Operatic in scope and biblical in its savagery, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is a profound achievement that seems destined to disappoint. It’s the most eagerly awaited movie of Australian trauma physician-turned-filmmaker George Miller’s 45-year second career, and to replicate the kind of glow-up that distinguished 1985’s Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome from its rightly revered, generation-later follow-up, 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road, would be plainly impossible. 

Wisely, Miller doesn’t try. Having realized his ambition to make Fury Road an emotionally resonant feature-length chase without a moment of exposition to slow (or dumb) it down, he’s adopted a more episodic structure for the 148-minute Furiosa. It’s both the longest entry in the five-film Mad Max-iad (though this one keeps the Max to a min.) and the first to play out over an interval of years instead of days. And, just as Charlize Theron’s Furiosa stole the movie away from Tom Hardy’s Max Rockatansky in Fury Road, the title character gets robbed in the prequel. Here, second-billed Chris Hemsworth—having the time of his life behind a prosthetic proboscis and a cranked-to-11 spin on his native Aussie accent—fairly rides away with the movie. 

It’s traditional, of course, for the the hero/ine of this franchise in particular and the western/samurai/postapocalyptic genres in general to be taciturn and stoic, while the villains get to be verbose and grandiose. That’s Hemsworth’s vibe as Dementus, a charismatic wasteland warlord who rides a three motorcycle-powered chariot like he’s in Ben-Hur, and whose goons kidnap Furiosa from her home, the fabled Green Place, when she’s just a child. In the first and simplest of the half-dozen masterfully staged set pieces with which Miller punctuates the film, Furiosa’s mom, played by Charlee Fraser, pursues these motorbike-riding raiders on horseback, determined to rescue her daughter and kill her abductors before they can reveal the location of the “place of abundance” where the Vuvalini, Furiosa’s people, attempt to preserve some semblance of civilization. 

Actor Alyla Browne (b. 2009) is fully persuasive as the preadolescent Furiosa; we’re a full hour into the film before Anya Taylor–Joy (b. 1996) makes her entrance as the adult version of the character. By this point, Furiosa, like so many Shakespearean heroines before her, is passing herself off as a man to avoid unwanted attention. (As in Fury Road, sexual violence is a major thematic element here, but it’s implied rather than explicitly shown—more evidence of how Miller has evolved since he made the first couple of these in the late ’70s and early ’80s.) In a chapter—there are individually titled chapters in this movie—called “The Stowaway to Nowhere,” we meet Furiosa in action, tethered to the underside of a “war rig,” like the one she’ll eventually drive, performing mid-battle repairs and repelling attackers. Only after the close of this 15-minute rolling combat sequence, wherein enemies attack the truck from paragliders, does Taylor-Joy speak.

There’s a more complex trigonometry of allegiances here than in prior entries. Miller spends a lot of time on the cycles of war and diplomacy between Dementus’ gang and that of Immortan Joe, the water-hoarding, Citadel-dwelling despot Furiosa rebelled against in Fury Road. (Lachy Hulme takes over the role from Hugh Keays–Byrne, who died in 2020.) This stuff isn’t boring, but it’s a shift away from the mythic quality that’s always been a strength of this series. In prior installments, Max was the only constant; the films even seemed to be told through the recollections of different historians of the no-longer-distant future, where literacy is a luxury and the oral tradition dominates. But Furiosa brings back all the key locations and most of the characters from Fury Road: Gas Town and the Bullet Farm are each the site of major sequences. There’s John Howard as The People Eater, one of Immortan Joe’s advisers, and Nathan Jones as Rictus Erectus, one of Immortan Joe’s sons. Josh Helman, who played a War Boy in Fury Road, returns in a different role, as one of Joe’s sons, Scrotus. Credit Miller and co-screenwriter Nick Lathouris (another Fury Road alum) for having a great ear for exotic character names, among their other skills.

When Furiosa at last has her opportunity to avenge her own abduction and the death of so many of her loved ones at the hands of Dementus, the scene satisfies not through the false catharsis of bloodletting, but through complexity. When Furiosa tells the man who stole her from her family and prematurely ended her childhood, “I want them back,” she’s aware of the impossibility. “I’ve got a fiendishly high pain threshold,” Dementus says, which sounds like a prerequisite for surviving even a day in this fallen world.

It’s an elegant denouement, and then Miller wobbles a bit in the final minute, binding the finale of this thrilling entry too tightly to the start of Fury Road. The end credits are even intercut with clips from the 2015 film, a clumsy postscript that retroactively drains Furiosa of some of its individuality. Fortunately, it’s got plenty to spare. Miller’s imagination, as illuminated by the many returning collaborators who won Oscars for Fury Road—costume designer Jenny Beavan, production designer Colin Gibson, editor (and Miller’s spouse) Margaret Sixel, and hair and makeup designer Lesley Vanderwalt—is a place of abundance.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (R, 148 minutes) opens at area theaters today.