My Review of "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga has recently released in theatres as a summer blockbuster of 2024. It's basically the prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road but emphasizes the character Furiosa. I was intrigued because I liked the first movie. What I got from this movie was not exactly what I was expecting. That's not to say that some of those expectations weren't kept.

The movie starts off many years before the aforementioned movie. We have a very young Furiosa in a land of abundance. There are some bandits that have infiltrated her village's and they seem to be scavenging. Due to the nature of the world, it seems that the whole world is some huge apocalyptic place except for Furiosa's village. The villagers don't want any of these bandits to be coming back because it only spells bad news for them.

Furiosa tries to sabotage the bandit's escape by damaging their bikes but she gets caught. They decide to take her in with them as evidence of this land of abundance. This becomes a huge cat and mouse chase to prevent the bandits from escaping but they ultimately make it to their boss Dementus.

Furiosa is adamant on not giving away her village and becomes uncooperative. In turn, Dementus takes her on as his adoptive child. I know... it's a really weird movie. Dementus is a power hungry guy that has a pretty loyal following.

The problem with Dementus is that he can't really good at keeping finances going. He seems to run himself out of resources and then uses his charisma and charm to get more resources. Eventually he hatches a plan to take control over the big Citadel that the franchise is based on. This isn't going to be an easy task. This whole movie kind of surrounds Dementus' conniving schemes to take power of the Citadel.

Dementus doesn't care what he has to do to achieve his big goal. It seems Furiosa's path keeps crossing Dementus' path and because Dementus is such a sociopath he's constantly destroys important things to Furiosa. Ultimately this becomes a bit of a revenge story for Furiosa to take out Dementus.

There are tons of wild action sequences that may make you squirm if you don't have a high tolerance for horrific deaths. I know I turned my head for a few of them. They are utterly brutal but they do fit the aesthetics of the movie.

Speaking of aesthetics, the movie is also quite beautiful in it's own apocalyptic charm. Despite the many horrifying visuals there are on occasion some exquisite pieces there as well. With all the chaos that they have in this movie they do have some quiet to offset some of the tension that's been brooding.

That kind of hits one of my qualms about this movie. It certainly has some pacing issues for me. This isn't going to feel the same for everyone but this movie felt like it was way longer than it really was. I felt like I was there for 4 hours. Even though I was interested and quite entertained throughout the movie there were these moments I was checking my watch to see how much longer this movie was. Again, at no time was I thinking wow I'm bored.

If you're a fan of the first movie there are a lot of easter eggs throughout the movie to make you happy. I had a Hot Tub Time Machine moments when I was trying to guess when Furiosa's arm was going to be chopped off. It was happening throughout the movie and it almost became a running joke. There's also quite a lot of funny moments in this movie as well. More than I expected.

I thought the cast did a great job and overall it was very well made. My biggest issue with the pacing. It shouldn't have felt like it was so long. I didn't understand why I was thinking this too because I was entertained but maybe not as entertained as I thought. It felt sort of like watching Lord of the Rings where they'd be on their merry way and the movie would take time watching the characters just roam around the environment.

Overall, I had an okay time with this movie. I don't know if I'd go watch it again because it did seem somewhat of a chore to go through this. I'd have to be in a certain mood to really have to see this one again. Otherwise it was acceptable. I would have to give this movie a 6.5 out of 10. I would suggest this for people that liked the first movie but only because you want to see Furiosa's backstory.