Furiosa arrives as a prequel to one of the best action films of the century, which means it starts at a disadvantage before the projector even turns on — how do you build tension around a character whose fate you already know from Fury Road? George Miller's answer is to stop treating this as a conventional action movie and build something closer to a Wasteland origin myth, following young Furiosa (Alyla Browne, then Anya Taylor-Joy) across a fifteen-year span as she's traded between the warlord Dementus and the tyrant Immortan Joe. The pacing is unhurried by blockbuster standards, more interested in world-building and cruelty than nonstop momentum.
When the action does arrive, though, it's on a scale few films even attempt anymore — a multi-vehicle chase along a war rig stretches into a jaw-dropping sequence of practical stunts and digital augmentation working in tandem. Chris Hemsworth's Dementus is the film's real discovery, a jabbering, self-mythologizing warlord who's funnier and sadder than the Immortan Joe archetype usually allows, giving the back half real emotional stakes beyond spectacle. Taylor-Joy, largely wordless for stretches of the film, communicates Furiosa's hardening through posture and stillness rather than dialogue, asking more patience of the audience than Fury Road ever did.
A sprawling Wasteland origin myth that trades velocity for scope, and mostly earns the trade.
This isn't the leaner, meaner ride Fury Road was, and it doesn't need to be — it's a different kind of film, a sprawling saga instead of a two-hour chase, and once you stop waiting for it to move at Fury Road's pace, it's remarkable how much control Miller, now in his seventies, still has over scale and geography. Watch it for the Dementus material and the final act's chase alone; both rank with the best action filmmaking of the decade.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga was written and directed by George Miller, who returned to the franchise nine years after Fury Road with a $168 million production through Kennedy Miller Mitchell. Anya Taylor-Joy shaved her head to play the character originated by Charlize Theron, while Chris Hemsworth built his performance as Dementus from a blend of influences he described as a carnival barker, his own grandfather, and a seagull. The film covers roughly fifteen years of story, compared to the three days depicted in Fury Road.
Furiosa opened to strong reviews, holding a 90% critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes, close to Fury Road's own 97%, but it underperformed badly at the box office, grossing around $172.8 million worldwide against its budget and reportedly losing Warner Bros. close to $120 million, one of the biggest theatrical flops of 2024. The film found a much warmer reception once it reached streaming, developing a rewatch following that several outlets noted stood in sharp contrast to its theatrical numbers.
