George Miller Continues to Let His Freak Flag Fly With ‘Furiosa’

There really is no making sense of George Miller’s filmography. The Aussie director broke through in 1979 with Mad Max, a down under Grindhouse, revenge film about a police officer who tracks down the brutal killers of his family in a world on the brink of desolation. Shot on a torn shoe-string, Mad Max broke through in America, making stars of Miller and the actor who played the title character (some guy named Mel Gibson). Two years later, Miller followed up with a sequel that would become an instant classic: The Road Warrior. Essentially a film about Max (Gibson again), leading a civilized, gasoline-rich group of people to a safer tomorrow through the Australian wasteland and past a wicked tribe of bandits led by “The Hummungus.” The latter portion of the 96-minute film is an eye-popping road-race chase film where Max and crew must fend off attacks from The Hummungus and crew to reach that (hopefully) better place. The entire chase sequence is breathless, remarkably complex in terms of choreography, and in watching it, you can catch yourself wondering: how did anyone not die?

After filming the best segment (John Lithgow screaming, “There’s a man on the wing of this plane!”) of the otherwise fairly limp Twilight Zone movie, Miller returned to make what seemed to be the final Mad Max film, Beyond Thunderdome in 1985. The third film in the Miller/Gibson trilogy received more modest reviews and had a surprisingly (at least in comparison to its predecessors) sentimental tone. I would imagine most remember the film for two things: the Thunderdome sequence (a sort of cage match between Max and a rival, battling to the death while attached to bungee cords), and Tina Turner’s most significant film role which included her recording of the film’s theme: “We Don’t Need Another Hero.”

To say that Miller’s filmography gets really strange after Thunderdome is to exercise in understatement. Over the next quarter century, Miller directed five feature films: The Witches of Eastwick, Lorenzo’s Oil, the sequel to  Babe (which he produced) Babe: Pig in the City, Happy Feet, and Happy Feet Two. So, if you’re scoring at home, that’s one devilish John Updike adaptation, a family drama about a child with a mysterious disease, and three family films. You can make an argument that both Witches and Lorenzo’s were in the realm of the understandable, but going from “the wasteland” of his Mad Max origins to children’s fare is a head scratcher of the highest order. In fact, if you go back through those titles, there’s not a single action movie among them.

Then, in 2015, Miller unexpectedly returned to the Mad Max universe with Mad Max: Fury Road, re-casting Max with the great Tom Hardy and introducing the soon to be iconic character of Furiosa, played by Charlize Theron in a fierce performance. Given the largest budget of his life, Miller poured it all out on screen in a film so manic (or should I say maniacal), beautiful, and out and out nutty (the heavy metal guitarist strapped to a rig playing theme music during a chase scene is…well, I have no comparison). The film received reviews that were almost as spectacular as the experience of watching the film itself. Fury Road also scored at the box office despite its eccentricities that verged on the incredulous. For many (publications and movie goers), Fury Road is the greatest action film of this century, and you won’t catch me arguing otherwise.

With all the acclaim and financial rewards that came with the film, there was the strong belief and hope that Miller would direct a sequel to Fury Road, a film that added to the legacy of the original trilogy to a degree no one could have predicted.

Instead, Miller took seven years to make another movie, and when he did, he returned with Three Thousand Years of Longing, an adaptation of an A.S. Byatt short story, in which Tilda Swinton plays a woman who receives a magic lamp, gives it a rub, and a genie in the form of Idris Elba is released from said lamp. The film received mixed reviews, and it’s not hard to understand why. It’s lush visuals, use of color, cinematography, and all other technical aspects are beyond tip-top. But it is one loopy movie that you can either ride along with, or you jump out the car while it’s speeding down the road at 80 miles per hour. I rode along, but there are times thinking back on that film that I wonder, “what in the hell drew Miller to this material?” To put it mildly, he’s a man who you cannot put a finger on.

Even with Furiosa, his relentless and excellent return to the world of Mad Max, Miller upset expectations. Instead of a Mad Max sequel, or a Furiosa stand alone film with Theron, Miller decided to create a prequel for the character, re-casting the lead with the white-hot (and gifted) actor Anya Taylor-Joy. The film’s announcement was met with enthusiasm, but also with some reservations. Why a prequel? Why not let Theron move forward with the character she embodied so well? Theron herself expressed disappointment in not being able to reprise the role. I even saw questions asked related to the difference in height between Theron and Taylor-Joy. Theron stands at 5 foot 10, and it appears that many thought of Taylor-Joy as a “shorty.” Not so. Taylor-Joy scales up to 5 foot 8, a negligible difference on a huge screen and with a director so gifted at angling the camera as Miller. To put a final point on it, you know how tall Tom Hardy is? 5 foot 9. I’m betting you thought he’d be bigger.

With all that background out of the way, the only question about Furiosa that matters is, “does it deliver.” And my goodness, does it ever. Sure, people can quibble that there’s no Max in the film and that Fury Road may well be impossible to top, but Furiosa stands its ground with great aplomb. Not only is Taylor-Joy up to the task of stepping into Theron’s shoes, Miller, at the grand age of 79, can still fill his own boots. The film is shot almost entirely in the desert, and much like Fury Road, Miller takes the beauty of David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia, runs it through a psychotic blender (you know, if blender’s had minds of their own), and turns “the wasteland” into a nightmarish vision that mixes beauty and foreboding in equal measure. I know the phrase “eye-popping” can be overused, but there were times when I wondered if my wide eyes would ever get a rest during Furiosa, such is the visual splendor on display.

Running nearly two and a half hours long, there isn’t a single boring second, and barely even a slowdown in the film for you to catch your bearings. Despite the film’s length, there’s hardly any dialogue, and not much in the way of speechifying–Although a nearly unrecognizable (except to those who have every inch of that Thor physique memorized), thickly-beared Chris Hemsworth (as the “Big Bad” Dementus) has a moment or two, when rallying his ragtag troops. It’s a real delight to see Hemsworth excel (in his natural language, by the way) in a film where he doesn’t wield a hammer (although he does have a cape–a choice that struck me as cheeky). Still, this is not a film of words, this is storytelling through expression, visuals, and action. I read somewhere that Taylor-Joy’s Furiosa has only thirty lines of dialogue in the film. Miller’s reply to this likely accurate point? “Dialogue just slows things down.” And there is nothing slow about Furiosa.

There are some surprises though. The film begins with a much younger Furiosa picking fruit from what must be one of the last trees in existence. Soon after she’s kidnapped by Hemsworth’s motley crew and brought to Immorten Joe (here’s where Furiosa begins to connect explicitly to Fury Road). The next thirty minutes find ‘tween Furiosa navigating her way through this ugly new world, finding her place in it, and plotting revenge all the while. And yes, if you were paying attention just now, that means Taylor-Joy doesn’t even show up until a half an hour in. No matter though, because over the next two hours, she becomes the Furiosa we know from Fury Road, and does so in full. As Furiosa begins to meld into what will become Fury Road, we learn more about Immorten Joe’s world. We see the origin of the “War Boys,” and most importantly, we find out how Furiosa lost her left forearm, and how she replaced it. That is the moment that leads up to the young scheming Furiosa turning into the warrior Furiosa.

Once Taylor-Joy attaches the new robotic arm, she picks up a blade, and shaves her head down to the near stubble-length of the Furiosa we met in Fury Road. She does so with her back to the audience, and then as she turns to face us, with that black paint streaked across her eyes, it is then that the transformation is made complete. And if you loved Fury Road, you’d have to be among the most churlish of its fans to not find your jaw going slack. In fact, of the few lines Taylor-Joy has over the remainder of the film, I’ll be damned if her voice doesn’t deepen to becoming a near dead-ringer for Theron’s.

The reviews for Furiosa have been strong, if not as ecstatic as Fury Road. Fair enough. Maybe after seeing the heightened, barely in control, wheels threatening to come off (but never quite) high-wire act of Fury Road, Furiosa might seem a little less of a stunner than the film its storyline precedes. But taken on its own merits, what I can say is that as I left the matinee and wandered out into the sun, my first thoughts were, “Oh what a day. What a lovely day.”