TL,DR: Furiosa is good. It's not like Fury Road, and it's not better than Fury Road, but it definitely fits into the Mad Max series. It's a fun movie, lots of action, good acting, effects, cinematography, etc. The score could've been better. Fury Road is a lot easier to rewatch because it's so fast, so I'll probably return to it more than Furiosa, but I still plan to see this movie at least one more time. I would highly recommend it.
First off, to get it out of the way: Furiosa is not like Fury Road. But it was never supposed to be. I went in knowing that, and was happy with what I got. That being said, I'm about to compare this movie to Fury Road a lot. It's pretty much unavoidable, but just keep in mind that I recognize that they were made with different intentions.
I'm a big fan of the Mad Max series: I've seen all the movies except Thunderdome, which I want to watch soon despite its reputation; I've read "Blood, Sweat, and Chrome," about the making of Fury Road, which is a great book; and I think I rewatched Fury Road four times just last year. All this is to say, I know what I'm talking about when I talk about Furiosa.
I only watched one trailer for Furiosa, and from what I saw I was excited, but I had some reservations. I was worried that Chris Hemsworth wouldn't work as the villain, that he would be too distracting. I was worried that Anya Taylor-Joy wouldn't be able to match Charlize Theron as Furiosa. And I was worried that the visual effects would be too clean, too "Marvel-like," and not gritty enough for the wasteland. After watching the movie, I'm happy to say that I was wrong. Hemsworth does a great job as Dementus, it never felt like I was watching Thor in a Mad Max movie. Anya Taylor-Joy manages to capture the same silent rage that Theron had in Fury Road, you can even watch it building inside her as the movie progresses. And the visual effects still capture the feeling of the bloody, greasy, leather-clad Wasteland. The effects are definitely more obvious than they were in Fury Road, nobody is going to claim that this movie was 100% practical. But for me, there was nothing immersion-breaking and all the VFX felt like they fit into the environment. But now that I've talked about my doubts, what about the rest of the movie?
The most divisive aspect of Furiosa seems to be the pacing. It's a lot slower than Fury Road, and 30 minutes longer. The plot feels more spread out, with some breathing room, rather than the breakneck pace of Fury Road. For some people, that might seem like a bad thing. But don't worry, there's still plenty of intense action, crazy stunts, and deranged murder contraptions (they weaponize truck nuts. I loved it.). I look at it like this: Fury Road had to fight for it's life to make it to theaters, and that paved the way for Furiosa and all the future Mad Max movies that George Miller will hopefully get to make. Because of the insanity of Fury Road's production, every scene feels charged, like it's fueled by high-octane crazy blood just like the characters in the film, and that's what makes it so great. With the success of Fury Road, Miller knows now that everyone has bought in, and that enabled him to slow down with Furiosa and just tell a story that he really liked. Nothing to prove, just a passion project that developed as an offshoot of an even bigger passion project. And that means that, with Furiosa, Miller can take the time to explore the wasteland and the people in it, which I really enjoyed. There's more of every environment that Fury Road only got to mention in passing as the nonstop car chase flew by. We get to see more of how the wasteland societies actually work, and it all builds on what we learned from Fury Road. So yes, parts of the movie are slow. But I never got bored, and I still felt plenty of adrenaline during the action sequences.
Speaking of the action - the stunts are great, yet again. The camera work is dynamic and never confusing, and there are some great shots that really bring out the scope of the combat. There's also none of the obvious made-for-3D moments like in Fury Road. The vehicles look cool, and the action coordinators did a great job of making everything feel visceral. There's no hand-to-hand fight that's quite as intense as the fight between Hardy and Theron in Fury Road, but to be fair the actors in Furiosa didn't genuinely want to kill each other. The War Boys don't feel as genuinely crazy as they did in Fury Road, but the actors also probably didn't go through such an intense transformation as the stunt men did on the set of Fury Road. I think the only thing that was lacking in the action scenes was the score. There are some scenes at the beginning and end where the music really intensifies the action, but there are also plenty of fights where there's no music at all or just low, steady drumming, which I thought was underwhelming. Even though Tom Holkenborg composed both Fury Road and Furiosa, this movie's soundtrack is much more restrained than it's predecessor. And there's nothing even close to the brilliance of the Doof Warrior (the guy with the flaming guitar in Fury Road and my all-time favorite Mad Max character ever).
For the editing: I liked it, no major complaints. I liked the transitions and how they handled time-skips. It definitely feels more fluid than some of the abrupt changes in Fury Road.
On the acting and characters: like I said already, I think Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth did great in their respective roles. I think Dementus is a really interesting character: he's a trickster, and you can never really tell what his intentions are, thus living up to the name. He's constantly creating diversions, faking people out, and you can never really tell when he's being genuine. He constantly talks about wanting to create a better wasteland, one where the common people get more food, water, etc. He also has a tragic past, with a wife and kids that were taken from him by the wasteland, echoing the story of Max in the very first movie. But then he turns around and does terrible things and seems to only rule for his own benefit, so you never really know what to believe. Basically, he's a politician. As for the supporting cast: I liked Tom Burke as Imperator Jack, he also feels a lot like the classic Max Rockatansky and he made for a good companion to Furiosa; I think Lachy Hulme did a good job as Immortan Joe, not great, just good; the Bullet Farmer and People Eater didn't do very much, it would have been nice to see them do more than just stand around in the Citadel but I think Dementus and the other gang leaders made up for it; and I liked Young Furiosa and the History Man. Rictus could also have been a little more menacing, he's a momentary antagonist during Young Furiosas time in the Citadel, but again he mostly just stands around with the People Eater and Bullet Farmer. His brother, Scrotus, is a new character, and interestingly doesn't die during the events of Furiosa, so something must happen to him before Fury Road.
I can't think of anything more to say so I'll just wrap it up by saying again that you shouldn't expect to see Fury Road 2 when you watch Furiosa. As long as you keep that in mind, you should be in for a good time when you watch this movie, in my opinion it's definitely worth seeing in theaters.
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