Furiosa (2024)

[BetterButter]

 

[tv echo]

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga Behind the Scenes | Metal Beasts & Holy Motors | Warner Bros. Entertainment
Warner Bros. Entertainment   Aug 3, 2024

[tv echo]

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga Behind the Scenes | Chris Hemsworth as Dementus | Warner Bros. Entertainment
Warner Bros. Entertainment   Aug 17, 2024

[paramitch]

I just saw it finally, and really enjoyed it. It's beautiful filmmaking overall, and as always with this series, Miller brings a certain odd beauty and poetry to it when I least expect it.

I thought Anya Taylor-Joy was solid -- game, graceful, emotive. It did feel a bit odd to me that she reappeared and nobody ever recognized her (especially when Anya and those huge eyes is SO recognizable), although I loved her path to the War Rig.

I do think Anya was ultimately kind of miscast. She's so physically different from Charlize that I never quite bought her as Furiosa (especially given some plot nitpicks). She is so much more delicate and balletic, and of course has that little narrow face and huge eyes. Charlize is so much stronger. It was just really jarring to me, honestly. ESPECIALLY when the end credits take us right into Fury Road, which -- come on. The movie ends and Furiosa looks all of a waifish 25. Then we're supposed to believe very young Anya T-J is now a strong (gorgeous) 40something Charlize? Nope.

However, I thought the little girl who played Furiosa, Alyla Brown, was freaking AMAZING. She looked so much like Anya, and she had the same grace and ferocity. Just a wonderful job.

But I enjoyed the movie overall, loved the overall design and flow of the story, and loved all the performances overall. Chris Hemsworth was a wonderful villain, and visibly had a great time. I also loved Furiosa's connection with Praetorian Jack, which was so silent but moving.

BUT.

Here's my big issue. While I loved it overall, the movie gives us EVERYTHING about Furiosa -- her literal entire life -- but utterly skips the story for two of her biggest motivations from Fury Road -- redemption (which she openly states), and revenge ("Remember me?")! Why?! 

To me, in Fury Road (which is one of my favorite movies of all time), I felt it was obvious by the end that Furiosa had been part of the Wives and/or witnessed their assaults up close (and if part of the Wives, that she had been assaulted and perhaps escaped -- maybe after infertility? -- to become a respected imperator but never forgot them). She felt deeply for the Wives FR yet we never get even a hint of that here on either side.

I also felt like Fury Road implies that she had done a lot of things to keep her place high up under Joe that she regretted -- I always thought this must have included some missions involving capturing healthy women and girls for Joe maybe, or something else with innocent people harmed so that she could remain "undercover" in her mission to one day escape.

It just bothers me so much. The main thing she says she wants in Fury Road is "redemption." She wants to fix the red in her ledger, to paraphrase Black Widow. 

But we don't really get any of that. I would say her primary goal in this is revenge, but against Dementus only, and it's pretty straightforward. And we aren't really ever given any scene with Immortan Joe where he is anything but respectful to her (at least, in his weird way) and where she seems to feel strongly about him at all. We don't even get scenes in the Wives' cage that show her witnessing their being used and treated like things (and being horrified/angry at what she sees), which also could have worked. The one birth scene shows her watching but with little reaction.

Joe and Rictus don't even seem to recognize Furiosa as the little girl who was rescued (and that Rictus creepily attempted to potentially assault). They just seem to accept her as one of them, treat her with the same respect as the other men at her level.

This is just a huge plot hole for me. Furiosa's hatred of Joe in Fury Road just felt so visceral to me, and her "Remember me?" felt like the cry of any woman avenging herself against the man who had abused her. So for it to come down to ... nothing really personal? Just felt weird to me.

I still absolutely love the movie. But this anger at Joe is the plot hole that still bothers me, along with her desperation for redemption beside Max -- forced by the world to do bad things to survive. For me, that's not what Furiosa as a movie shows us.

On 4/5/2024 at 8:13 AM, Tom Holmberg said:

Yes, actually stunts are much more exciting than CHI.  On the other hand there have been deaths in previous Mad Max production, I believe.  No movie is worth anyone's life.

While there are persistent myths about a stuntman who broke his back on "Mad Max," no one has actually died on a "Mad Max" movie stunt, but stunt men and women from the series have been injured, and also some were killed or injured on other movies.

Olivia Jackson (Fury Road) was severely injured on "Resident Evil: The Final Chapter" (she lost an arm). Rosie Bailey, the original actress for Max's wife Jessie in Mad Max, was injured on a motorcycle stunt along with a stuntman (broken bones) and recovered, but the recovery period meant her role had to be recast with Joanne Samuel.

On The Road Warrior, a stunt man broke his leg in a motorcycle stunt. It was a nearly fatal "Cartwheel stunt," which is probably where the "broken back" myth came from. One other stunt performer was also injured during the filming of the climatic highway battle. George Miller, who is an experienced MD, cared for both injured stunt performers, who went on to recover.

Beyond Thunderdome producer Byron Kennedy died in 1983 in a helicopter crash while scouting locations for the movie. The movie was dedicated to him.
 

On 5/27/2024 at 12:57 AM, Anduin said:

Like, why did Joe let her be an imperator instead of chucking her back in the harem? Sure she's amazing, but it would have been an interesting conversation to see.

From the end of Fury Road, you'd think she hated him. From what I could see, he actually respected her and treated her decently.

See, these are what bothered me too.

On 6/8/2024 at 8:52 PM, Cobalt Stargazer said:

The kicker is she clearly wanted remorse from him. Remorse or regret or some kind of human emotion out of him, but him saying, "I have nothing, I am nothing" wasn't just him surrendering, it was him saying he was a hollow shell. That's why Furiosa's new purpose become rescuing the wives and taking them to safety, to replace her need for vengeance with something that wouldn't eventually hollow her out.

I like this idea but if so, I wish we'd been given any of this in the movie. Furiosa is barely shown interacting with -- or reacting to -- the Wives at all.

On 6/18/2024 at 8:32 AM, Cobalt Stargazer said:

Also, I rewatched Fury Road over the weekend, and I remembered that Furiosa also says, "Remember me?" to Immortan Joe in the final act. Nice callback to her last confrontation with Dementus.

I really hated it and thought it was a cheap throwaway line of dialogue to tie the two  very disparate things together. It just didn't work for me. She says it with so much fury in FR but here we saw no reason for it that I could buy.

[Anduin]

"Joe and Rictus don't even seem to recognize Furiosa as the little girl who was rescued (and that Rictus creepily attempted to potentially assault)."

I can accept that. She's ten years older. While I know kids who look the same but older now than ten years previously, that's because I've known them the whole time. They knew young Furiosa for what, a few days? There's been plenty of other things happening in that time to drive her out of their thoughts. When she reappears, they've probably completely forgotten about her.

But yeah, as much as I like it, this movie doesn't seem quite as thought out as Fury Road.