Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (Blu-ray Review)
When we were first introduced to Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road, she gave our boy Max a run for his money. She could drive and fight and had so much to live for. She was an incredible hero in a world full of hoarders and crazies. She never gave up and she held her own running from Immortan Joe and his goons. But we didn’t know much about her, except that she came from The Green Place. Now, we have Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga to give us more insight into how she became the hero of the last film. Origin stories are either important building blocks to a cinematic universe, or they get things to crumbling. So where does Furiosa land in the Mad Max world? Find out below, and if you’re ready to ride on through Furiosa’s life after reading, please click the cover art below to buy your own copy of Furiosa!
Film: 
As the world fell, young Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy) is snatched from the Green Place of Many Mothers and falls into the hands of a great Biker Horde led by the Warlord Dementus (Chris Hemsworth). Sweeping through the Wasteland, they come across the Citadel presided over by The Immortan Joe. While the two Tyrants war for dominance, Furiosa must survive many trials as she puts together the means to find her way home.
When Mad Max arrived in 1979, few would’ve known that the character of Max Rockatanski would become such an icon. A super low budget Australian import by the then unknown George Miller, the film and the character became legendary when Mel Gibson (then the titular Max), returned for The Road Warrior. Where Mad Max was rooted in more reality, The Road Warrior was a little more down-and-dirty and with that came some great thrills. The film was non-stop, fast, fun and never boring. We got Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome a few years later, and even if some disliked it, it too has some incredible moments that make it essential watching. Then, Fury Road captivated fans of the older films and a whole new audience. This was beautifully done commercial filmmaking. It was spectacle, action and an actual storyline too. We hadn’t seen a film so strange and yet so entertaining in a while, and film fans were impressed.
Furiosa as a character was something that felt fresh. She fit in with Ripley from Alien or Laurie from Halloween, where she just had to survive to keep living and helping people and not letting anyone stop her from going on in her mission. As we begin this film, we see Furiosa in The Green Place. As her mother is brutalized and killed, she is taken by Dementous, a warlord leader. He wants to claim her as his own, but we know Immortan Joe will have none of that. As Furiosa gets older we see her through the hardships of growing up in Gastown. She learns to drive, she learns to fight and she learns to shoot. She is a survivor through and through. Nothing and no one will keep Furiosa from attaining what she needs to keep her survival imminent. As Furiosa grows older, she begins to go on the Fury Road with crews, keeping things in line with the gas trucks hauling guzzoline, and she will stop at nothing to get her cargo where it needs to be. There of course are hiccups and setbacks and still Furiosa fights on.
Anyone familiar with the Mad Max universe knows that the films have a strangeness to them. The characters are all in some way odd. They dress like they’re going to a leather bar in the 70’s, and most of them are demented some sort of way. They’ve let their existence in a wasteland get to them and they’ve all got something wrong with them mentally. It’s been this way in all the films and there seems to be a quirkiness that keeps these characters interesting and sometimes even funny. Action is the name of the game in sequences of chase along the deserts and Furiosa wastes little time in starting the story enough to let a chase scene come into play. The desolate desertscapes are a playground for big rigs, motorcycles and all sorts of mixed-up vehicles to lay rubber in. Once Furiosa teams with Praetorean Jack, she is able to fend for herself fully, but then he attempts to make her escape the life he leads. Not realizing Furiosa can do more continuing to drive on the War Rig with him, Jack makes a mistake trying to make her leave, giving us a moment of love story in with all the madness.
Front and center in Furiosa is George Miller’s frenetic style. The film utilizes similar tactics from Fury Roadwith some sped-up photography and this time more CGI than ever before. The last film was touted for its use of practical effects, with this film feeling slightly more artificial than the last. The overall look is still quite striking, with night time scenes taking on a deep blue color and deserts in daytime being an endless sea of beige. Character development isn’t always first priority, with Chris Hemsworth’s Dementous being a nemesis for Immortan Joe, presenting as a main character and then becoming somewhat less prominent as the runtime goes on. Anya Taylor-Joy is the younger quieter version of Furiosa, with Charlize Theron using her subtleties to make her more dominant. This can be seen as a necessity since Joy plays Furiosa much younger. Others, such as Immortan Joe and his unfortunately named sons Scrotus and Rictus Erectus are also only seen a few times. We had more of them in Fury Road, and so we are able to use our memories of them to flesh them out. For new viewers these character rifts could be confusing.
This is the first Mad Max saga film that wants to take its time a bit more than the others. Action scenes are fantastic, even when the more prominent special effects take on a cartoonish look. The actors all disappear with makeup, wigs and costuming bringing you further into the desolate world of the Australian desert. And of course, the driving Tom Holkenborg score brings it all together. While this isn’t as raucous and innovative as Mad Max: Fury Road, it is nice to see Furiosa getting her time to shine. The movie benefits from the quietness of Anya Taylor-Joy, and her smarts to join the bad guys and still do something good. Just as Furiosa does, we want to reach The Green Place, and see the good of the world return from there.
Overall, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga only adds more depth to the stories we’ve seen before. We witness another survivor in a world full of people desperate to stay living. Furiosa and Max have similar wills, and this is why we root for them. This entry into the series feels more labored than the others but is certainly not without its own merits. Action sequences are still exhilarating and as we inch towards the final sequences, we are treated to some excellent moments of tension too. After finishing the film, I do wonder if we will see another Mad Max universe film or not? While I hope so, I won’t hold my breath, and I’ll be happy having this film to come back to and hopefully discover even more with other viewings.
Video:
Encoding: MPEG-4/AVC
Resolution: HD (1080p)
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1
Layers: BD-50
Clarity/Detail: Filmed digitally at 8K, Furiosa debuts on Blu-ray looking excellent overall. With the filming formatted for IMAX and other large formats one can only imagine how this looked in a theater. At home and relegated to the HD Blu-ray, you can only know that the uptick will be vast in comparison to the UHD Blu-ray. What we have here is still impressive, with detail being sharp as an HD disc can get, and colors looking nice despite the film only being presented in SDR.
Depth: Depth of field looks sharp with characters and vehicles whizzing by from scene to scene, with no loss of depth as objects move around the screen.
Black Levels: Dark scenes aren’t in abundance in Furiosa, and thankfully the black levels are dark and lovely, with no crush.
Color Reproduction: HDR will sweeten the color palette for collectors of the 4K disc, and in SDR, the colors still look great, with pops of green and a nighttime scene looking like deep blue. The grease Furiosa masks her eyes with looks like it is tattooed on her head with it looking grey and great. Desert colors of brown, red and beige also come to play.
Flesh Tones: Even when made up, characters look like they’ve been suffering in the desert forever. The flesh tones are organic to the source material.
Noise/Artifacts: None
Audio:
Audio Format(s): English Dolby Atmos, English Dolby Digital 5.1, French and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1, English Descriptive Audio
Subtitles: English SDH, Español, French
Dynamics: On par with Dune Part Two for one of the finest Atmos mixes coming home on disc this year, Furiosabatters the home theater with spectacular movement throughout all surrounds and heights, punishing bass and beautifully placed dialogue.
Height: Desert echos and megaphones give a cavernous sound to some of the dialogue, going up and around us from above. Buzzing sounds, motors and crashes come into the heights too!
Low-Frequency Extension: I am a bass fan and this film delivers. Every chase, every crash, every explosion makes the sub go boom, and we love a good moment to make something go boom!!
Surround Sound Presentation: Moving fluidly like the height speakers, the surrounds play with nature sounds, crowd noise, chase noise and echoes also.
Dialogue Reproduction: Clean.
Extras:
Surprisingly, this Blu-ray edition of Furiosa omits special features that are available on the 4K edition. This release also doesn’t come with a slipcover but does come with a digital code.
- Highway to Valhalla: In Pursuit of Furiosa – Nearly an hour in length and very interesting, this feature dives into the making of the film.
- Furiosa: Stowaway to Nowhere – 11 minutes devoted to the character of Furiosa.
Summary:
I was hoping I would be able to view Furiosa in 4K. If you’ve read my work before, you know my passion for the format. Here is hoping I get a chance to check it out with the release of the Black and Chrome edition of Furiosa as well as the 5-film set that is also due out soon. As it stands, this 1080p offering will do the job for those not in the 4K world yet, and the sound is the same across the Blu-ray formats so there’s no loss there. Furiosa is a welcome addition to the Mad Max movie family, and I do hope we get more stories from this desolate wasteland full of carnage and vehicle chases!
