Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is, unsurprisingly, one of our most anticipated films of the year. George Miller’s prequel to the modern classic Mad Max Fury Road, the film sees Anya Taylor-Joy taking over for Charlize Theron in the title role as we dive into two and a half hours of the character’s backstory. Most viewers will be wondering if Furiosa is better than Fury Road, or what the point of even watching this movie is since it’s a prequel and the outcome is known.

When they first revealed the first trailer for Furiosa, I had two immediate reactions: excitement for more Mad Max action and concern that this prequel would just be “more Fury Road”. I love Fury Road, but I didn’t want George Miller to make something derivative of his work. Having seen Furiosa, I can say with great enthusiasm that Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is nothing like Fury Road in terms of style and scope. Sure, it shares characters and visual aesthetics, but this movie is its own beast. Clocking in at two and a half hours, this movie is an epic in every sense of the word. Grand in scope and vision, Miller uses Furiosa as his avatar to chronicle over a decade of Wasteland history over five chapters.

Furiosa actually opens not with Anya Taylor Joy, but with Alyla Browne as a younger version of the titular lead, living in the Green Place. We quickly get thrown into events referenced in Fury Road, her abduction from her home and her people. Like Taylor Joy, Browne gives a subtle and focused performance, with George Miller making the most of these actors’ very expressive eyes. Furiosa is damn near mute in this movie, but we’re never lost on her motivations or her emotional state of being and that’s a huge testament to both the actors playing Furiosa and to Miller.

But it’s Furiosa’s captor that demands our attention. Chris Hemsworth co-stars in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga as Dementus, a sadistic motorcycle gang leader. Dementus is perhaps Hemsworth’s best role to date, with the character being menacing, evil, vile, charismatic, unhinged, ruthless, flamboyant, and hypnotic; sometimes all at once. Hemsworth dominates the screen every moment he’s on it with sheer bravado. Miller opts to hide Hemsworth behind a huge, mangy beard and a prosthetic nose and while this choice may have seemed silly in the trailers, it’s anything but in the film as Hemsworth disappears into the role. Dementus first sees Furiosa as nothing more than his captive and a potential compass to the Green Place, but he ends up viewing the child as more of a surrogate daughter and protege, but he’s completely aloof to Furiosa’s emotional state due to the character being mute since the day she was taken.

But Dementus wants to be more than a ringleader, he has ambitions of being a warlord and that sets him on a violent collision with Fury Road’s Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme, replacing the late Hugh Keays-Byrne), leader of the Citadel and the War Boys. And while the film may be called Furiosa, this is really an odyssey of the Wasteland and how one woman rose during this conflict.

Furiosa sees the Mad Max franchise return to Australia after filming Fury Road in Namibia. You wouldn’t think something like variations of a desert would have an effect on a film, but it does. Furiosa feels tangibly different than its predecessor thanks to this location shoot, with the dust appearing more reddish than the orange sand of the previous film and more dunes and mountains dotting the neverending horizon.

Furiosa is a tour de force in both costume and production design. The visual aesthetic, especially in the first two chapters where we focus on Dementus quite a bit, evoked the visual style of The Road Warrior. Lots of spikes, leather and improvisation in the characters’ costumes and the vehicles they drive. This is definitely a biker movie, so if you like low riders and things that go vroom, buckle up. The vehicle design in this movie is off the rails, with so much imagination and craft on display, it’s honestly wildly entertaining just seeing these creations in motion. I loved looking for the little details, how older everyday objects got repurposed for the Wasteland’s needs.

Junkie XL, credited as Tom Holkenborg, returns to do the score but unlike Fury Road, offers a far more subtle and subdued soundtrack. At times, Furiosa feels like a house of horrors or oddities and the score seemingly reflects this. The score was pulsing, more tense and deliberate. My co-host on the Film & Spirits podcast, Fred, mentioned the score reminded him of the Sicario soundtrack at times and he’s absolutely right. Again, I’m glad it’s not “more of the same” and very much its own thing.

So of course, everyone is going to be wondering: is the action better than Fury Road? Of course it’s not, and that’s not a bad thing; hear me out. Fury Road set the bar so high that it’s pretty much unreachable. I think the most important thing to know here is that Furiosa isn’t trying to be Fury Road. The choreography and the cinematography both feel different than its predecessor and Furiosa makes sure that the film doesn’t venture into the absurd in an attempt to “one up” Fury Road. It’s still crazy entertaining and the movie fires on all cylinders, especially the sequence featuring the War Rig with Tom Burke’s Praetorian Jack behind the wheel as he and the War Boys fight off invaders from both the land and sky. The CGI is a bit more noticeable in Furiosa relative to its predecessor and there’s certainly a lot more of it by the nature of some of the action sequences, such as the fourth chapter set piece. But thankfully, there’s nothing janky or immersion-breaking, which was a concern for many, myself included, after seeing the first trailer.

I mentioned that this movie feels like an odyssey and that’s true in more than just the scope. While Fury Road tackled themes of feminism and patriarchy, Furiosa explores humanity’s thirst for conquest and violence. The movie also opts to flesh out the mythology and lore of the Wasteland, which really feels like the third lead in the movie as opposed to just being the setting. I found it utterly captivating how Miller expanded the history of this Australian Wasteland through the perspective of the film’s two leads and I couldn’t help but think that this was essentially a Greek tragedy but with V8s. Also, if you like the Mad Max video game I think you’ll like this as there’s a few winks for fans here. And even though this is a prequel, the journey still felt warranted and satisfying and I never asked myself what the point of the movie is, I wanted to know what happened next at all times. The movie also segues very nicely into Fury Road, creating a great double-viewing opportunity.

If there’s one area where Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga does stumble a bit is pacing. This is a meaty movie and I definitely started to notice the runtime come the fourth chapter. It never drags to a crawl, but I was aware that this movie was getting long and think trimming ten minutes would’ve resulted in a tighter film.

I think if you go into Furiousa expecting Fury Road 2, then you may be left wanting. I went into the cinema excited because George Miller made another Mad Max movie, but I was also a bit concerned. Thankfully, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga isn’t doing the same things over again and actually feels more like an older Mad Max film in many respects while also doing its own thing. It’s elevated by the performances of its two leads, especially Hemsworth, and the film is a huge win in the production and costume design departments. I left the movie really utterly satisfied. I really hope George Miller returns to the Wasteland in due time because these movies are just so unique and entertaining and above all, well crafted. Go and witness this.