“Forty-five years after the collapse, a young Furiosa is taken from her family. She will devote the rest of her life to finding her way home. This is her odyssey.”

Drake’s rating: A full tank of guzzolene.

Drake’s review: There have been an increasing number of “re-imaginings” and sequels of late that draw upon well-known films from that fabled decade known as the ‘80s in an attempt to squeeze one last nickel from the intellectual property before those producers or actors or directors who were involved in the original’s success succumb to the ravages of time. And sure, if you want to watch the adventures of a once dynamic but now geriatric archaeologist or the four-peat of a once wise-ass, now retirement-aged cop revisiting Beverly Hills, then you’re certainly set for entertainment.

But, as the Exalted High Lord of Mutant Mayhem* recently wrote, “We need to let franchises die.” This is a virtual creative necessity to pave the way for new and original endeavors. After all, these franchises originated some forty years ago and their creative wells are running dry.

Think about it: Were the films of the 1930s and ‘40s still gasping for life four decades later? Did we have endless remakes and reboots of James Cagney gangster films or John Wayne Westerns? Of course not, and that’s a good thing. They went away and new genres and ideas took their place, and when those new ideas became stale, there was something to take their place as well. It’s the natural evolution of both creativity and audience demands.

And that brings us to George Miller. I could say Miller’s the exception to the rule, and that the quality of his work exempts him from the points I made above, but that’s a truckload of manure and you know and I both know it. The most important thing is, Miller knows it, too.

Now George Miller hit the ground running in 1979 when Mad Max roared into the theaters, and took off like Usain Bolt two years later when Mad Max 2/The Road Warrior redefined the action movie landscape. Despite a stumble with Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, Miller’s saga of a man coping in a future dominated by road gangs ravaging a deadly wasteland captured the imagination and propelled both director and star to international renown.

Thirty years later, Miller revisited the man and the post-apocalyptic world that he created and, once again, gifted audiences with a rip-roaring action film like no other with Fury Road. Kinetic and absorbing from beginning to end, Miller took his vision of a world torn apart by war and updated it, with climate change joining nuclear fallout in a joint destruction of civilization. And he updated the look of the post-apocalypse as well, with War Boys and thundersticks and a desperate chase across the desert that echoed that of Max Rockatansky’s big rig battle with the hordes of Lord Humungus without slavishly repeating it.

Miller also threw a gigantic wrench into his whole saga, by turning the solo adventures of Mad Max into an equal partnership with the enigmatic Furiosa. A hard-bitten woman from a society that prizes male domination, Furiosa’s story is the centerpiece of Mad Max: Fury Road, and it’s her drive and desires that force the narrative.

Even so, I was a bit skeptical when I heard that Miller was pushing forward with a prequel centered around Furiosa. We had learned quite a bit about her, in general at least, during the events of Fury Road, and a “Furiosa origin story” seemed like a less interesting prospect than a sequel about her adventures after displacing Immortan Joe.

Miller, of course, proved me wrong. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is an epic tale of the child, and then the teen, and then the young woman, who would grow up into the person who grabbed the post-apocalyptic status quo by the neck and strangled it to death with her mechanical arm.

Just a young girl at the film’s beginning, Furiosa is torn from her green and bountiful home and thrust into a world of crazed bikers and vicious warlords who trade her like a bag of wheat. But Furiosa, even a young Furiosa, is no plaything, and she lives with two goals in mind: To get revenge and to go home. And to do that she will have to learn and plot and become tougher and quicker than those around her. It’s a monumental task, to be sure, but Furiosa is both patient and persistent.

Which is good, as the movie takes place across a dozen or so years, and along the way develops a bit of the backstory behind Gas Town and the Bullet Farm, and the relationship of the two holdings with Immortan Joe’s Citadel.

It also introduces Dementus (Chris Hemsworth, Interceptor), a talkative villain who leads a horde of bikers and becomes the focus of Furiosa’s ire. Hemsworth is in fine form here, as a muscleman whose gift of gab exceeds his bench press numbers, but it has to be said that Anya Taylor-Joy makes the film, and the role of Furiosa, her own. With little dialogue to work with (Furiosa stays mute for much of the film in order to remain undiscovered by those around her), Taylor-Joy’s performance for a long stretch of the movie is limited to her body language and facial expressions, and the young actress makes the most of the opportunity. Silent but always watching, Furiosa’s eyes catch everything. And when the War Rig fires up for the first time, those eyes light up with more than mere interest, as Furiosa has finally found her means of escape.

Despite the fact that, yes, franchises should end, it has to be said that George Miller has once again returned to the film series that made him famous and hit another home run. And that’s because Miller doesn’t rest on his laurels, expecting audiences to show up just because the name “Mad Max” is in the title**. A veritable font of creativity, he instead opens up his world to new characters and new ideas and fills the screen with new adventures. You can see the bones of Miller’s earlier efforts here, but they don’t supplant his current work. Instead, they form a structure that he builds upon, yielding thick layers of subtext and narrative to serve as the foundation for Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. This film, alongside Mad Max: Fury Road, is a masterclass in examining just how a franchise can be extended and continued without relying on simple audience nostalgia.

And of course, it’s simply a kick-ass film.

*Justin. I get a bonus Mutant check whenever I mention his full title.

**I’m a bit ambivalent about the Mad Max name being included in the film’s title. I can see the studio justification for doing so, but this is a Furiosa movie from beginning to end.

Intermission!

• Nope! Not a peep from me! You all deserve to see this one spoiler-free.