Not everything goes smoothly… and it leads to a lot of car crashes, deals, and backstabbing. 

Whether this is a particularly interesting narrative for you, I can’t say. I can see some people losing interest with all these warlords, warboys, gas peddlers, and bullet farmers. Mainly because they are all a bunch of scruffy nerf herders but also we kind of know how it all turns out.

But, hey, the vehicular manslaughter sequences are very good. It took a while to get a proper one but when it hit, it was as propulsive and energetic as the ones from Fury Road. And there are a fair number of them too, spread across the film’s timeline. They are all pretty great with amazing sound and music. If you came for the crunch, you’ll get the crunch.

The finale was weirdly talky for a Mad Max film but I bet George Miller was trying something different. Which… fair enough. Not sure I was as invested though. It was ok… but kind of insignificant given how, once again, we know how this ends.

But this is a pretty great film… third best in the franchise behind Fury Road and The Road Warrior. It has its pacing lapses and a storyline we can figure out given that its a prequel. Maybe it was a mistake to go prequel… probably would have been wiser to rehire Charlize and give her a proper sequel. 

Score: 91