If there’s any movie/film franchise that’s more relevant to the moment, it’s Mad Max. Or, in this case, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. Released almost exactly nine years after Mad Max: Fury Road, Furiosa serves as a prequel to the events in that film, detailing how its heroine (or anti-heroine, if you prefer) came to be in her current situation, searching endlessly for redemption. Even if most other people’s concern in The Wasteland is mere survival. As a History Man narrates, that’s all a person is reduced to when there’s nothing left and the social contract has been irrevocably broken. And yes, the usual soundbites commence the movie, giving viewers the indication that civilization collapsed due to, among other causes that are completely believable (especially at this juncture), war (both “general” and nuclear), ecocide and oil shortages.
Returning to New South Wales for filming (whereas Fury Road’s backdrop came courtesy of Namibia), just as it was for 1981’s Mad Max 2, director and Mad Max co-creator (along with Byron Kennedy, RIP) George Miller opens the Furiosa story with an overhead shot of a barely detectable green strip of land in the midst of an otherwise barren landscape. This, of course, is The Green Place that The Five Wives of Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) speak of so hopefully in Fury Road. When Max (Tom Hardy) asks Furiosa, “How do you know this place even exists?” she solemnly replies, “I was born there.” Max then rightly asks, “So why’d you leave?” It is in this next piece of dialogue that the premise for the prequel is set up as Furiosa states, “I didn’t. I was taken as a child. Stolen.”
So it is that we see how she was stolen and who stole her: a gaggle of goons from a gang known as the Horde of the Biker Warlord Dementus. Dementus (Chris Hemsworth) initially seems like a man who is more or at least as powerful as Immortan Joe, for the goons that happen upon The Green Place and snatch Furiosa (after we see her snatching a peach from a tree—in a moment that has decided “Eve in the Garden of Eden” overtones) are extremely eager to please him with this discovery. Not just of a geographical location that possesses “copious bounty,” but of a young girl who isn’t riddled with health issues from malnourishment. Furiosa (played at this age by Alyla Browne) endures the kidnapping with the aplomb and cool-headedness we’re used to seeing her with as an adult, trained from an early age, it appears, to expect such a scenario, even if she was sheltered by the idyllic cushion of The Green Place. Besides, she knows her mother, Mary Jo Bassa (Charlee Fraser), is quietly and doggedly pursuing her, picking off the members of Dementus’ gang that have stolen her until only one remains. That one, unfortunately, manages to get back to the “base camp” and tell Dementus about this place of “abundance” as Furiosa is paraded as being a product of that environment.
Hanging back to watch and wait from afar, Mary Jo knows that Furiosa will never give up the secret of where The Green Place is. She’s been conditioned far too well for that, knowing that to trust anyone outside of The Green Place, let alone this pack of war-mongering men, is the last thing that would be beneficial to her. No, instead, she bides her time, waiting for the moment when Mary Jo will appear to rescue her. When she does, Mary Jo makes the mistake of believing a misogynistic woman when she tells her she won’t tell a soul that Mary Jo has reclaimed Furiosa. Two seconds later, the woman is doing just that, alerting the proverbial media to Mary Jo and Furiosa’s escape, giving Dementus and his gang plenty of notice to catch up to them—which of course they do. Although Mary Jo tries to give Furiosa a fighting chance by telling her to take the motorbike and go off on her own to get back home, she can’t bring herself to leave her mother behind. Especially after she hears shots fired in the distance. Though her mother was the one shooting the gun, she ends up being captured and mounted, Jesus-style, to a tree, with Dementus burning her feet like she’s a witch.
When Dementus sees that Furiosa has come back to watch the “fun,” he promises her that he’ll let her mother live if she tells him where the place of abundance is. Furiosa says nothing (also likely aware that Dementus isn’t exactly the “man of his word” type and would probably kill Mary Jo regardless of her giving him the location of The Green Place). Forced, instead, to watch her mother’s torturous death. In the days that follow, Dementus’ History Man (George Shevtsov) advises Furiosa to make herself invaluable to Dementus rather than playing the sullen, bereaved part she’s fallen into. But Furiosa knows that by sheer virtue of not being a mutant, she’s less likely to be fucked with. And it’s true, Dementus sees her as something of a “special creature.” One he seems “affectionate” toward (or as affectionate as someone like him can be). If for no other reason than because he does know she’s liable to be “useful” to him somewhere down the line. And in a post-apocalyptic world, being useful is the name of the game more than ever.
As Furiosa, who has remained in a mute state ever since being captured, watches Dementus in diabolical, erratic action, she appears to be processing all the information she can glean in order to know how to proceed next. Calculating what the best move will be (like Elizabeth Harmon in The Queen’s Gambit—another Anya Taylor-Joy project). At one point in their odyssey, Dementus and his gang see red smoke shot in the sky by a flare gun. They approach the source to find one of Immortan Joe’s War Boys prattling on about The Citadel. When he speaks of it as a place with everything one could need, Dementus presumes it to be The Green Place that Furiosa hailed from. Thus, he gets the War Boy to take them to The Citadel, where he rolls in with big dick-swinging energy, assuming he can just take over the place by telling the maltreated masses that they have a choice—that they don’t have to follow an abusive leader and can choose him instead. He who insists he’ll give them as much food and water as they want. It’s a scene that feels familiar in terms of how political leaders bulldoze their way into power with promises of being “better” or “different” from a previous “ruler,” only to end up being more or equally cruel and incompetent.
But Dementus was very much overestimating his clout when he arbitrarily showed up on Immortan Joe’s turf, with The Citadel being the only so-called port in the storm of The Wasteland besides Gastown and The Bullet Farm. As such, there’s no way Immortan Joe would ever let it go—especially with so many War Boys willing to die in a fight to defend his reign over it (in many ways, they’re like Islamic extremist suicide bombers).
Taken aback by the counter-ambush against him and his crew, Dementus is totally unprepared when most of his gang is killed off. Unwilling to accept a powerless state, however, Dementus gathers a new gang of men together and hatches a plan to take over Gastown as leverage to negotiate with Immortan Joe for more rations. Allowed into The Citadel for these negotiations, Immortan Joe catches sight of Furiosa in the background of Dementus’ crew, demanding that she becomes part of their trade deal. So it is that Furiosa’s path is detached from Dementus’ (at least for a while). But that hardly means she’s free of nefarious men who are obsessed with her.
After being placed in Immortan Joe’s “special area” for wives, one of his sons, Rictus (Nathan Jones), becomes fascinated with her in a way that pretty much screams “pedophile.” As though anticipating a scuffle with him or some other creep that might try to do something to her, Furiosa shaves her head but refashions the hair back on it as a wig, of sorts. This way, when Rictus ends up pulling on her hair after demanding to know what the tattooed constellation on her arm means (it’s a map back to The Green Place), the whole thing comes right off and she’s able to run like hell into the night. As far as Rictus can tell once he manages to catch up to the place he saw her escape, Furiosa has “disappeared.” In reality, she’s merely clinging perilously to the bottom of a platform until she can scurry back up again when no one is around (granted, Miller never deals with actually showing how she managed to fully escape undetected).
A number of years pass (as the “wig” that has fallen on an ever-changing tree branch indicates) until Furiosa grows into a young woman (allowing Anya Taylor-Joy her time to shine). Only she’s posing as a War Boy so that she can not only learn how to tinker with and build one of the War Rigs, but as a means to plan her escape from The Citadel. Taking notice of the main commander of the War Boys, Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke, in his most commercial role yet since Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir), Furiosa clocks him as the one to watch. Or watch out for. After all, he’s clearly the sharpest tool in the shed, therefore the person most likely to catch on to her scheme. Which is to conceal a motorcycle and enough rations for her journey back to The Green Place on the War Rig for the next ride to Gastown. On the way, the rig is attacked (in the manner and style viewers grew accustomed to seeing nonstop throughout Fury Road) by Dementus’ band of followers, who manage to exterminate all the War Boys tasked with defending the rig. Jack and Furiosa, as the only survivors, are left to kill the remaining gang members. In the midst of the brutal battle, Furiosa’s true gender is revealed to Jack.
Despite how well the two have worked together to overcome the enemy, Furiosa still aims a gun at Jack and tells him to pull over. Alas, her gun is empty and Jack tosses her out of the vehicle. Left in the middle of nowhere (which is the crux of what The Wasteland is except for The Citadel), Furiosa resigns herself to walking. Just as she does, Jack returns to invite her to join him in rebuilding his battalion. This, of course, is a running theme throughout the Mad Max universe: rebuilding again and again, even though civilization—life—itself has broken down entirely. With that in mind, there comes a point when Dementus name-checks Darwin, and how showing weakness isn’t an option in a non-society such as this. Although the Darwinism element was always implied in the Mad Max movies, it’s never been so explicitly called out.
And yet, even in the face of survival being the sole concern—for there is little time to occupy one’s mind with anything else—Furiosa can’t help finding love in a hopeless place. For it’s apparent that her dynamic with Jack is one ever-shifting toward a romantic rather than platonic love (the latter variety seeming to be what she has with Max in Fury Road). With this part of Furiosa’s backstory offered up by Miller, it becomes mildly heartening to know that, no matter how bad or apocalyptic life gets, this innate human craving can’t be stamped out any more than the innate need to survive. Alas, it becomes immediately disheartening to know that anyone who finds out about such love—such hope—in a hopeless place will become enraged by another person having it as a result of their own jealousy. Their own desire to keep watching the world burn. Dementus is just one such exemplar of that asshole trope.
And so, when he catches and captures Jack and Furiosa in their bid to escape together back to The Green Place, he tells them that they “break his heart” for being foolish enough to have such hope. It is his job, he feels, to remind them that “there is no hope” in this world. That hate is what drives everything in conditions such as these. Thus, Dementus orders Jack’s slow, cruel murder while Furiosa is bound to the back of a rig, unable to do anything to prevent losing the only man she’ll ever love (like that). Dementus obviously has no idea who he’s dealing with though, and that he’s only fueling the flames of her burning for revenge.
In the final act, when she finally gets him alone and defenseless, Furiosa screams at Dementus to give her mother back, to give her childhood back (cue Taylor Swift singing, “Give me back my girlhood/It was mine first”). Dementus is unmoved, saying that his own family and childhood were ripped from him as well (this is where a shrink would spout that “hurt people hurt people”). He also goads her attempt at finding “peace” or “redemption” by killing him, reminding her that even after he’s dead, it still won’t bring Jack or her mother back. He tells her she’ll never find peace, and that the two of them are the same: dead already. Ghosts haunting The Wasteland in search of more and more pain just so they can feel something. Could that be, in the end, why Furiosa succumbed to the emotional dangers of falling in love? Knowing full well that it could only conclude in tragedy. That it was endlessly naive to imagine returning to The Green Place at all, let alone with Jack.
If that’s the case, and an inherent sense of masochism was the reason Furiosa allowed herself to become vulnerable enough to love someone, well, then at least viewers can take comfort in knowing that our post-apocalyptic selves aren’t so different from our apocalyptic ones.
