thoughts on: Furiosa
Let me tell you something about me, I love Mad Max: Fury Road. To me it is a pretty flawless film; the story is interesting and poignant, the acting is incredible, the cinematography is creative, but not distracting, and the action is unbeatable excellence. Not only is the final product amazing, the story of what it took to create it is filled with its own cinematic level stories. This is a real art piece, a labor of love, unwilling to cut corners for costs, a creation that is authentic in every sense of the word. (if you’d like to learn more read Blood, Sweat & Chrome by Kyle Buchanan.)
You may think that I was apprehensive going into the prequel focusing on Charlize Theron’s Furiosa, however, I was anything but. Staring Anya Taylor Joy as the young Furiosa and Alyla Browne as even younger still, this film is just perfect in an entirely different manner. I think there are three main reasons for this; it’s a good prequel, it feels like the same world, and it’s how Furiosa would tell her story.
I’m going to try to make my argument without spoilers, in a way that if you’ve seen both films you’ll understand directly what I’m talking about, but if you haven’t you’ll still get the gist.
Prequels are hard because the author knows there is an ending already in place in some capacity. The best prequels are ones that don’t feel like they are written just to fill in gaps, yet still do. Furiosa does just that. There are four major things we know about the character in Fury Road and if we did not get references to those things it would seem an inconclusive storytelling endeavor, but if they were done in obvious ways and paid too much attention to, they would feel more gimmicky than authentic. We needed to be shown where she came from, how she ended up where she was when we met her originally, her motivations, and a how she came to have a physical and visual difference. All of these things are achieved, but in more subtle ways, they are not the main focus of her story, but just moments that give us insight into her future actions. That’s what makes this a good prequel, the focus is the character, not the ending point.
Moving on to the feel of the world. One of Fury Road’s best qualities is it’s all encompassing world building, and Furiosa keeps in that same vein. Every person and society we meet has a backstory, a reason they live the way they do, even if that’s not disclosed to you, it comes across in your small interactions with a character and their world. By introducing us to Chris Hemsworth’s Dementus we are given a new antagonist, but also a new group and lifestyle, the biker gangs of this world, if you will. That opens up not only new ways of life, but also new and interesting fighting techniques we get to marvel at throughout the film. Visually the films look similar, employing the same techniques from the first film to emphasize their closeness. We also get to keep are original antagonist, the big bad, we see more insight into the way the society at large operates. This is mostly due to the fact that unlike Fury Road, Furiosa has dialogue (biggest spoiler you’re getting from me.) While, not always a necessary part of storytelling, dialogue can be an important way to understand the more political sides of the world. I also feel that in the Mad Max world it is used to depict ego; if you have an abundance of words it also usually equates to an abundance of power and other more tangible objects, while those who choose their words more scarcely tend to be seemingly at some sort of disadvantage, yet are often wiser and craftier. All of these qualities live in both of the films creating unified storytelling, even if they are told very differently.
Finally, Furiosa is distinctly her story. I feel that if asked this is how she would tell it (even though they didn’t make her the narrator, thank god). While this world is primarily filled with men as the main character types, with women only used for their bodies, this film felt distinctly feminine to me. The action genre is dominated by the male gaze (yes, i do know George Miller is also a man) women stories are constantly filled with unnecessary “sexy” shots and pandering to women audiences that feels disingenuous and mainly a move to increase ticket sales. When that’s all you get as a action fan and a woman you kinda stop hoping for better, and just take what you can get. This movie is better, Furiosa is distinctly a woman, yet she is not a woman action star. There are moments where she is relatable, but not in forced ways, and there are moments when she is just a hero. I thought an interesting exercise for Hollywood might be to write a male action star and then just replace the actor with an actress, but that’s not real. Women and men are different not inherently, we’ve very unfortunately been socialized that way, so our women action stars have to also be socialized that way, but they don’t have to be for the male gaze too. There are so many moments where Furiosa succeeds in this respect, her cunningness, sympathy, and thirst for revenge, feel distinctly feminine and for that I am grateful to Anya Taylor Joy, Charlize Theron, and George Miller (see it doesn’t have to be all men).
This is a great movie and I’m very happy it exists. To me both these films are a reminder of real art and passion in film, particularly in a genre, that recently feels so capitalistic in the worst possible ways. This is storytelling at its finest.