FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA (2024)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological*                                                                                                                                   There's no mystery in the story of FURIOSA more profound than that of its failure at the box office. Its predecessor FURY ROAD enjoyed strong ticket sales even though there had not been a Mad Max film in theaters for the past 25 years, so even though it took director/co-scripter George Miller almost ten years of red tape to get FURIOSA funded, that amount of time doesn't seem an insuperable barrier to success.                                                                                

The inevitable explanation, for some viewers, was that Miller erred by making his next project a "woman-led film." There is of course no guarantee that the fifth "World of Max" film would have succeeded had it starred either the character of Mad Max or some other male hero, and particularly not if Miller simply had no such stories to tell. In general, the only thing one can say about adventure-movies is that often those starring male performers (even if allied to starring female protagonists) TEND to sell better than those purely focused upon heroines. But since SOME movies focused on heroines do succeed, the rational conclusion would be that SOMETIMES heroine-movies can appeal to large audiences. And I make this conclusion in part because I don't think Miller, however sincere he was in his desire to give Furiosa an impressive origin-story, managed anything beyond the most basic tropes of a story.                           

    Much of FURY ROAD's appeal was hero Max's eventual attachment to the cause of Furiosa: that of liberating imprisoned female sex-slaves from the harem of the repulsive tyrant Immortan Joe. As played by Charlize Theron, Furiosa made a major impression with her grit and determination to spirit the innocent women away to Furiosa's "promised land," even if she and Max are forced to change that plan late in the film. This is such a dynamic myth that it doesn't matter that much of the action involves driving back and forth through the Australian desert from one isolated human compound to another. In FURIOSA, we get the same back-and-forth action, but since this time Furiosa is much younger (played first by a child-actor and then by almost-twenty Anna Taylor-Joy), she's forced to shuttle between the compounds of two desert-tyrants, the earlier-seen Immortan Joe and new arrival Dementus (Chris Hemsworth). Since the FURY ROAD continuity establishes that Furiosa must be present in Joe's fortress in her later life, the prequel can only offer satisfaction by making Dementus the slayer of Furiosa's mother, so that the movie is fundamentally a revenge-tale.                                   

  The big narrative problem for FURIOSA, and the reason I think it didn't pay off, is that this time out, Miller's forced to focus on the subcultures of the two tyrants, with the flamboyant, almost Shakespearean Dementus getting much more attention than the rather flat malevolence of Joe. I think Miller may have meant Dementus to incarnate the penchant of males to exhibit more violent and domineering tendencies than are readily apparent in females. However, even in the conclusion where Furiosa gets her vengeance, he doesn't succeed in making Furiosa the incarnation of femaleness, She certainly comes closer to some such status than the toxic feminism seen in the Marvel films. But in the end, Miller's reach simply exceeded his grasp.