Having seen two exemplary films exploring war and the nature of evil just the day before (Civil War and Zone of Interest), I felt unprepared for the kaleidoscopic onslaught of the latest iteration of the Mad Max saga.

This was not helped by seeing the film at IMAX, something that turns everything up to 11. Yes I know this is a franchise and so it is unlikely that each new version will bring you something more than the one before. I really loved the original Mad Max trilogy, and watching them all together you can see the trajectory from low budget super Australianness to higher budget Australian camp and then what happens when Hollywood gets involved. I think it’s well understood that the first two films are the best and so when George Miller returned to the story a few years ago with Mad Max Fury Road, it could’ve gone any way.

I saw Fury Road with my two sisters just after we had cremated our father. It was an odd day, and we were all quite spent with the emotion of the previous weeks. We had a really great meal and then decided on the spur of the moment to see Fury Road. We sat near the front of the cinema and I remember the cathartic pleasure of just being overwhelmed with size and spectacle and eventually the awesomeness of Charlize Theron as Furiosa. I remember feeling that there were a few too many men in the story and not enough women and that it’s apocalyptic campness sometimes didn’t quite work, but it holds a positive place in my heart.

Furiosa is the prequel to Fury Road and picks up on the fact that Theron‘s character of Furiosa transcended any interest in the character of Max. This story takes the opportunity to fill in the blanks and tell us how Furiosa came to be, what her origin story was and what made her so mad.
It does an okay job at this. We start off with Furiosa as a young girl (Alyla Browne) living in a sort of Eden with her female family members. When their idyll is invaded by male scavengers, her pluckiness contributes to her being kidnapped and taken away. Her vengeful mother Vulvalini (Elsa Pataky) follows, but we know it won’t end well because we know where Furiosa ends up.

Unexpectedly she starts off in the clutches of Dementus, an almost unrecognisable and very camp Chris Hemsworth. Mostly we understand that this is amusing, even though the details of the narrative can be gruelling and gory and decidedly unfunny. It turns out that there are three fortresses in the wasteland and they are ruled by ruthless men. The Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme) that we know from Fury Road rules the Citadel with his Warboys and cliff tops and his harem wives kept to bear him children. Dementus has his own forces and also a large dose of narcissism that makes him think he is the rightful ruler of everything. This sets him against Immortan Joe to take over Gastown, where all the fuel comes from, and the bullet farm, that seems to be the source of their ammunition. Not overly realistic but there is a kind of sense in the patriarchal world building.

Furiosa becomes a dog man, and rather cleverly at some point morphs into Anya Taylor Joy.
In terms of plot, there’s just a lot of action and spectacle and noise and fighting. It starts to blur a little as to who was with who and fighting who and why and how we feel about it. Furiosa just wants to get back to her family in their secret Eden, but she also wants a good dose of retribution against Dementus. In the process she teams up with Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke) who trades her work for a chance to get back home.

We know where the story goes so the interest should come from the development of characters and motivation. Furiosa looks cool and fights like a boss but doesn’t talk much and when she does, inexplicably she has the only non-Australian accent. Is this because ATJ can’t do accents or because Charlize didn’t? It’s jarring and affects your trust in the authenticity of her character as we are given so little sense of her other than her single minded mute doggedness.

Another disappointment was the woeful lack of female characters. Even the wives of Fury Road don’t get a look in other than as a plot point. There are LOTS of blokes and you start to realise the hubris of a male director with a massive budget crafting a world that gives women such little agency.

I was also hopeful to recognise the filming location just up the road from where I live and where the production was set up for many months. There was no trace of the Hay plains though, they CGIed the crap out of it, perhaps because they had to match the Namibian location of Fury Road, chosen because the unusually wet year of 2012 turned much of rural Australia too green.

I watched the film with my nephew and nibling who both loved it, coming afresh to the franchise and already being steeped in the apocalyptic style, fashion and art direction that Mad Max 2 spawned in the 80s without really knowing its origins. That ratings on IMDb are higher for this than for Civil War probably says a lot about the need for the masses to avoid thinking too deeply about the origins of war. It’s easier to think it’s about apocalyptic excess than middle class banality.