Representation has been a key issue in Hollywood over recent years, stemming from the stereotypical roles that were often all that was available to many actors. In recent years, the addressing of this issue has seen great progress made in opening up to a much wider range of roles for women and non-white actors.
Yet parallel to this, Hollywood is also keen to draw upon its franchises from the 1970s and '80s that were established in a less representative age and, through the means of sequels, prequels and reboots, hope that nostalgia for these films of the past will ensure full movie theaters. The confluence of these two different streams of concerns has recently led to a flood of new films in which the franchise in question has been updated both literally and socially. Thus, the "Rocky" franchise has now begotten the "Creed" franchise centering on an African-American boxer, "Ghostbusters" has been remade with all-female leads, "Star Wars" has continued with a woman as the main character and the "Terminator" franchise has gone the furthest by making a Colombian woman its lead.
With "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga," the turn has come for greater representation in one of the traditionally most macho and all-male franchises – that of Mad Max. In terms of race, the latest installment in the franchise remains in the almost all-white world of the earlier movies – although mention must be made of the late great Tina Turner’s outstanding performance in Mad Max III – but in terms of gender, the lead in this film, as its title suggests, is female. It explores the back story of Imperator Furiosa, one of the two lead characters in the 2015 Mad Max spinoff "Mad Max: Fury Road."
Gender is not simply an issue in terms of casting the lead, however. It is also an issue within the film itself. The movie is set in a post-apocalyptic world, yet at the beginning, there is a clear echo of the Garden of Eden, as the child Furiosa, played by Ayla Browne, is snatched away by members of a biker gang from a small area of paradisiacal greenery into the harshness of the desert world after having been picking fruit. The story of the film is how she subsequently survives, both as a child and later as an adult, played by Anya Taylor-Joy, in this hostile environment amongst savage men and her attempt to get away and find her way back to the “place of abundance” of her childhood.
In the beginning, though, the community that inhabits this verdant area and to which she belongs is one in which there is certainly at least gender equality but which is perhaps a matriarchy. The situation of women in the desert world is quite different, though. There, they have a fate akin to that in "The Handmaid’s Tale" in that they are viewed as valuable products that propagate the species. In one settlement, the Citadel, the women are quite literally locked in their secluded chamber behind the door of a bank vault and subjected to a “three strikes and you’re out” system by which the women have three chances to give birth to physically healthy babies with them being held at fault if this does not occur, despite the radioactive environment in which they all live.
There is symbolism in this film, and the position of women, in general, is well-symbolized by the predilection the original ruler of Gas Town has for John William Waterhouse’s 1896 painting "Hylas and the Nymphs" in the small and large print he has of it. This painting, guaranteed to tickle many a male erotic fantasy, reflects the mindset of the desert patriarchies.
With women’s roles defined in this way in the desert world, the converse is that men are expected to be warriors. Although the focus of the film is on the resulting masculine conflict-filled desert world, albeit through Furiosa’s navigation within it, an implicit critique of this testosterone-saturated realm of aggression is made through the aforementioned contrasting place of greenery at the beginning of it.
As this film is set in a post-nuclear conflict world, it unsurprisingly has certain similarities to that found in The Road or The Book of Eli. Indeed, it might be expected to be even heavier in tone than these two films that are almost too tense to be watchable in that the direction taken by the protagonist in Furiosa is the inverse to them rather than managing to find refuge in a safe space in the end; she is wrenched out of one at the beginning. Yet, as with other films in the Mad Max franchise, there is a lightness in tone that makes this film far less dystopic-seeming than those others. In Furiosa, this is clearly deliberate on the part of the director, George Miller, due to his cinematographically showcasing the scenic beauty of the desert throughout the film. One scene in which it is set off with a silvery sheen in one particularly beautiful moonlit nightscape is breathtaking. It is also magnificently used as a backdrop to the action, as in one daytime scene in which Furiosa surmounts an enormous sand dune in her vehicle.
The tone is also kept somewhat light by certain comedic touches in the film. Particular credit should go to Furiosa’s main antagonist, Dementus. He is brilliantly portrayed by Chris Hemsworth as a manchild, symbolized by the teddy bear he carries. With such immaturity of character, he is particularly sensitive to his titles and his emotional instability breaks forth when he confronts Furiosa and her companion Praetorian Jack, telling them “You break my heart” and then infinitely adding “and it’s not fair.”
One particular joy to the film is its added sprinkling of a few literary echoes. These include the Trojan War and the "Iliad" with a ruse akin to that of the Trojan Horse used by Dementus’ men to get themselves into Gas Town, there is the wise old Nestor-like figure of the History Man who accompanies the impetuous Dementus, and the is the decoration of the trailer of the monster rig with embossed scenes that brings to mind the Shield of Achilles. Then there is Smeg, who resembles the Fool from William Shakespeare’s King Lear, and the Troglodytes seem drawn from the ones in Jorge Luis Borges’ brilliant short story “The Immortal.”
Yet, as befits an action film in which there is a copious amount of violence, it is particularly laden with reflections from the history of warfare from the strategic use of a narrow canyon by Furiosa’s mother to slaughter a number of Dementus’ men that resembles in miniature the Battle of Thermopylae to that of the Medieval Assassins of Hasan-i Sabbah by the ruler of the Citadel when one of his number commits suicide by throwing himself from up high to the earth when commanded to make a dramatic impression on outsiders.
This, in turn, reflects the film’s looking at the wider issue of war. The statement is made in it that “there always was, is, and will be war,” and as well as the echoes just mentioned above, concrete examples of conflicts throughout real history and into the history of the story are given. It is definitely a pleasure to hear the names of the ancient Middle Eastern peoples of the Elamites and Sumerians – the first example of war given – in an action film. Mention is made of other conflicts before reaching those of World War I and II. From here, fictional background wars take over, including World War III, which presumably destroyed global civilization up to the present conflict in the film – “The Forty Day Wasteland War.”
Yet despite such a long litany of organized violence, the pessimistic assertion that war will always be with humankind, and a Darwinisitic “survival of the fittest” symbolism of a lizard appearing out of the eyehole of a skull on the desert floor, which is in turn crushed by the tire of a motor vehicle, the film suggests that rather than the pessimistic view of human innateness for violence, it is instead caused by competition, especially when the peaceful aura of the green world is contrasted to that of the desert one with its scarce resources. Notably, the interior of the trailer of the monster rig is filled with cabbages, the same vegetables that we hardly register being carried to market in Türkiye in red-painted rickety trucks to be sold for a few lira a kilo are, due to their scarcity here, of such value that people are willing to risk their lives to take or protect them.
Such conditions throw up warlords and this type is put under the spotlight in the film, especially in the case of Dementus. How he has come to be in charge is clear, as he even tells his own people, “Big shots rule only because you choose to follow.” He is hardly an alpha male looking after his pack, though, for he is easily willing to sacrifice the few for the many. It is his charisma that keeps his followers in place, but his failings are made manifest when he actually takes over Gas Town and attempts to administrate it. He fails spectacularly, illustrating that warlords do not necessarily make good rulers.
Moreover, he refuses to take responsibility for the failures of his leadership. Although he is in charge as sole ruler, he avers that what has happened to Gas Town is not his fault but rather the fault of everyone. However, it does not work to be autocratic in success; it works only to be democratic in failure. As he cannot govern, Dementus seeks to create conflict and throws the desert world back into warfare.
This regression in the situation of Gas Town reflects a wider societal regression that has taken place since the end of civilization. The situation of human beings as time moves forward is interesting in the film, for it is strongly suggested that our supposed progress brings about a conflagration that causes the collapse of the civilization that underlies the film. Then, as humans adapt to this new, wilder existence, there is a clear regression back to an earlier type of human existence. There has been a regression in understanding, in that the stars are no longer recognized as distant suns but rather as paganistic deities, as when Furiosa’s mother seeks to bless her daughter with “the stars be with you.” There is a regression in terms of the exactness of time with a meeting set for “high noon,” meaning the sun is now used for timekeeping. Reading has once again become the preserve of specialists, and language itself has regressed with a flare, for instance, being called “sky blood.” Particularly graphically, there is a regression in terms of punishment – it is now a world in which the death penalty is prevalent, and that of the more savage pre-French Revolution type, with a quartering, albeit carried out by motorbikes and the dragging of a victim to death while being savaged by vicious dogs.
All of these negatives might seem to augur the death of hope. Indeed, at one point in the film, Dementus cries, “There is no hope. Not for them, not for you, certainly not for me!” Yet, there are positives to even the macho human world of the desert that the film joins with its spectacular visuals and a certain lightness of tone to prevent the whole work from blanketing its audience with a heavy dystopian aura. First and foremost, human beings continue to survive in this most hostile environment. How they have done so is revealed by Dementus when he avers that “when things go bonkers, you have to adapt.” It is through ingenuity and cooperation, albeit cooperation limited to a tribal group, that allows human beings to ameliorate and improve their situation. Indeed, it leads them to achieve in the film what is described as “stability born from a world of chaos” before Dementus blows everything up again due to his emotional instability.
Moreover, a hope-inspiring successful adaptation to survive is most manifest in the character of Furiosa herself. It may be thought that I am late in dealing with her, but this review reflects the film in that her adult version does not appear until a fair way through the film, whereas Dementus’ presence is there almost from the start. Furiosa is adaptive in that she learns what she needs to know about fighting tactics from the world around her, but she also possesses an ingenuity that is allied with the former, making her a formidable warrior. She strikes the right and delicate balance between becoming a toughened warrior in this forbidding world and retaining enough of the humanity derived from her mother and childhood to prevent her from completely stifling her emotional side. This balance is brilliantly depicted in the expressive face of Taylor-Joy. It should also be noted that while human decency is not overly evident in the film, it can be seen in how Jack treats Furiosa.
Of course, there are also some phenomenal action sequences – indeed, a film cannot belong to the Mad Max franchise without well-choreographed road conflict with strange-looking road war machines. All in all, this film is a joy to watch, even if its running time is a little on the excessive side and I highly recommend it.
As such, my view accords with the vast majority of critics who have been impressed by it. At the time of writing, it holds an enviable score of 90% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Yet, in terms of the general audience it has attracted, the news is gloomy. So far, it has seriously underperformed. It has been reported that it has been met with the worst opening day of the Memorial Day weekend in the U.S. for the last 30 years. In seeking a potential explanation for this, it is worth returning to the women-led films mentioned at the beginning of this review. The all-women "Ghostbusters" and the female-led "Terminator: Dark Fate" were also critically well-received, though they performed poorly at the box office. Hasty conclusions about women in the cinema cannot be drawn, though, when the phenomenal success of "Barbie" at the box office last year is remembered.
Moreover, when the highly successful Wonder Woman films are also called to mind, the problem cannot even be woman-led action films, especially as the new "Star Wars" films with a woman lead have also attracted large audiences. However, the original Star Wars movies also had a highly significant female warrior and the new ones have male warriors of a similar status, so perhaps we are led to conclude that action film franchises that were set up with dominant male leads face difficulties amongst audiences if female ones replace these exclusively leading characters. This leads to the open question as to whether this will dampen Hollywood’s ardor for change or whether it will continue to struggle like Furiosa herself for the representation she and films of her type deserve.
Review: 4¼ out of 5
