Yahoo Movies Everything we know about Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
George Miller returns to his gasoline-fuelled dystopia for one more ride…
Oh what a glorious day! Stock up on guzzoline because filmmaker George Miller is inviting us back into his dust-flecked dystopia for the prequel story Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.
Set before the events of 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road, Miller’s latest entry into the Mad Max story acts as both a prequel and a spin-off from the primary storyline, marking Miller’s fifth Mad Max film so far.
Miller first revved the franchise to life in 1979, with Mel Gibson in the leading role. Together, they took us to a dying landscape that had fallen victim to a breakdown of society known as ‘the collapse’ leaving survivors forced to battle deranged warlords for simple resources like water and gasoline in an arid wasteland.
Releasing three films with Gibson, Millar rebooted the story 30 years later with Tom Hardy inheriting the role of Max and Oscar winner Charlize Theron as battle-hardened heroine Furiosa.
However, it’s the latter that takes the lead in this new installment. Read on for everything we need to know about Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga…
When will Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga be released?
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga will be released exclusively in cinemas and IMAX on Friday, 24 May.
A streaming release date has yet to be announced. However, 2015’s Fury Road is available to stream on Sky Cinema, Prime Video and Apple TV.
Is there a trailer for Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga?
Yes. The first trailer for Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga sped online in December 2023 and wasted no time bringing us up to speed with all the key details of Miller’s new story.
Explained via a Star Wars-esque narrative crawl, the movie’s first teaser told us how a young Furiosa was snatched from her home as a child and proceeded to spend the rest of her days trying to find her way back to her family.
However, by the looks of it, it’s far from an easy task with our young hero forced to cross paths with warlords, biker gangs and some familiar (masked) faces.
What are critics saying about Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga?
The first reviews for Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga burst online after the film’s premiere at Cannes Film Festival — and by the sounds of them, everything’s coming up shiny and chrome.
The Guardian called Miller’s prequel “immersive” and “spectacular”, while The Independent lauded its “wit and lyricism”. The Telegraph’s five-star review hailed the film as “cinema at its most soul-pricklingly primal”, explaining: “The film may handle differently to its predecessor, but it’s clearly been tuned by the same engineers.”
However, Variety said Furiosa was inferior to Fury Road, calling it “naggingly episodic” and arguing that Miller “seems more invested this time in his world-building than he is in his road-warrior-ing”.
The film has an impressive 88% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes. Read the full reviews below:
The Telegraph: Strap in for cinema at its most soul-pricklingly primal
The Independent: Fury Road prequel is emotional, witty and filled with purposeful savagery (3-min read)
The Guardian: Anya Taylor-Joy is tremendous as chase resumes (3-min read)
Deadline: Chris Hemsworth And Anya Taylor-Joy Take Dystopian Franchise To New Levels (5-min read)
Variety: The Origin Story of Furiosa Has Dazzling Sequences, but George Miller’s Overstuffed Epic Is No ‘Fury Road’ (10-min read)
What happens in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga?
Set 45 years before ‘the collapse’ which left society to fend for itself, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga aims to fill in the gaps on how Furiosa became a big enough badass to give the franchise’s leading man a run for his money.
According to the film’s official synopsis, “As the world fell, young Furiosa is snatched from the Green Place of Many Mothers and falls into the hands of a great Biker Horde led by the Warlord Dementus.
“Sweeping through the Wasteland, they come across the Citadel presided over by The Immortan Joe. While the two Tyrants war for dominance, Furiosa must survive many trials as she puts together the means to find her way home.”
Interestingly, the chronology of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga and the arrival of ‘the collapse’ (which happened in the film series between the events of Mad Max and Mad Max 2) would place Max at around 80 years of age in Mad Max: Fury Road. If that’s true, he must have stocked up on a lot of moisturiser before society collapsed.
In fact, the whole chronology of Max and his appearance in Miller’s series has perplexed viewers so much, it has inspired its own Reddit thread dedicated to getting to the bottom of the whole Mad Max timeline.
Who is starring in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga?
The Queen’s Gambit star Anya Taylor-Joy inherits Furiosa’s bionic arm from Theron, who first brought the character to life in 2015’s Fury Road. Child actor Alyla Browne plays a younger version of Furiosa, having previously worked on Millar’s 2022 feature Three Thousand Years of Longing.
They’re joined by Thor’s Chris Hemsworth as Dementus, a warlord that the star has described as “a very violent, insane, brutal person that is born from the Wasteland.”
The Matrix Revolutions star Lachy Hulme portrays a young version of villain Immortan Joe, who was played by the late Hugh Keays-Byrne in Fury Road.
Hardy does not appear in the movie — with Jacob Tomuri instead taking on the role of Max for a cameo. Miller explained: “It was Jacob Tomuri, who was Tom Hardy’s double [on Fury Road]. He also did some other stunts. He’s a New Zealand stuntman, and he was doing some other stunts on the film, and I thought, ‘Who better?’”
The blockbuster also include appearances from Angus Sampson, Daniel Webber and Nathan Jones.
Speaking to the New York Times while promoting the film, Taylor-Joy admitted: “I’ve never been more alone than making that movie. I don’t want to go too deep into it, but everything that I thought was going to be easy was hard.” In a separate chat with Variety, she said she found the film “very traumatising to watch”.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga will be released in cinemas on Friday, 24 May
