Anya Taylor-Joy steps into Charlize Theron’s boots as the younger Furiosa, replicating the stoicism that Theron brought to the character. There has already been some mentioning on social media of the lack of dialogue the character has, and it is true, Taylor-Joy does not have a lot of lines here. Much of the character is played through her eyes and Taylor-Joy delivers what is needed. Chris Hemsworth seems to be having fun, and maybe a bit too much dun at times, as the lead villain of the piece, revealing at not having to play the virtuous superhero Thor as he has been for the last decade or so over in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Miller fills out the rest of his cast with his usual great selection of post-apocalypse bikers, thugs and muscled weirdos.
Miller has made himself a tough act to follow, when it comes to mounting new action scenes in the wake of Fury Road. And there are moments, especially during a long sequence in the middle of the film involving an attack on an armored eighteen-wheeler that Furiosa helps defend against that comes close to matching the energy and inventiveness of that other previous film. But the film does not seem to be interested in being the same kind of non-stop thrill-ride that Fury Road was. This is more a campfire story, told years after the events, treating Furiosa as a figure of legend more so than anything else.
Unfortunately, Furiosa falls prey to the biggest danger a prequel story can face – a lack of stakes for its main character. Since we have seen her in Fury Road, set a few years after this film takes place, we know that there is no danger of certain things happening to her. She certainly won’t die. In fact, because we meet her in Fury Road with a prosthetic arm, we know that seeing how she looses her flesh and blood appendage is about the worst danger she will be in, but that it will be survivable. And with no sense of real danger for the character, it is hard to invest in her journey. And frankly, the most interesting arc her character will go through is the one we have already seen in Fury Road.
Normally, the way around this would be to create some new characters interesting enough to serve as companions for Furiosa and to give the audience, and her, someone to emotionally invest in. And Miller tries to do that with Tom Burke’s Praetorian Jack character. Unfortunately, he is not in the film long enough outside of the aforementioned extended action set piece for Miller to really develop any kind of relationship between the two to engage the audience.
