The high-octane power of mythmaking
Now that the drama has died down somewhat, a closer look at Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. The film doesn’t exactly tear up the rulebook on origin stories, but George Miller does give the Fury Road prequel its own voice, its own tempo and its own musicality
Towards the end of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Anya Taylor-Joy’s eponymous avenging angel finally catches up to her target: Chris Hemsworth’s warlord Dementus. For two hours and change, we have been riding shotgun with Furiosa on a most hellish journey across the Wasteland. Dementus burns her mother alive before her eyes, treats her like a trophy, sells her into slavery, and kills her closest and only ally. We have feasted on enough revenge sagas to expect sweet catharsis in the form of a bloody climax. What we are served instead is an anticlimactic dialogue about the psychology of revenge, about being driven by hate versus hope, about the courage it takes to hold on to your humanity in a broken world. To begin with, Furiosa toys with Dementus, not content with granting him the mercy of a quick death. Next, she beats him into submission, demanding he remember her and all that he stole from her. A beaten but bumptious Dementus refuses to give her the satisfaction. He taunts her to kill him, while reminding her that whatever punishment she chooses can “never balance the scales of their suffering.” By killing him, she would become him, he argues. Death is an outcome he welcomes. To consider her choices in silence without interference, she “takes away his voice,” likely by chopping off his tongue.
Four endings play out based on the different theories told and retold around the Wasteland. The least imaginative of the lot believe Dementus’s fate was sealed with a single bullet to the back of the head. Fans of poetic justice propose Furiosa either chained Dementus to the back of her car and dragged him to death (as he did to her sole ally) or crucified and roasted him (as he did to her mother). The History Man (George Shevtsov), our narrator and the Wasteland’s living document of a fading cultural memory, claims Furiosa herself whispered to him the truth: high in the Citadel is a garden where Dementus has become living soil for a peach tree. Furiosa took the seed her mother gave her before her death and planted it in his chest, dooming him to spend the rest of his days sustaining the tree on his life force and bearing fruit for a woman robbed of her childhood and innocence. Growing out of the groin of a vessel of hate is a vessel of hope forever out of his grasp. A story of revenge germinates a story of redemption when Furiosa shares a peach from the tree with Immortan Joe’s wives before sneaking them onto the War Rig, setting in motion the extended car chase of Mad Max: Fury Road, milestone scenes from which are intercut with the end credits.
When Dementus realises his number is up, he dares Furiosa, “Do ya have it in ya to make it epic?” It’s a dare George Miller too accepts with glee. When the Australian filmmaker is firing on all cylinders, “making it epic” is all but a cast-iron certainty. Furiosa takes a monomyth and puts the pedal to the metal. No seat belt, no air bag, no ABS. Just high on chrome. In the wasteland of 21st century blockbusters paralysed by shoddy CGI and overediting, the new Mad Max movies have emerged as an oasis. Closing in on 80, Miller has lost none of his sharp instincts for character-driven action. Fury Road remains the high water-mark to which all vehicular action movies aspire. Nine years after its release, its demolition derbies of post-apocalyptic hot rods continue to whip us up in giddy excitement.
If hot rod action is the engine of the franchise, high-speed pursuits are the piston thrusting up and down to generate a rattling forward momentum. If emotions are the fuel driving its story forward, single-minded fury is the oil lubricating all the moving parts. Miller got the show on the road with the Mel Gibson-led trilogy (1979–85). Max Rockatansky is a patrolman keeping the highways safe from biker gangs, perverts and criminals of all stripes in an Australia where resource shortages have led to the collapse of the government — and society with it. When a run-in with a gang led by the deranged Toecutter (Hugh Keays-Byrne) ends in the deaths of his wife and son, the trauma pushes Max over the edge. He spends the next three films (1981’s The Road Warrior, 1985’s Beyond Thunderdome and 2015’s Fury Road) as a lone drifter wandering the blighted outback. Every once in a while, he runs into tiny pockets of civilisation in life-or-death situations that require him to rise to heroism.
Radio transmissions at the start of Fury Road and Furiosa speak of oil wars, water wars, thermonuclear wars, pestilence and pandemics. The Wasteland is a manifestation of all our eco-anxieties piled on top of each other. Warlords have come to power by amassing precious resources like fuel, water, food and bullets. People are nothing but merchandise. Fertile women are enslaved as breeders. Lactating women are hooked up to milking machines like dairy cattle. Young men dying from radiation sickness are indoctrinated to be proud cannon fodder. Prisoners are repurposed as “blood bags.” Warlords stay in power by inventing self-aggrandizing myths and titles. Lord Humungus (Kjell Nilsson) is announced in Mad Max 2 as “the Ayatollah of Rock and Rolla!” In Fury Road, the blinded Bullet Farmer (Richard Carter) charges forth, guns akimbo, screaming “I am the scales of justice, conductor of the choir of death!” Dementus asks to be addressed as “Beloved ruler of Bikerdom” and “Lord Guardian of Gastown.” Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme and Hugh Keays-Byrne) carries himself like an incarnation of a mighty old Norse God. The Citadel is one big brainwashed cult built around devotion to his supposed greatness. Joe and his sons Scrotus (Josh Helman) and Rictus Erectus (Nathan Jones) run a kingdom powered by an army of War Boys, the chalk-white half-lives who worship the V8 engine. Since birth, these radiation-sick soldiers have been taught that their self-sacrifice will be rewarded with a place in Valhalla. Their belief in the Immortan Joe’s words is so unfaltering they dive headlong into a suicidal fantasy that the world beyond will greet them as heroes. If they are doomed to die in this hellscape, they wish to at least die in a way that people will remember them. As the War Boy Nux (Nicholas Hoult) declares in Fury Road, he will be “McFeasting with the heroes of all time.”
The inhabitants of the Wasteland speak in a distinct vernacular tongue. Some familiarity with consumer culture has made Immortan Joe quite the rebranding master. Oil is sold as “guzzoline.” Water, he calls “Aqua-Cola.” The breast milk harvested for human consumption is “mother’s milk.” Exposition within the universe is referred to as “word burgers,” junk food for thought with a lot of calories for consumption but not a whole lot of nutrients for reflection. When Furiosa cries as she watches her mother being tortured, Dementus demands the History Man a “word burger” for tears. Dementus makes his entrance in a pure white cloak, sporting long hair and a flowing beard, like a post-apocalyptic messiah figure. When a flare gun shoots a cloud of red smoke and he stretches his arms wide, the soiled image proclaims that he is more the anti-Christ. He rides around in a chariot powered by two bikes, like a deranged legion commander. The truth is he is a man who thirsts for power but doesn’t know what to do with it once he has it. His spineless inadequacy is reaffirmed by how quickly he loses control of Gastown. When its aggrieved inhabitants rise up against him, he destroys the facility and invades the Bullet Farm. The teddy bear he keeps strapped around his belt is a memento of his dead children. It is the same reason why he takes a liking to a young Furiosa. Dementus is the distorted mirror image of Max, if Max had used his grief as an excuse to terrorise the world. Ignorance, vindictiveness and masculine rage make for a terrifying combination in a salted earth where most of humanity has reduced itself to its basest instincts. Names like Dementus, Scabrous Scrotus and Rictus Erectus tell us exactly what Miller thinks of these pathetic men playing dress-up as warlords.
Furiosa isn’t Fury Road karaoke. Miller gives the prequel its own voice, its own tempo, its own musicality. Expansive where Fury Road was contained, freewheeling where Fury Road was streamlined, Furiosa deepens the Wasteland mythology. If Fury Road races along from set piece to set piece like it had been injected with a concentrated dose of high-octane, Furiosa zooms along in a different gear, taking detours to fresh emotional and narrative terrain. Furiosa’s stoic determination in Fury Road gets a richer emotional core. Her warrior spirit is given a bruised depth. Each battle sharpens her skills and hardens her resourcefulness. Each scar tells a story of survival. Her body is a map of what she has endured. While playing the same character, Taylor-Joy and Browne don’t mimic each other or simply trace the outline marked by Charlize Theron. The two capture the peaks and valleys of an emotional journey within their own instrument, inhabiting an identity not yet fully formed, warped by trauma and lifted by courage. The most essential connective tissue in their performances is their eyes. The key to the films’ continuity lies in the unbending gaze of the three Furiosas.
The weight of myth and legacy doesn’t burden a film revving at full-throttle. Furiosa is structured like a novel split into five chapters, each marked by a dramatic title card (The Pole of Inaccessibility, Lessons from the Wasteland, The Stowaway, Homeward, and Beyond Vengeance). Chapter 1 begins in Biblical fashion: Furiosa is introduced as a child (Alyla Browne) plucking a peach from a branch when she spots fiendish interlopers killing a horse for its meat. Her home, the Green Place, is a hidden oasis in the Wasteland. To ensure its existence remains a secret, a young Furiosa sabotages the interlopers’ bikes. Only she gets caught. The interlopers kidnap her to be presented as proof of “a place of abundance” to their leader Dementus. Her mother Mary (Charlee Fraser) gives chase but the rescue mission ends in tragedy. Torn from her mother and their isolationist haven, Furiosa is adopted by Dementus. When his conquest of Citadel fails before it even begins, he sells her to Immortan Joe in exchange for control over Gastown. Agency feels like a fantasy for women traded like currency between the hands of deranged men. Refusing to become another one of Joe’s wives, she cuts her hair and disguises herself as a mute boy. Masculinizing and muffling herself are survival tactics so she can hide in plain sight in the Citadel. As she grows up, she picks up all the skills of a mechanic to work her way up the ranks and all the battle prowess to enact her revenge upon Dementus. Once she is taken under the wing of Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke) in his War Rig, she grabs the chance to trace her path home.
For a prequel, Furiosa isn’t overly hemmed in. The details are alive in every isolated pocket of its rationalized universe. The Organic Mechanic (Angus Sampson), we learn, didn’t start off as the personal doctor of Immortan Joe and his wives. He was Dementus’s personal chef before he was traded along with Furiosa to Joe during peace negotiations. Backstories are weaved around the most salient details and developments of Fury Road, filling in the gaps of why Furiosa is so desperate to return to the Green Place and what transpired before Joe’s most trusted Imperator went rogue and smuggled out his enslaved wives. We know Furiosa shaves her head. We know she paints her brow with engine grease come battle time. We know she has got a bionic forearm. But Miller doesn’t treat these features as mere footnotes. When a young Furiosa is held captive by Dementus, she inks a series of constellations on her left forearm so she never forgets her way back home. Years later, she decides to escape with Jack. But Dementus will not let them get away so easily. When a chase ensues, the same arm gets crushed between her car and the wheels of a monster truck in pursuit. The escape is cut short. If that weren’t bad enough, Dementus strings her up by the crushed arm to make her watch Jack being dragged to death. While he settles down to take in the view himself, she tears her forearm off to free herself and retreats to the Citadel. The torn appendage left behind and dangling in its chains suggest she will come back for Dementus with a renewed vengeance. As for her homecoming, she will bide her time until she gets another chance.
Reports of on-set tensions and filming delays might have suggested Miller’s vision had been compromised. But neither Fury Road nor Furiosa show the scars we come to expect with troubled productions. Once again, Miller masterfully uses action to disguise exposition. The centrepiece (which reportedly took 78 days to shoot) finds Furiosa stowing away on the newly built War Rig during a supply run. When the convoy is attacked by the Octoboss (Goran D Kleut) and his gang of raiders, Furiosa has no choice but to join the fight. The combination of bikers, parachutists and paragliders present a tactical challenge on all levels. Vertical or horizontal, spears or cables, whatever obstacle comes her way, she navigates with a steely poise, repelling each attack with the help of Jack and the “kama-crazy” Warboys, all reacting to each other in a dance of combat. The over-cranked camera keeps track of the moment-to-moment strategizing till the finishing move: the deployment of the Bommy Knocker, a giant drill with spiked maces. The busyness feeds into the film’s high energy but the action never loses its legibility in the chaos of gunfire, crashes and explosions.
This sequence serves as a bridge between Furiosa lone-wolfing it and learning to trust others again. It establishes her credentials as a capable warrior, earns the admiration of Jack and secures the confidence of Immortan Joe. It is the first showcase of what Furiosa can do with a War Rig, even if it doesn’t match some of the heavy-metal pageantry of Fury Road. There is no doof warrior playing a guitar that belches fire with each riff. There are no polecats performing Cirque du Soleil stunts amidst the carnage. There are no cannibalistic Buzzards attacking with their spiked jalopies. But there is still a poetic grace to the action, to the bodies in motion, to the teamwork it takes to execute a combat sequence. The manic camera movement resembles sinuous brushstrokes transforming a dying world into a living canvas. Tom Holkenborg’s score keeps the action engaging, soaring along with all the choreographic beats of bodies and machines across Miller’s symphony of violence. Later, an ambush at the Bullet Farm tests Furiosa and Jack’s commitment to each other. Jack doesn’t blink in his attempt to save Furiosa. Unwilling to leave him behind, she returns the favour. The challenge certifies Furiosa’s badass bona fides as a sharpshooter. Fury Road presented a fine exhibition of her long-range shooting skills when the War Rig gets bogged in the mud. As the Bullet Farmer gains on our escaping party, Max shoots twice into the distance and misses. With only one bullet remaining, he hands Furiosa the rifle. She takes a deep breath, uses his shoulder to steady her shot and hits the bulls-eye — another sequence of trust and commitment conveyed via action.
That Furiosa is such a crack shot and so determined as a warrior should come as no shock. The opening chapter tells us exactly whom she picked up her combat skills from: her mother Mary. When the young Furiosa is whisked away by raiders, Mary sets off on a rescue mission, first on horseback, then on the motorbike of one of the raiders she shoots down. As the remaining raiders race through a series of dunes, she picks off two more, sneaks in to their camp and rescues her daughter. Even though Dementus and his goons track the mother and daughter down, Mary doesn’t go down without swinging. A young Furiosa too shows fight throughout, chewing through the fuel line, stealing a knife, and mortally wounding the last of her captors. Outnumbered and cornered, Mary gives Furiosa a peach seed so she never forgets where she comes from. The seed, a token of home and freedom she aspires for, stays with her wherever she goes. At first, she keeps it hidden in a knot of her hair. When she cuts off her hair, she saves it in her mouth.
Since inception, the Mad Max franchise has been steeped in hot rod culture. But the allegorical heft of Fury Road and Furiosa comes from the elements of Norse and Greek mythology that animate the films. Fury Road sees Furiosa make the long perilous journey home, only to find home isn’t how she remembered it — just as a certain king of Ithaca finds out in The Odyssey. Furiosa transposes The Illiad’s chronicle of the cycle of retributive violence from a war-poisoned Anatolia to a war-poisoned Australia. The Homeric parallels extend to scenes of horror. The body of Praetorian Jack is dragged around for hours behind a motorcycle — a humiliation tactic inspired by Achilles who dragged Hector’s body by pinning his feet to the back of his chariot. Dementus pulls a tactic right out of the Odysseus playbook to overpower the Gastown by having some of his men hide below a War Rig. It could be said the film itself operates like a Trojan horse, as Miller smuggles an allegory about hope springing from hate inside the chassis of a kinetic vengeance saga.
Accounts of how the saga ends may vary from the literal to the metaphorical. But the thrust remains the same. Oral tradition in the Wasteland, like everywhere else throughout human history, leaves room for ambiguity, for questions, for discussion. Leaving that room is what recasts Furiosa’s coming-of-age journey into a heroic origin story, a myth etched in the memory of the teller and passed down to the retellers. Furiosa opens with a shot of the History Man posing the question, “As the world falls around us, how must we brave its cruelties?”, signalling to us that what we are about to see is his version of events, a folk tale doubling as a moral allegory. The question strikes as a follow-up to another one attributed to The First History Man at the end of Fury Road: “Where must we go… we who wander this Wasteland in search of our better selves?”
Without anyone to teach them about the days gone by, the Lost Tribe (in Beyond Thunderdome) invent their own mythology out of what little they remember, what they have been told and what they have found. The figure of the history man, an in-universe collector and teacher of lost knowledge, is thus responsible for the continuity of human memory in the Wasteland. The knowledge is tattooed all over the body of the historian. For Immortan Joe, Miss Giddy (Jennifer Hagan) acts as a mentor to his wives in Fury Road. It is through her lessons that the wives learn the idea of personhood, that they are “not things” to be chained and owned. For Dementus, the History Man serves the role of a guide about traditions of the past. It is through his “word burgers” that the old world isn’t entirely forgotten. It is through his memories that myths are made. It is through his recounting that Furiosa’s legend is canonized and passed down through generations.
Prahlad Srihari is a film and pop culture writer. He lives in Bangalore.