Movies…with a little bit of obscure culture and sports mixed in
The second trailer for Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) came out on Tuesday and I immediately melted into my seat. Politely told the rest of the world to shut me out while I let George Miller’s RPM action hyper addictive drug drip seep into my drooling eyeballs.
“The origin story of renegade warrior Furiosa before her encounter and teamup with Mad Max.”
Director: George Miller
Writers: George Miller, Nick Lathouris
Starring: Anya-Taylor Joy, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Burke, Charlee Fraser, Angust Sampson, Nathan Jones, Alya Browne, Daniel Webber
Release Date: May 24, 2024
IMDB
Oh, we are back, we are SO BACK!
The second trailer for Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) came out on Tuesday, and I immediately melted into my seat. Politely told the rest of the world to shut me out while I let George Miller’s RPM action hyper addictive drug drip seep into my drooling eyeballs.
This second look at Furiosa offers much more context to the origin story that we will be witnessing.
In what is a very blatant but artfully done reference to the Garden of Eden, we see Furiosa plucking an apple for a tree. Immediately, we know we are in the Green Place. The more fertile land in the wasteland. The Vuvalini of Many Mothers resided there, and that is whom Furiosa descends from. The Many Mothers had to leave once the land became uninhabitable, but they tried to last as long as they could.
Perhaps a catalyst for their departure was Dementus, who is portrayed by Chris Hemsworth. But before we get to him, we’ve gotta take a look at how George Miller sets the scene for the inevitable confrontation that’s violently approaching quickly in the rear view window.
Furiosa takes the apple and her world turns from black & white to color. It must be nice as a child to see things as binary. Judging things only by good and bad. That bliss leaves everyone’s mind eventually, and once our hero’s world turns frighteningly vibrant once she pulls off the token fruit of knowledge off its tree.
I love how when Anya Taylor-Joy is muttering “my mother was magnificent”, we see her lining up an enemy in the sights of her gun. This is a callback to Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) when an older Furiosa returns home for the first time in a long time to find only a few hardened, deadly sharp-shooting ladies remaining.
It would appear that youthful Furiosa is taken by a soldier of Dementus, and when this beautifully bearded leader hears that she comes from a place of abundance … .the charming smile Chris Hemsworth is known for takes a maleficent turn. A shaman, or advisor or sorts, tells Dementus that this fruitful land where Furiosa is from is actually their destiny.
This is what we call a conflict of interest.
Words become secondary to the visuals for the second half of the trailer. We hear Furiosa’s magnificent mother talking to her daughter, begging her to promise to find her way home and protect the Green Place. There is a snapshot of an emotional goodbye followed by a young girl screaming towards the camera being dragged away.
Do we want to place bets on if we get Furiosa’s mom fervently defending her child from a dangerous scene? I would take those odds.
The last minute of this trailer hits the audience over the head with two things. The first is that Anya Taylor-Joy may never smile in this movie and she will be an old school animation-style TNT bomb waiting to go off. The young version of Furiosa appears to have perfected the art of the motorcycle skid stop, which makes sense seeing how the vehicle we see her mom driving earlier in the trailer is a motocross bike as well.
The second point is Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga appears to have a little bit more campiness and fun to it than its predecessor. I am not saying that George Miller is going to bring back Stallone style cheesiness, but it’s hard to look at Chris Hemsworth and not think of a classic over-the-top maniacal villain. In Mad Max: Fury Road, Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) was a blob of a man whose voice was his most powerful feature. Rewind to the setting of Furiosa and Dementus is flailing around like a mad-man while arching eye-brows and rolling in the chaos that’s ensuing.
The bit of the trailer where it appears like Furiosa is trying to snipe Dementus had me grinning from ear to ear. The shot grazes the building, we see Dementus giggle, and snap cut to him holding a rocket launcher firing back. Miller delivers the goods on the type of action humor that I personally like to see.
In this prequel we will meet a younger Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme) but it’s under an ultimatum from Furiosa: “If you find him, he’s mine.” We know that Furiosa is driving the war rig for Joe in Fury Road, so the question looms as to how she became employed by him in such a loyal way for so long.
Another classic question to ask is “What happened to Furiosa’s hair and arm?”
We get one answer with Furiosa picking up some brass knuckles, scissors and cutting her hair. A classic sign of character change. It is used often, but it would appear that Miller is leaning into some of the most popular story landmarks. The trailer begins with Furiosa taking a forbidden fruit. Dementus has an idea of manifest destiny, and the whole premise is about trying to return home. Miller is leaning into the simplicity of storytelling, only to blow us away with how he will visually blow us away.
“There will always be war. But to get home, Furiosa fought the world.“
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga will arrive in theaters on May 24, 2024.
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