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Volvo: Safety Beyond the Star RatingsFuriosa: A Mad Max Saga Brings Back High-Octane Thrills
The long-awaited prequel to the neo-classic Mad Max: Fury Road is nearly upon us. Here’s what you can expect from Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.
Truly, Madly Yours
Arriving this May, director George Miller returns to the post-apocalyptic world of Mad Max with Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. Given 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road is regarded by many as one of the greatest action movies of the century, hopes are high that the new film will be equally epic. As the title indicates, the new movie tells the origin story of the Furiosa character (played now by Anya Taylor-Joy), setting things roughly 15 years before the events of Fury Road.
The trailer for Furiosa is chockablock with intriguing plot details, charismatic new characters, new environs (The Green Place!), and of course a horde of gnarly new post-apocalyptic vehicles.
Warner Brother’s synopsis of the film: “As the world fell, young Furiosa is snatched from the Green Place of Many Mothers and falls into the hands of a great Biker Horde led by the Warlord Dementus. Sweeping through the Wasteland, they come across the Citadel presided over by The Immortan Joe. While the two Tyrants war for dominance, Furiosa must survive many trials as she puts together the means to find her way home.”
Furiosa’s Odyssey
Between the trailer and the film synopsis, the overall plot of Furiosa starts to come into focus. First, the opening to the trailer begins with a voice over (Furiosa’s mother?) asking her to promise to come home. On screen we see a shot of Furiosa staggering across the wasteland, directly echoing the first shot of Fury Road. The expositional text that comes next lays out the basic arc: “45 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.” That last line situates Furiosa alongside Homer’s original long journey home, a literal Greek epic.
From here, we encounter characters new and old. Foremost is the film’s new villain, the warlord Dementus, played by Chris Hemsworth with a prosthetic nose (obviously we can’t have our post-apocalyptic warlords looking that dreamy). Dementus gets a good deal of screen time in the trailer from being eye-to-eye with a younger version of Immortan Joe to riding into battle on a motorcycle drawn chariot.
We get only minor glimpses of the younger version of Immortan Joe, the lead antagonist from Fury Road. A lot of speculation has swirled around his character. The comic, also written by Miller, makes clear that Furiosa was once one of Joe’s wives, sometime before being his Imperator and protector of his harem. The only shot we get of actor Tom Burke is one with him and Furiosa, forehead-to-forehead in a cave. It is possible that part of Furiosa will be her relationship with Joe, his fall/rise as the warlord Immortan Joe, and the struggle for the Citadel between him and Dementus.
The trailer also offers a good deal of information on Furiosa’s character arc. We see a very young Furiosa in the clutches of Dementus, then saved by a motorcycle riding, skull helmeted woman (who’s this?). There’s a clear jump forward in the timeline as we see a grown Furiosa donning her black war paint, fighting alongside Joe’s War Boys, and then later, with her prosthetic/mechanical arm and finally staring down Dementus. On his knees, Dementus stares back up at her, saying, “The question is: do you have it in you to make it epic?”
New Furiosa Vehicles
It wouldn’t be a Mad Max movie without the radical, post-apocalyptic vehicles, and it’s clear from the trailer that Furiosa will not disappoint.
Dementus’ Six-Wheeler and Moto-Chariot
The new Dementus character gets us not one but two new vehicles. The first is a six-wheeled Mack tow truck on monster truck wheels with loads of speakers, tow cabling and winches, and the most imposing set of bull bars you’ll ever see, apparently borrowed from the claw half of an excavator. We see Dementus riding atop this vehicle in what seems to be an arena with oil pump jacks (so perhaps located in Gas Town).
Dementus gets a second vehicle that’s even more outrageous, a chariot pulled by a trio of motorcycles. We see Dementus riding in his chariot, a red Thor-like cape flowing behind him, along with his war party all heading straight for what looks like Gas Town.
Immortan Joe’s War Rig
The new movie will likely fill in a lot more on Immortan Joe’s background. One thing is clear, Joe’s own War Rig is one chrom-tastic machine. There’s chrome literally all over the War Rig, from the cab and excavator arms to the double tankers (gas and water?). In the back, we see four large mace heads hanging from chains suspended from a giant mining drill. The tankers are embossed with a mural depicting a heroic Immortan Joe. We get a lot of action shots of the War Rig: on the road and under attack, Furiosa stowing away on the underside, and finally, we get a shot up from the depths of what might be the Bullet Farm’s pit mine where we see the War Rig’s two tankers teetering on the brink, suspended by a crane.
Fan Bike
Another new vehicle is part of Dementus’ legion, the Fan Bike. On the assault of Gas Town, we see a rider wearing a horned helmet on a motorcycle with a large fan in the rear. We see the same vehicle in flight later on as Furiosa hit it with a harpoon. The vehicle is another callback, this time to the gyrocopter in The Road Warrior.
Furiosa’s New Rides
Furiosa also gets new vehicles in the movie. In one cut we see here outrace another vehicle, narrowly evading a falling portcullis. This is a modified S-Series Chrysler Valiant, originally built in Australia for 1962 and ’63. We also catch a glimpse of Furiosa in full war paint plummeting down the side of a sand dune in a very chopped coupe. Though the body hints at a classic deuce coupe, the turbos out the back window indicate a rear engine placement, meanwhile the front has what looks like harpoon guns (?) on the hood and a kangaroo catcher on the grille. We can’t wait to see more of this and all the other new, gnarly vehicles in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.
