Set 15 to 20 years before the events of Fury Road, in a desert wasteland where warlords fight over the last remaining sources of water, food, weapons, and gasoline, Furiosa traces the young title character's life from her kidnapping by the forces of warlord Dementus (Hemsworth) to her revenge on the warlord for the loss of her mother. For over a decade, she struggles to survive as a slave and, eventually, a trusted lieutenant of the Citadel's cult leader, Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme), and his military commander Praetorian Jack (Burke).
Miller initially intended to shoot Furiosaback-to-back with Fury Road, but the former spent several years in development hell amidst salary disputes with Warner Bros. Pictures, Fury Road's distributor. Several crew members from Fury Road returned for Furiosa, including composer Tom Holkenborg, costume designer Jenny Beavan, editor Margaret Sixel (Miller's wife), and screenwriter Lathouris. Filming took place in Australia from June to October 2022.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga premiered at the 77th Cannes Film Festival on 15 May 2024. It was released in theatres in Australia by Warner Bros. and Village Roadshow Pictures on 23 May 2024, and in the United States the following day. The film received positive reviews from critics and has grossed $65 million worldwide. Its debut has been described as "disappointing", having the lowest box office takings on the Memorial Day weekend since 1995.[6]
Plot
Years after a global catastrophe, Australia is a radioactive wasteland and the Green Place of Many Mothers is one of the last remaining areas with fresh water and agriculture. Raiders discover the Green Place while a young Furiosa and sister Valkyrie are picking peaches. Furiosa attempts to sabotage their motorbikes, but the raiders capture her as a prize for their leader, warlord Dementus of the Biker Horde. Furiosa's mother, Mary Jabassa, pursues them to the Horde's camp, killing all raiders but one, who delivers Furiosa to Dementus. However, Furiosa mortally wounds him before he can divulge the location of the Green Place.
Later that night, Mary sneaks into the camp and rescues Furiosa; the Biker Horde gives chase. Mary stays back to buy Furiosa time to escape, and gives her a peach-seed to remember her by; but Furiosa returns to her mother anyway. Dementus forces Furiosa to watch her mother's crucifixion. He adopts Furiosa as his daughter, revealing that he is still haunted by the deaths of his family during the catastrophe. During her captivity, Furiosa tattoos a star chart to the Green Place on her left arm so that she can find her way home.
After receiving a tip from a stranded War Boy, Dementus and the Biker Horde arrive at the Citadel, another Wasteland settlement with fresh water and agriculture. He is repelled by the Citadel's leader, Immortan Joe, and the rest of his fanatical army, the War Boys. Dementus changes course and captures Gastown, an oil refinery that supplies the Citadel with the gasoline it needs to pump water from its underground aquifer. At peace negotiations, Dementus demands that the Citadel recognize his authority over Gastown and increase its supplies of food and water. In exchange, he trades Joe his personal physician and Furiosa.
At the Citadel, Immortan Joe imprisons Furiosa in the vault with his stable of wives, although she devises a plan, including shaving her head, to escape from house arrest and from Immortan's son Rictus, who tries to molest her. Disguised as a mute teenage boy, Furiosa works her way up the ranks of Joe's men for over a decade and helps build the "War Rig", a heavily armed supply tanker that can withstand raider attacks in the lawless Wasteland. During one such attack, the Rig's crew are wiped out, leaving the Rig's commander, Praetorian Jack, and Furiosa as the only survivors. Jack recognizes Furiosa's potential, and she is promoted to the rank of Praetorian. He offers to train her to escape the Citadel if she helps him rebuild his crew; the two fall in love and resolve to escape together one day.
Immortan Joe decides to attack Gastown, as Dementus's mismanagement has led the facility to near-ruin. He orders Furiosa and Jack to collect weapons and ammunition from the Bullet Farm, an allied mining facility. However, Dementus, having preemptively attacked and captured the Bullet Farm, ambushes the War Rig when it arrives. Furiosa and Jack are captured, and Furiosa's left arm is severely injured. Dementus tortures Jack to death, and Furiosa escapes by cutting off her injured arm by which she was chained. She returns to the Citadel and a 40-day war ensues, during which most of Dementus's horde is killed.
Having lost her path home, Furiosa again
shaves her head, replaces her arm with a mechanical prosthetic, and engages in a solo pursuit of Dementus as he flees with the remnants of his horde. She captures Dementus in the desert and identifies herself. Dementus taunts her, saying that revenge will not make her whole. In a voiceover, the narrator claims that Furiosa did not kill him, as some thought, but imprisoned Dementus at the Citadel and used his living body as fertilizer to grow a peach tree from her mother's seed.
For her services, Immortan Joe promotes Furiosa to "Imperator" and gives her command of a new War Rig. She eventually meets Joe's five remaining wives in the vault where Joe once held her prisoner. In the final scene, the "Five Wives" hide in Furiosa's War Rig the night before another supply run.[a]
Director George Miller and co-writer Nico Lathouris spent over 15 years writing the script for Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), and developed backstories for every character, particularly co-protagonist Imperator Furiosa.[21] They eventually wrote a Furiosa-centered screenplay, which actress Charlize Theron used as a reference for her performance in Fury Road.[22] At one point, Miller and Lathouris hoped to turn the Furiosa screenplay into an animated film.[23] According to Miller, Furiosa "probably" takes place after Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985), but the Mad Max franchise has "no strict chronology".[24] The first trailer of the film, released on 30 November 2023, confirmed that Furiosa takes place "45 years after the collapse".[25]
In July 2010, Miller announced plans to shoot Fury Roadback-to-back with a live-action prequel film entitled Mad Max: Furiosa, but during pre-production, it was decided to only shoot Fury Road.[26] In November 2017, Miller's production company filed a lawsuit against Warner Bros. over unpaid salaries, which delayed the production of any additional entries in the franchise.[27] In July 2019, Miller revealed that a Furiosa film was still being planned in addition to two Mad Max sequels.[28] By March 2020, Miller resolved his legal disputes with Warner Bros. and began casting the Furiosa prequel, which he intended to make after Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022). It was reported that the film would take place over a timeframe of 15 years, depicting Furiosa's backstory of how she was displaced from her home and spent her life "trying to get back".[22]
Miller sought to cast a younger actress for the role in lieu of using de-aging technology for Theron.[21] The latter admitted that the decision was "a little heartbreaking, for sure," but understood Miller's rationale.[33] In March 2020, during the COVID-19 lockdowninAustralia, Miller auditioned several actresses over Skype for the Furiosa role.[34] In October 2020, Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth, and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II were cast.[8] Miller chose Taylor-Joy after seeing her performance in an early cut of the film Last Night in Soho (2021) and auditioning her with the "Mad as Hell" monologue from Sidney Lumet's Network (1976).[35][36]Edgar Wright, the director of Last Night in Soho, told Miller to "do yourself a favor and grab the opportunity to work with her".[33] Taylor-Joy received advice from Nicholas Hoult, who had previously portrayed Nux in Fury Road and worked alongside her in The Menu (2022).[37]
In 2021, Miller cast Alyla Browne as a young Furiosa; she had previously worked with Miller on Three Thousand Years of Longing. Miller said that she reminded him of a young Furiosa, and that she impressed him while doing the splits on set.[38]Tom Burke joined the cast in the autumn of 2021 as Praetorian Jack, replacing Abdul-Mateen, who dropped out due to a scheduling conflict.[39]
In June 2022, it was reported that Nathan Jones and Angus Sampson were set to reprise their roles from Fury Road.[40] That August, Quaden Bayles, who worked on Three Thousand Years of Longing after a video about his mistreatment at school went viral, was announced to be appearing in Furiosa in a small role.[41]
In March 2024, it was revealed that Lachy Hulme would portray a younger Immortan Joe in the film, succeeding the late Hugh Keays-Byrne, who portrayed Joe in Fury Road and passed away in 2020. At first, Hulme was only cast as Rizzdale Pell and Miller planned to use a body double for Immortan Joe. However, during filming, Hulme offered to portray the Immortan to honor Keays-Byrne, insisting he could replicate Joe's voice and eyes. He eventually convinced Miller to cast him.[11][42]
Filming
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga was shot in the New South Wales towns of Hay (left) and Silverton (right), which is often considered a ghost town,[43] though it reportedly has a small population of 48 people.
In May 2022, Miller confirmed to Deadline Hollywood that second unit filming was underway in Australia in advance of principal photography.[44] The film was awarded a AU$175 million filming incentive,[45] and spent a total of US$233 million (AU$343.2 million) in Australia, the most-ever for a film production in the country.[46] Hemsworth stated that Miller had hired ex-convicts as supporting artists for the film.[47] In May 2022, second unit filming moved to Hay with more scheduled to take place in Silverton.[48]
Principal photography began on 1 June 2022, in Australia.[49] The action sequence where the raiders attack the War Rig took 78 days to shoot; close to 200 stunt performers worked on it every day.[50] Filming was expected to wrap in September, but instead wrapped in October.[51][52] Taylor-Joy said that working on the film was a challenging experience, stating: "I've never been more alone than making that movie ... I don't want to go too deep into it, but everything that I thought was going to be easy was hard."[53]
On 29 November 2023, the Warner Bros. booth at CCXP featured a first-look image of Taylor-Joy's Furiosa.[57] The following day, the teaser trailer of the film was released.[58]AtCinemaCon, Warner Bros. screened extended footage of the film on 9 April 2024; Miller, Taylor-Joy, and Hemsworth appeared together for the first time in public to promote the film.[59] On 19 March 2024, the official trailer debuted.[60] A new trio of first-look images from the film were released exclusively by Total Film on 19 April 2024.[61]
It was reported that the film is split into three distinct acts—"I: Her Odyssey Begins"; "II: A Warrior Awakens"; and "III: Ride Into Vengeance".[62] While these were used promotionally, the final film actually features a total of five—"The Pole of Inaccessibility"; "Lessons from the Wasteland"; "The Stowaway"; "Homeward"; and "Beyond Vengeance".[63]
Release
Theatrical
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga had its world premiere at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, screening out-of-competition, on 15 May 2024.[64] The film was released theatrically in Australia and India on 23 May 2024, and in the United States on 24 May 2024.[65]
The film was originally scheduled to be released on 23 June 2023, but was delayed to May 2024.[65][66][67]
Home media
In May 2024, Miller confirmed that the film will be receiving a black-and-white treatment, similar to what he did for Fury Road (referred to as the "Black & Chrome" edition) in 2016, expressing interest in black-and-white as a format for films; no release date has yet been announced.[68]
Reception
Box office
As of 23 May 2024[update], Furiosa has grossed $32 million in the United States and Canada, and $32.8 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $64.8 million.[3][4]
In the United States and Canada, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga was released, alongside The Garfield Movie and Sight, and was projected to gross around $40 million from 3,750 theaters in its four-day opening weekend. Over the same frame, the film released in 71 additional territories, where it was projected to gross $40–45 million.[69] The film earned $10.2 million on its first day, including $3.5 million from Thursday night previews, similar to the $3.7 million made by Fury Road.[70][71] It went on to underperform, grossing $25.5 million in its opening weekend and $32 million over the four-day frame, marking the lowest-grossing film to finish in first over the Memorial Day weekend since Casper ($22 million in 1995; $43.2 million when adjusted to 2024 prices).[72][73] The film also came in below expectations in its global opening weekend, grossing a total of $58.8 million from 76 total markets through Sunday.[74] Regarding the opening week box office performance, David A. Gross of movie consulting firm Franchise Entertainment Research said: "This is a weak opening in spite of outstanding reviews and a good audience score."[75] In Australia, the film opened at number one for the weekend, earning $3.33 million (AUD).[76]
Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 90% of 378 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.9/10. The website's consensus reads: "Retroactively enriching Fury Road with greater emotional heft if not quite matching it in propulsive throttle, Furiosa is another glorious swerve in mastermind George Miller's breathless race towards cinematic Valhalla."[77]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 79 out of 100, based on 63 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[78] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale, while those polled by PostTrak gave the film an average of 4 1/2 stars out of 5, with 70% saying they would definitely recommend it.[72][79]
Writing for RogerEbert.com, Robert Daniels awarded the film 4 out of 4 stars, and called it "one of the best prequels ever made". He praised the storyline, action sequences, and performances.[80] Pete Hammond of Deadline Hollywood viewed the film as possessing "the best screenplay of any Mad Max film".[81]The Guardian'sPeter Bradshaw called Taylor-Joy "an overwhelmingly convincing action heroine".[82] Writing for Empire, John Nugent awarded the film 5 out of 5 stars, and described Taylor-Joy as "phenomenal", finding the "right balance of steeliness and fractured humanity that Theron instilled".[83] Although Jada Yuan from The Washington Post thought that Hemsworth had "created one of the all-time-great screen villains",[84] and Jake Wilson of The Sydney Morning Herald saw him "steal[ing] the show",[85] John McDonald of the Australian Financial Review opined that part of the film's "failure may be attributed to the writing, but also to Hemsworth's woodenness as an actor".[86]
In a critical review, Owen GleibermanofVariety perceived Furiosa as filled with "pretension" and as "franchise overkill".[87] Nicholas Barber of BBC also disliked some aspects of the film, giving it 3 out of 5 stars. He viewed the plot as meandering and as draining, writing: "You soon reach the point where you're sick of sand, sick of explosions, sick of off-puttingly sadistic violence."[88]Stephanie Zacharek's review in Time similarly criticized the film as "a slog that's working hard to persuade us we're having a good time".[89]
^Huff, Lauren (1 May 2024). "Hitting the Fury Road: Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth go inside 'Furiosa', their full-throttle 'Mad Max' prequel". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved 25 May 2024. In doing what we did in the preparation of Mad Max: Fury Road, we also wrote what happened to Max in the year before we encounter him in [that film] ... Basically, we had to see that Mad Max was lurking around somewhere because we do know what happened. The writers know what happened to Mad Max in that year before, and we have a whole story of that, which I would like to do sometime if I get the chance.
^Northrup, Ryan (27 May 2024). "'Furiosa' Will Get Black & White Version Like 'Mad Mad: Fury Road', Confirms George Miller". Screen Rant. Retrieved 28 May 2024. We've done it already. It's the last thing I did on this film, and I call it 'Tinted Black & Chrome', or I want to call it 'Tinted Black & Chrome'. I must say, it's really interesting. I'm still trying to demystify why the black and white, for me, has something more elemental to it. I still can't quite put my finger on it. It's not because they look like old black-and-white movies, it's something else. It's like if we took a picture of ourselves right now, it might look a little more dramatic if it was black and white.