When a film leaves its mark on pop culture as deeply as Mad Max: Fury Road did in 2015, the wild, post-apocalyptic saga that began with that first chapter leaves a heavy footprint on every attempt to continue the story. Sequel, prequel, spin-off, or anything else, expectations rise to a level that makes honest assessment nearly impossible. In short, judging Furiosa without acknowledging the monumental footprint of its predecessor would miss crucial context—the preeminent action film many still consider among the best ever crafted.
Freshly unveiled outside competition at Cannes, the project invites viewers to imagine the early life of the one-armed warrior Charlize Theron popularized in Fury Road. Here the role is portrayed with remarkable restraint and nuance by Anya Taylor-Joy. The narrative unfolds on a desert frontier dotted with fortress-like compounds ruled by brutal men, Dementus and Immortan Joe, who battle over scarce resources and power. Furiosa is captured, displaced, and forced to redefine her own destiny. The on-screen arc begins with youth and quickly reveals a wound that shapes her life: an act of cruelty that fuels a lifelong mission for freedom and vengeance.
Alongside Furiosa, the film preserves the saga’s core iconography: endless desert roads teeming with raiders, relentless vehicular engineering, and colossal trucks accompanied by the roar of engines and swirling sandstorms. Yet this installment also marks a departure. It is the first Mad Max chapter to move forward without the familiar antihero Max Rockatansky, and that absence signals a shift in tone. The movie respects the franchise’s DNA while testing new ground, inviting audiences to witness a different kind of journey from Miller, a director known for pushing blockbuster cinema toward new sensory horizons.
Violent Spiritual Education
Where Fury Road felt like a relentless chase, Furiosa traces a 15-year arc divided into chapters that chart the protagonist’s intense, often brutal, education in survival and self-definition. The film trades the maximal kinetic energy of its predecessor for a deeper study of the world its heroine inhabits. It becomes a place that, even as it teeters on the edge of danger, draws the viewer into a slowly unfolding fascination. Miller has explained that the differences are intentional, signaling a potential direction for the saga’s next phase rather than rehashing what came before.
Yet the movie still carves out space for those signature action sequences. The long, operatic car chases—escalating in spectacle and technical mastery—demonstrate Miller’s knack for choreography and his unique imagination when designing machines that feel both grotesque and inspired. These scenes may not hit with the same narrative urgency as Fury Road, but they reaffirm Miller as a creator of blockbuster cinema that demands to be seen on a big screen, at maximum volume, with a sense of awe that only a director with bold constraints can evoke.
Even if Furiosa does not reach the same heights as its predecessor, it remains a bold statement from Miller. It asks audiences to accept a different trajectory and to trust that the filmmaker will push boundaries rather than repeat himself. The implication is clear: Miller deserves patience to explore these characters and this world, and his ambition in this new chapter deserves, at the very least, respect for its audacity and craft.
In this new phase, the story broadens its scope while staying true to a visceral, sensory experience that fans expect from the Mad Max universe. The result is a bold gamble—an experiment in storytelling that prioritizes character depth and thematic resonance as much as spectacle. Audiences are invited to witness a filmmaker willing to chart unfamiliar territory, even as the legacy of Fury Road looms large and undeniable.