Highs and lows of Furiosa - A Mad Max saga
The story starts with a 10 year old Furiosa plucking apples in The Green Place when scavengers passing by spot her and whisk her away. What follows is her saga.
The world building is exhaustive. It’s a massive project spanning years of life ordeal of Furiosa. The whole of the wasteland is erected in front of you. The movie is a spectacle worthy of IMAX screens. The wasteland grows and evolves infront of your eyes. As the years go by, the world gets bleaker, the rigs get bigger, finer, more innovative and powerful.
There’s a lot of story here. We get glimpses of not only the Bullet Farm, Gastown but also the burrows of Citadel, a place made of anyone’s worst nightmares, where the rest of its population resides. We get insights into the origins of many aspects of Fury Road. Like Furiosa’s missing arm, the birth of a deformed son of Immortan Joe which I thought was Corpus Colossus. Remember the bossy, disabled son who points out Furiosa’s escape? He’s the eldest according to Google. For clueless moviegoers this scene might seem like his birth, but it turns out Immortan Joe had more than his fair share of disabled kids with deformed body, brain and soul.
A relatively young Immortan, People Eater, Bullet Farmer make appearances so does the Organic Mechanic. But the main antagonist here is Dementus played by Chris Hemsworth. A deceiving, conniving, despicable man full of self worth. But the way he was written for the film and portrayed by Hemsworth, it felt caricaturish. As the main villain he didn't hit the mark. His dialogue delivery felt forced. He doesn't hold a candle to the Immortan Joe of Fury Road.
On the other hand, Anya Taylor Joy nails her role as a beaten, scarred, tried Furiosa. She portrays the earlier days of Charlize Theron's Furiosa who is more battered with years of struggle that it reflected in her eyes. Anya Taylor Joy's eyes don't show the same furiosity but her performance is top-notch nonetheless.
Here’s where the latest installment falls short as compared to its predecessor. One cannot help but compare the two because Fury Road raised the ceiling too high. In Fury Road the side characters of Nux, Angharad and many others grabbed our attention. While in the new movie such characters are mere placeholders, used only to carry the story forward. Fury Road boasted performances with such an intensity. That sincerity in the characters is lacking here.
Just like in Fury Road, the war lords use microphones to communicate. But the war of words isn't impactful enough. It feels flat. You miss the boom of Immortan Joe's voice. The dialogues are only good at the end. They are banal till then, only serving the storyline.
It has its moments. The effects are brilliant. A bit more refined to my taste. Wasteland has too much VFX. The story is too extensive to be compressed into a two and a half hour long movie. I would have loved to delve more into some of its aspects. A detailed look at the architecture and inner workings of the Bullet Farm and Gastown.
The makers couldn't help themselves but include snippets of Fury Road as the credits roll by. And you are immediately hit with the difference between the execution of both the projects. The too real, too raw, controlled pieces of action of Fury Road still stand out. The antics were better. The aesthetic was better.
In a sense 'Furiosa' delivers what it proclaims to be - a saga of its protagonist. Makers could’ve given it more time to breathe. Maybe split it into two parts. The idiom 'less is more' holds true for Mad Max franchise. With minimal dialogues and skimpy storyline, Fury Road created history which Furiosa will have difficulty to shoulder on.
These are my initial thoughts and maybe I'll appreciate it more with second watch.
