Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, a prequel that measures up to high expectations

Prequels are the sort of lazy storytelling that beget Muppet Babies. That statement can still be true, however, I’ve been watching Young Sheldon on Netflix and love that show. A movie is a different kind of beast though, and making a sequel to one of the best action films ever shouldn’t be trifled with. Mad Max: Fury Road is the movie in question and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is the prequel that was holding the place card for an apocalyptic, gasoline-centered Muppet Babies. Our worst-case scenario of young Kermit may be the exception, rather than the rule. That’s because Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is possibly the best action movie since 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road.

I realize that puts it in the same Venn diagram as Mission Impossible: Fallout, but as an action film, Furiosa has so much going for it that one can easily overlook its flaws. Flaws is a tough term to use with Furiosa because the only issue that some movie goers will have is its use of CGI. In Fury Road the use of CGI was either much sparser or utilized more efficiently. You knew there had to be CGI in that movie, but there were only one or two instances where it was obvious.

In Furiosa you can see where the CGI is, but you trust the process. It also looks better on the big screen than viewing the trailers on your phone. The effects aren’t bad or any worse than Fury Road, it’s that there are more of them.

Furiosa benefits from having a very different plot structure. The film takes place over 15 years and is broken up into five chapters. When I heard that I was concerned that there wouldn’t be no action in the film’s first half. Again, this is where you need to trust George Miller’s timing and pacing. Having seen Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome with my family I had some reservations about straying away from the formula. Thunderdome wandered so far from the template that it resembled a tourist brochure for the Australian Outback more than the sequel to Road Warrior. Furiosa shakes up the formula but doesn’t rattle its DNA to where there’s a song and dance number.

Furiosa as an adult doesn’t show up until about an hour into the film. This leaves Dementus to earn young Furiosa’s trust in giving up the green place’s location and opens a series of great chase sequences between the biker gang and Immortan Joe. Dementus is great fun to watch, think of a muscular, well-spoken version of Bobcat Goldwhait’s Zed from Police Academy 2 who riffs violent one-liners a moment before glibly dispatching a dystopian faux War Boy to his death the next.

When the adult Furiosa enters the movie its plot is still taking shape, one more main character enters the fray and the major action sequence takes place. This is where the plot could’ve gone south towards a sappy, more Hollywood-centric crap-filled center, but thankfully it stays far away from that and gleefully hits the gas toward chaos. There are countless throwbacks for fans of the series, instances where key props from previous entries are introduced and shades of things that made past chases so memorable. The film could’ve used those elements too much, but it doesn’t.

The polecats are there, but they don’t play too big of a part. Instead, there are lower-tech tricks that the War Boys use in their pursuits. It’s in these cases when the CGI strains credibility, but only just for a moment, keep your eyes on the greater enjoyment of Furiosa and it’ll be fine. If you do that you’ll enjoy Furiosa as much as you did Fury Road. There are instances where the later doesn’t match up with the former, for those audiences intent on splitting hairs. However, this is the rare case where the prequel fills the big shoes that preceded it, making you wonder if more time between Star Wars films would yield the same results.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is rated R for sustained action, violence and one scene where maggots are cleansing a wound.