Do you have what it takes to make it epic? Well, we certainly try, at least! We sing the praises of this latest instalment in George Miller’s Mad Max Saga by delving into everything that we enjoyed about this bombastic and layered action film. From the acting, the special effects, the creative names, the incredible soundtrack, the story, characters and more, we also take time to appreciate how it fits perfectly in with it’s sequel film Fury Road (which came out nine (!!) years ago. By the finish, we gave our ratings for this film, but also each Mad Max entry.
This episode is not to be missed!
* Spoilers for all Mad Max movies, including Furiosa, are contained within. *
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)
directed by: George Miller
starring: Anya Taylor-Joy – Chris Hemsworth – Tom Burke – Alyla Browne – Lachy Hulme
genres: action – adventure – science-fiction
runtime: 149min
Transcript (via Apple)
*not 100% accurate
Hi there, welcome back to The Reel Film Chronicles podcast.
As always, I’m Nathan.
And I’m Brian.
And in this week’s very special episode, we’re going to be taking a look at a little film called Furiosa.
A Mad Max Saga.
Get the full title in there, Nathan.
Come on.
How do you feel about adding the full title like the Mad Max Saga?
Is that just there for like the marketing of the film?
Like, do you really need that?
I think it’s there for the same reason they put Knives Out Mystery after Glass Onion.
I think it’s for maybe audience members who may not be…
Maybe they’re a bit more casual, might not be following everything, just to understand that, oh, this is part of the Mad Max universe.
So for those of us in the know, it’s not useful.
And that’s why the subtitle, you can choose to leave it in.
It’s a choose your own adventure kind of thing, right?
But like, who watched Fury Road and doesn’t remember the character of Furiosa?
It would immediately jump at an opportunity to see a full-length feature film starring this character and her antics.
I don’t know, like, us 20 years ago, just going to see every movie we could in the theater, I guess?
I don’t know.
So before we get started on the film, we got to issue our standard spoiler alert, where we’re not going to hold back on spoilers throughout the discussion.
So again, if you haven’t seen the movie, go in and check it out.
And this is a movie that, you know, it’s probably not in theaters by the time we publish this, but it’s not doing so hot at the box office.
But everyone should go support this movie.
You can at least pre-order the 4K UHD of this movie to your local retailer and support the film, because this movie was a blast to watch.
And you should check it out.
And then come back and listen to our podcast about it, where we’re going to talk about this and much of the other Mad Max movies, I think.
I mean, I haven’t seen the original three in quite a while, but Fury Road has been a regular watch maybe every couple of years.
Since it came out 2015, it felt a lot sooner, or a lot more recent than that.
I was like, it can’t have been nine years already, can it?
It really, yeah.
I mean, these years are slipping by.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s brutal.
Mad Max, I mean, obviously the first film, 1979 with Mel Gibson, George Miller is directing.
I mean, it kind of ticks the world by storm.
I was vaguely aware, I mean vaguely, I was aware of the Mad Max movie when I was growing up.
I never watched it until I think it was maybe 2012.
I checked it out for the first time.
Oh, really?
Then I watched the other two, which, what were they called?
Beyond Thunderdome and just like Mad Max, the…
Well, Road Warrior.
Road Warrior is the second one.
Yes, and then Beyond Thunderdome was the third one.
Are you a resident Mad Max expert here?
Like, have you been watching these movies your whole life?
Yeah, I think I’ve mentioned this anecdote on the podcast before.
We’re during summer vacation.
My mom would take us into town.
We’d go to the library downstairs.
Me and my three siblings would each rent or borrow the library.
Stack of VHS tapes for that week to keep us out of my mom’s hair, really.
And like, yeah, among those movies, Mad Max, the Road Warrior, Beyond Thunderdome were among regular rotations.
So I grew.
I literally did grow up watching these movies.
There are movies that it’s always so weird.
Like your parents will say, like, don’t watch these movies.
Got too much violence.
Or like this one, you know, it’s like adult content.
But then for some movies, they’ll make an exception if they really like it.
And I think with the Mad Max movies, they were just classic, classic action movies, even though they were more, I don’t know, they’d be related, would they have been rated R?
I don’t know.
But I remember watching them pretty, pretty young age.
And then rewatching them like that library where I grew up was not super big.
So we’d end up written the same movies.
Got a limited selection.
Quite a lot.
The first one I will say as a kid, I didn’t really love as much.
It’s a little very, very different in tone because it’s almost, it’s happening like as the apocalypse is happening.
Yeah.
It’s a little bit lower budgets.
And so like as a kid growing up, it was like Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome was where it was at.
And now as an adult going back and watching them years later is like, okay, I appreciate all the movies a lot more.
But the original Mad Max, I appreciate a lot more as well.
And it’s really interesting to go back and see kind of the mythos such as it is, even though like George Miller himself is not obviously not interested in continuity in any way, shape or form, he just keeps doing stuff that looks cool.
And it’s more about the Mad Max, the world of Mad Max almost like it’s being told as a myth in the wasteland of like this wandering stranger who pops in and out of our lives.
And you don’t know what’s fact or fiction.
I really appreciate that.
But there is a bit of a through line in terms of Mad Max anyway.
But anyway, that’s my spiel.
Yeah, I love Mad Max, love the films a bit more growing up.
So I’ll answer any questions that the audience may have.
It’s kind of interesting.
I mean, we do have to talk about that continuity, the world, the lore about the build up.
Because I think it gets more difficult, and especially in today’s landscape of movie universes and stuff that tie into all these other properties or entries in the franchise.
And George Miller, like you said, has gone on record.
It’s pretty loose connections between the movie.
But that doesn’t stop us from looking at it, right?
And I remember some things go around here like, all right, so the Mad Max in Fury Road is possibly a different Max than the original Road Warrior Max.
And it’s like there’s a little scene of, I think, was like a little trinket that Max gave to this kid in Beyond Thunderdome or something.
And then that trinket shows up in Fury Road he’s holding later.
So you kind of say, well, this is that kid grown up.
And then other stuff is coming out.
Like I heard recently that he was injured at his leg and he retains that leg limp through Fury Road.
He’s still wearing this leg brace, which is not explained in Fury Road.
But it’s like you can piece back together.
It’s like, well, this is actually the same Max.
And even has like the same last name.
What is it?
Max Kroketensky.
Yeah.
And it was just like, even at the very, because I rewatched Fury Road again last night, of course.
And at the opening credits, like there’s his full name.
So it’s like, I guess this is the same Max.
But at the end of the day, I don’t think George Miller really cares.
And I don’t think we really care that much either.
And it’s like, I’m not invested enough in the original trilogy to like really get on board.
It seems like we’re building a little more cohesive world with Fury Road, Furiosa, and supposedly has planned another Mad Max movie or two.
One, which would be parallel to Furiosa, would be like another prequel where Max, like the year leading up to Max being in Fury Road, I think he probably has outlined some plans to do more Mad Max movies down the road sort of like in a future date.
But that’s all hanging on the precipice of a poor box office reception for this movie.
Yeah, it’s interesting.
People have been harping on the poor box office reception of Furiosa.
But really, it’s in the context of the opening weekend.
It was like one of the lowest opening weekends for movies historically.
So it wasn’t just Furiosa.
It was a bunch of movies at the time that didn’t do well.
It could be a variety of factors.
So I don’t know.
I’m not hanging.
I don’t know.
I don’t usually follow the box office numbers that much.
Because people try to draw direct correlations between, oh, you got a low box office, therefore it’s terrible.
Look at the original Fury Road.
The original Fury Road is the fourth in the series.
Look at Fury Road.
It barely broke even at the box office, even though it got rave reviews and people were praising it.
So it’s just, I don’t know, man.
Fury Road almost doubled its budget for what it’s worth.
About $380 million worldwide on a $180 million budget.
Right, but that doesn’t take into account all the marketing, right?
Typically, you double the original budget of the movie for marketing, essentially, in general.
So like, with all the marketing on there, it’s like, it’s really, it’s not a huge…
As it stands right now, Furyosa, I mean, it’s only been released for like, was it two or three weeks now?
$168 million budget, and it’s made about $120 million worldwide.
Which, there’s been larger box office bombs, but I’m hoping because I think his quote is that if there’s enough interest in like, good reception of Furyosa, that there would be more.
And I’m not sure if reception refers to that box office or if it refers to like, the critic audience, you know, approval ratings, right?
Because obviously, people are loving this movie.
Spoiler alert for later on, when we play the guessing game there.
The ratings are high, like across the board.
Yeah, I don’t know.
Like Furyosa, it’s kind of weird because this is the first movie.
It feels like it’s like a companion piece.
It’s the first really Mad Max movie or movie in the Mad Max universe that feels like it’s cared about continuity at all.
And that’s only because it’s a prequel to a specific movie.
And even then, there’s like, there’s characters in there that weren’t in Fury Road that I think people was like, oh, I expected them to die at the end of this movie and they were still around.
So like there’s still story, hinting at story between them.
So really, it doesn’t, I don’t think George Miller cares more about continuity.
I think this is more just like, it’s almost like it feels like he’s telling a continuation of the Fury Road story.
So it feels like, like you, I went home and watched, I just watched the movie yesterday and I went home and watched Fury Road again.
And it really feels like almost one long extended epic movie almost.
Yes.
Oh, definitely.
From what I’ve read in terms of the continuity and whatnot, is that for Fury Road, he was developing that screenplay of that story for about 15 years, right?
And during that process, he created and fully fleshed out the story of the Furyosa movie and the Mad Max character side by side.
And he, there’s one bit of trivia, I don’t know how accurate it is, where he wanted to do Fury Road and Furyosa, film them back to back, but it was too ambitious.
So he had all the story beforehand, and that’s where Charlize Theron is basing her acting off of is that, like this unproduced, which is now produced, movie, the screenplay of Furyosa, and then presumably Tom Hardy would have done the same thing with his little prequel film, which is kind of neat to have that level of care put into, you know, not just like one, like it’s a slice, like Fury Road is like over 48 hours time, right?
It’s like, what have these characters been doing before?
Have they been getting an opportunity to actually showcase what they’ve been, you know, that story is pretty neat.
Yeah, it’s a first.
It’s really interesting where George Miller is really taking a different approach to his, this world that he’s created, his post-apocalyptic wasteland.
And yeah, Furiosa is different in a lot of ways.
It’s the first, you know, Mad Max movie that’s like, that doesn’t have Mad Max in it.
Well, spoiler alert, he shows up randomly for a scene, just like a little cameo near the end.
But yeah, it’s the first like in the world of Mad Max, but not about, but not focused on Max himself.
It’s the first like prequel, direct prequel to one of the existing films.
So it’s the first one that actually carries kind of more, a little bit more about continuity.
But yeah, it’s like, I wonder if his plans or he, as his vision grew, was like, did he envision, here’s another character that Mad Max interacts with and, you know, like tell their story and Mad Max’s story, almost like companion pieces.
And that’s how he wants to tell the story kind of going through, like here’s Max’s point of view and here’s this main character’s point of view.
And it’s like, that’s an interesting kind of storytelling dynamic to have those, you know, side by side.
That’d be interesting to see if he goes for, I know, like, I think the dude’s like 80 or something now.
So like, I don’t want to, dude probably wants to retire at some point, right?
Like he, I don’t want to put too much on his shoulders here for more Mad Max content.
I’ll be grateful if we do get some more from Mr.
Miller himself, but I don’t think he owes us anymore.
I think he’s given us, you know, five great movies now.
Like, I don’t think, you know, like I’d be happy if this is all we got, but I’m grateful for more.
But I just don’t know.
I don’t know how realistic it is.
Yeah.
George Miller, born in 1945, based on some other directors still being active into their 90s and 80s here.
I think we, I mean, hold in hope for more because he seems to really know what’s going on with these movies.
And it’s shocking to me.
I mean, there’s quite a period of time from Beyond Thunderdome to Fury Road.
And even when you’re walking into Fury Road, you’re like, okay, he’s still directing this?
Like, what, really?
Like, come on.
And then you watch the movie, you’re just blown away.
And then the same thing happens here.
It’s like, okay, we’re doing a prequel?
Really a prequel to Fury Road?
And when you watch it, you’re like, holy crow, that was something else.
Yeah, like, that’s the thing too, like, walking into it, what were your initial thoughts when you heard about Furyosa and when you saw the marketing leading up to it?
Were you stoked to see this?
Were you, did you have some misgivings?
Like, what were your, what was your initial kind of thoughts around this?
My expectations were way too high.
Furyosa, I mean, the character, she was really a centerpiece of Fury Road.
And seeing that Charlize was not coming back to reprise the role and that it was going to be a prequel kind of like soured me a little bit because she did such an awesome job and I was hoping for more of that character and like her portrayal of that.
So I went in with a bit of trepidation, but also a ton of expectation because Fury Road just blew me away so much.
And I’m thinking George Miller, he’s back at it, right?
And the trailers looked phenomenal.
I was just like, this is more, this is going to be even bigger.
It’s going to be even more epic.
And I was super excited to the point where I couldn’t help be a tad disappointed walking out of the theater on that first view.
And it was like, okay, it has to draw back.
Like when you walk out, you’re like, was that better or worse than Fury Road?
And for me, it was like, well, this didn’t have the same impact.
But it’s a very different set of circumstances.
Like Fury Road felt like it came out of nowhere, right?
Like it’s just like was the action movie halfway through a decade of when action movies are dominated by comic book films, and then we got something like this.
So I think it’s a little bit, I have a little bit of trepidation on accepting it, but I’m really looking forward to watching it more.
And I think I’m accepting it even more so now.
What were your thoughts on it like that?
What were your expectations going in and walking out of that theater yesterday?
Man, when I first heard just the concept, I was not particularly stoked about a prequel to Fury Road.
I was like, I don’t know, man, like, what are you talking about?
George, what are you talking about?
I don’t know.
But then I saw the trailers and the trailers got me super pumped.
I was like, okay, okay.
I was like, okay.
It drew me back into the world.
It’s the world of Mad Max, something that I’ve grew up loving.
And I was like, okay, the trailers are cut together really well, really cool lines.
You see, like, you know, the actors in there, given it 110%.
And I like the trailer sold me and I was getting pumped.
And I went to the theater yesterday.
I was reading a couple comments online, no spoilers, people just saying, don’t go in expecting another Fury Road.
It’s a different kind of movie.
The movie has a different pace.
And it’s trying to do something different.
It’s still going to be an action movie.
And so maybe I had my expectations a bit more tempered.
I was still a little bit hesitant.
I was like, it’s still a prequel to a great movie.
Doesn’t have Charlize Theron in it.
Anya Taylor-Joy is great.
She was great in this movie.
She’s a great actor all around.
Charlize Theron is Charlize Theron.
She’s iconic as Furiosa in Fury Road.
But I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed Furiosa.
There were great action set pieces, but it wasn’t at the same pace as Fury Road, obviously.
It didn’t have the same…
Fury Road was like a chase movie, and this was a revenge movie, so it was set up very differently in terms of structure.
Yeah, I had a blast.
And then George Miller, all the world building, it didn’t feel like he was…
It didn’t feel like some movies, like the new Ghostbusters movies that feel like they’re really beholden to the lore with a capital L.
It’s like, oh, this has so much significance.
It’s like, no, man, let’s just go to Gastown and blow some shit up.
It’s like expanding.
We didn’t go into the Gastown before.
We’re in Gastown now or we’re in the bullet farm.
It’s like, what’s the politics of the bullet farm?
Who cares?
We’re just going to have a big fight here.
So it’s like it’s building, it’s doing world building, but it’s not beholden to that lore.
It’s like, oh, this is super important.
There’s one bullet, so there’s one object is super important.
It’s like, no, no, we’re going to have a good time here.
It’ll be a good revenge flick.
Without a doubt.
I was pleasantly surprised.
Yeah, that’s a really good point of being beholden to the lore because that’s what we’ve been subjected to.
And I feel like every episode I bring up the Marvel Cinematic Universe and comic book movies.
And it’s like it’s trained us to pay attention to every little detail.
And there are fans and super fans.
It has to mean something.
Everything has to mean something.
Just as you said there, it was like, no, here’s a movie that’s directly connected to another one before it.
And it’s not going to, you know, the binds are not necessarily going to be there perfectly.
Don’t read into every little detail on screen too much.
Where do they get the resources, metallurgy to have the embossed panel on that war rig?
It’s like, who cares?
It looks cool.
The thing on the back, the spinning, was it the Tommy Knockers or whatever they called them?
Tommy Knockers?
Who cares if that would work in real life?
It just looks cool, man.
Like, yeah, throw some spike balls and twirl them around the back of the rigs.
Like, who cares?
It’s cool.
Who cares about her friend?
Her friend there, Mad, not Mad Max, there, Mad Jack.
Mad Jack.
He looks exactly like Mad Max.
And I was like, who cares, man?
I don’t care.
I’m having a good time, man.
At first, when I saw Jack, I was just like, oh, my goodness.
Is this like a class of…
Because I’m sitting there playing these video games.
I’m like, is this a class of people in the world who are like the road warriors?
Is this guy just driving from them for a bit?
Is he also a road warrior?
And it’s like your mind just starts going forward through all the little things.
I think he’s Praetorian Jack, right?
And Furiosa becomes Imperador.
They have different ranks.
Yeah, it’s just like, do these ranks mean anything?
It’s like, no.
You know what?
I’m leaning too far into it.
It means nothing.
It sounds cool as hell.
George Miller is like, this just sounds cool.
This is called this guy, the organic mechanic.
Done.
If you go look through the credits and look at the names of these characters, they are truly astounding.
It’s amazing.
Do you mention one of the characters being around in this movie?
I think that’s Scabrous Scrotus.
Scrotus, yeah.
Who is one of the sons of a Morden Joe.
I think he’s in the video game.
He’s in the video game.
I don’t remember what his fate is in the game.
I’m not sure if that’s like…
Again, it’s not really like canon to the whole timeline, but he’s in the game.
Just like the one character near the end who gives Furiosa the beat up vehicle that’s missing a wheel, that is Chum Bucket, who is one of the main characters.
He’s your Mad Max’s buddy, who’s constantly fixing the car in the video game.
This is the 2015 title we’re talking about.
So it’s like there’s some Easter egg like that thrown in there, but none of it really matters.
You’re just there for the good time, but also getting a good story and narrative through it, right?
And I just wanted to quickly visit a point you made earlier where when you watch these two movies as a whole, it really does feel like one big whole film.
And it feels really good.
And I watched it, Fury Road, last night, and that scene where she’s meeting with the, oh, my goodness, I can’t remember, the mothers there from her old tribe and learning that that place doesn’t exist.
And they drove through it.
We saw it before, whereas, like, it’s just…
Yeah, the green place is no more.
And it made that moment even more impactful.
And it’s enhanced, Furiosa has enhanced now Fury Road and all the little details here, which I’m not sure, at first, you’re kind of feeling like, oh, maybe they’re gonna go back and, like, needlessly explain some things that happened in Fury Road.
But I definitely get the sense that it was a lot more organic, especially knowing that he made a lot of the story beforehand, right, before doing Fury Road.
It’s just, like, a lot of this stuff doesn’t feel like pandering.
Like, in, um, I mean, the classic example now is kind of like Solo or even a Rogue One, where they’re explaining these little details in Star Wars that don’t need explaining, but it’s like…
Yeah, exactly.
That’s a type of setup that is not necessarily explaining it, but it’s just like we get to see a bit of the green play, so we get to see her fight for it, and we see her miss it, and it’s like it’s so much more emotionally impactful for that moment later on, which had its impact when you’re watching Fury Road, but it wasn’t as significant as it is now when you go and re-watch it.
To see the eyes of the character, yeah.
It feels almost like Furiosa and Fury Road feel almost like a cinematic equivalent now of We Will Rock You and We Are The Champions.
It’s like you have to watch them back to back almost.
When I pick this up, and I’m going to be picking this up as soon as it comes out on 4K, I have to upgrade the other Mad Max movies on 4K now too.
I only have them on Pathetic Blu-ray now.
But it’s like, yeah, I don’t think we’ll be able to watch Fury Road without watching Furiosa first.
It’s so woven together.
So except for one thing, I don’t know.
I’m still torn about this.
At the end of Furiosa, through the credits, they kept showing a bunch of scenes from Fury Road.
I’m just like, I’m not sure how to feel about this.
I almost hope that a home release doesn’t have those details in it.
My friend pointed this out when we were walking out of the theater.
What if in 10 years from now, you’re watching Furiosa because it’s chronologically in that order.
It is a prequel to Fury Road.
If you watch those end credits, you’re like, okay, so all of those events happened.
But you watch Fury Road is like, guess what?
You’ve seen a bunch of the movie now.
You’ve seen the highlights of the film.
Like, why did you force us to watch a highlight reel of Fury Road at the end of this movie?
It felt really weird, right?
But yeah, overall, like the story.
Okay, got to talk about Chris Hemsworth’s Dementus.
Yes.
Chris Hemsworth looked like as good a time as the audience was having with the movie.
I don’t think anybody had as much fun on this movie as Chris Hemsworth.
He just like, he played an amazing villain, got to play in his native Australian accents.
And he was just, you talk about like chewing the scenery.
Like Chris Hemsworth made a meal of this movie.
He was just, from the ads, you know, I was expecting great things.
And like, you’re just so used to seeing him as Thor.
And you forget, it’s like, oh yeah, this guy actually, he’s an actor and he has a range and he can do all this other stuff.
And his dimensions was so great because it was, he was like the big bad guy.
Or one of the big, like, it was Furiosa’s main bad guy because Immortan Joe was in this again and there was like a kind of battle back and forth.
But to see contrasted with like, you see now like, oh, Immortan Joe or Lord Humongous from Road Warrior, these guys were, they were bad guys.
They were evil, but they were competent.
They had a vision they could keep structured around them.
And Dementis, Chris Hemsworth Dementis, was just like this kind of fly-by-the-seat-your-pants kind of guy.
And when he got power, he couldn’t, he couldn’t maintain control properly.
He didn’t really have a plan.
And he was just like, everything fell apart at the end.
And he was not really competent at all.
He was just kind of going with the flow.
It was like, it was so interesting to see that kind of contrast between Immortan Joe and Dementis, to see the kind of different kinds of villainy, right?
But it was like, it was just, it was so great.
It was so over the top.
But yeah, it was just, what a great villain.
You felt like he could have been in one of the original Mad Max movies.
It felt like it was just so, got the tone of the movies perfectly.
He knew exactly what movie he was in.
And I think I remember reading in an interview or something, it was like, yeah, as an Australian, being able to be in a Mad Max film was like, yeah, of course.
You’re going to be in there and you’re going to have a ton of fun.
It’s like a dream come true.
But yeah, it was amazing.
It was a great performance.
What did you think of Dementis?
Dementis, absolutely fantastic character.
And I was a little on the fence when I saw Chris Hemsworth in the trailer and I was just like, what is he doing exactly?
Am I going to gel with this or not?
But he was really good.
What did you say you do here?
And I’m glad you mentioned it.
It’s a different type of villainy in the Mad Max world.
And I love seeing those different elements.
Those are the bits of world building that I can really appreciate.
That we have these three towns, like Gastown, the Bullet Farm and the Citadel.
And it’s just like they each have their own unique cast of characters and villains.
And I think you nailed it there.
We’re like, he’s just going with the flow.
He just hears about a green place.
He just starts going for it.
He gets diverted in something else.
He’s distracted.
That’s it.
It’s a distraction.
He forgets all about the green place after a while.
He’s like, oh, yeah, Citadel.
It’s like, oh, Gastown now.
Oh, now the bullet farm.
It’s like he’s got ADHD or something.
Yeah, it was really neat.
And even at the very end, which almost felt a little anticlimactic, like there wasn’t a huge battle with him or anything, but it’s like, no, this guy is not capable of doing that.
If he’s not surrounded by all his crew, all his fellow goons or whatever, it’s just like you’re going to beat him in a fight.
He’s kind of a sad person in the end.
Yeah.
And you get a sense of like his…
He has like a tragic backstory that I love that they didn’t go into it, but he has this like little stuffed teddy bear, and he hints vaguely at having a family, and it’s like, oh, I wonder, you know, look at the original Mad Max, and he lost his family.
They were murdered by a motorcycle gang, and that’s when he became Mad Max, as opposed to just regular Max.
When you look at maybe Dementis had a similar kind of backstory where he lost his family, and you see like, oh, like Mad Max and Dementis almost felt like opposite size of a coin, maybe.
Like, Mad Max could have bound up as a Dementis type character, where Dementis feels like he’s almost like a shark, where he has to kind of keep swimming around.
If he loses momentum, right, he has to raid, he has to go on the next day and raid the next town or the next village, or else, you know, like he loses momentum and he can’t sustain his crew.
Like, who’s the guy, the octopus guy, the Octolord or something?
Yeah.
Who’s like, calls him like, your scum Dementis, and he breaks off with his own tribe.
Dementis can’t keep all the factions together and everything.
In Gastown, he loses control.
But he’s just like, he is Dement, like, and is just like, I love how he goes with the flow, too.
Like, he gets sprayed with that red flare there, and he’s all, like, red there, and he’s like, he just, like, incorporates part of his costume then.
He’s like, OK, cool.
Yeah, he’s initially wearing, like, the pristine white.
Yeah.
It gets stained red.
But his beard, his hair is all red afterwards, too.
And that, like, slowly fades out over time.
And then he becomes dark Dementis.
Yeah, like, his initial, like, perfect white costume is, like, turning multiple colors.
Like, it’s getting ruined throughout the course of the film.
It’s really nice details.
But it’s, yeah, it was just, it was so much fun watching him in there.
And that, yeah, the whole final conflict, I like that, though.
I like that George Miller didn’t try to just recreate Fury Road.
He didn’t try to recreate any of his original movies in terms of structure.
And I love that the final showdown is, like, they talked about, like, oh, there was a big war.
It’s about, like, the narrator comes on.
I think it was, like, the history man who had all the tattoos and all over his body and was like, oh, that’s…
Watching Fury Road, there was a woman who was covering those tattoos and everything.
She’s like, oh, my God, yeah, this is really cool.
It ties back in.
But the narrator’s talking about, like, there’s always been war and the Hundred Years War and the War of the Roses.
And then this led to the 40-day war.
And you don’t see any of it.
You just see the fallouts at the end where it’s like, it’s been so exhaustive that they’re in, like, such one working car.
It’s like, we’ve got to chase down Dementia.
Dementia is like two or three top henchmen getting away.
Furiosa steals like their last working vehicle to go chase them down.
Yep.
And I love, like, there’s little bits of humor in there, like dark humor is like, you know, they see him coming.
It’s like, oh, who is that?
It’s like somebody competent and, you know, utterly relentless or something, whatever the line was.
They’re like, you know, like, we’ve been together so long.
It’s like, let’s go in different directions to Confuser.
It’s like, you know, it’s like, after being so long together, we don’t need to do all goodbyes.
So goodbye.
It’s just like a quick perfunctory nod off.
So great in character.
And then like his whole last speech with her was like, the whole thing was the drama was not, is she going to find him and get revenge and the violence and everything?
Is there going to be a big fight showdown?
I love that there wasn’t that thing.
It was like more of a kind of a battle of wills and a battle of philosophies where, you know, Dementis’ whole speech there about, you know, there’s no hope in the wasteland.
Like, what drove you here was not hope, right?
What drove you all these years, what had kept you alive was hatred.
It was like, that’s a valid motivation too.
And he’s like, he’s toying with her.
And it’s like that whole line from the trailer there, that was in the movie, I was waiting for it.
It was like, he was talking about like, yeah, you’re going to kill me.
But the question isn’t whether you’re going to kill me, but how are you going to kill me?
And like, do you have it in you to make it epic?
Right?
He’s breaking down his own kind of psychology of like, you’re looking for something, anything to fill that void, right?
All the pain makes you start to feel numb and you’re looking for anything out there to kind of have some kind of feeling.
And that’s why he does the things that he does.
And he hurts people and he tries to seize power.
He’s looking for something to fill that.
He’s looking for something just to be able to feel again.
He was like, yeah, do the same way, right?
You’re going to take revenge on me just to try and feel something because you lost your mother, right?
Well, Demet just killed her.
But you lost your mother, you want revenge and all this stuff.
It’s like there’s nothing different between what you’re going to do to me and what I’ve done to other people.
But he wants to go with a bang, though.
Do you have it in you to make it epic?
And she does make it epic.
Just when you’re talking about it and referencing all the terms and some of the lines of dialogue, George Miller also wrote this and Fury Road, along with Nico Lathorus, who probably mispronouncing that, but that was the only writing credits Nico has, at least.
And it’s just like, I love that rewatching these.
And every line of dialogue is just like, there’s a snappiness to it.
It’s the names, it’s the terminology that they come up with.
And it reminds me, forgive me if I’ve referenced this before in the past, in high school, we studied a clockwork orange.
And a lot of that was like the jargon.
It was really an exercise in learning jargon and it’s like using that consistently.
And they do that right here.
It’s like they’re creating their own world through their speech, through their jargon, the words they use.
I mean, the previous movie, like, Mediocre comes in.
Witness me!
Right, witness me.
All this stuff, it keeps coming up.
What a day, what a lovely day.
What a powerful moment, too, where he first comes in, DeBentis comes in, he’s just like, I’m taking over.
It’s just like, all right, well, pick out any of these war boys here, any one of them.
And I love this moment, it’s so powerful.
It was amazing.
He puts your points at one random one.
And I think, you know, he walks over, does the chrome spray in the mouth, and then just jumps to his death.
It’s just like this.
It causes an explosion to the guys below.
And like, you know, like in Morton Joe, you see the contrast.
He’s so measured and so controlled.
Like any one of my war boys would die at my command to stop you.
And you’re going to come here with your motley gang of motorcycle people and like order me around.
And they completely mess them up.
Like Dementia’s, yeah, it’s just such a great setup.
It’s like, oh yeah, it’s like Dementia’s.
It’s like, oh yeah, we’re biggest guy on campus.
And like, we’re just going to ride up and take over your Citadels.
Like you just hand it over.
And Morton Joe’s is like, I’m going to show you exactly.
Like pick any one of my guys at random against your best dude.
And this is what’s going to happen.
Like they will all lay down their lives to end you.
Like, do you have the same commitment?
And they did not have the same commitment.
No, they did nothing.
They scrambled and fled pretty quickly.
Also, yeah, I wish I could remember more of the lines, but like one of them was when he was having the tryouts, like the Joker did for his crew was like, we’ve got five spots and there’s 20 of you.
You got to fight for this.
It’s like, today we dance to Darwin.
I was like, yeah, this is pretty awesome.
Lady and gentlemen, start your engines.
It was like everything about it was like, you see like the character is kind of goofy, like Dementia is kind of goofy at some points, but then he’s kind of scary in other points.
And you see at the end when he’s facing off against Furiosa and Anya Taylor-Joy there and is like, there’s something kind of dark and damaged in this guy where, you know, like he’s describing that kind of, that sadism as a way to this like kind of fill some kind of emotional void or some kind of trauma that he was never able to properly process.
And then you see in Fury Road when Furiosa is talking to Bad Max about, you know, why am I doing this?
It’s like, what are you looking for in this?
And she’s like redemption.
And you see, oh yeah, this is why, because, you know, the things she had to do in order to stay with the Morton Joe regime in order to buy time to be able to smuggle his wives out and everything.
It’s like she had to do some stuff that she wasn’t proud of and then, you know, getting revenge on him in a horrific way.
And I thought, I was like, what’s she going to do?
Is she going to drag him around or something in the back of the car or do something?
And then I love how it was like all it was all the unreliable narrator thing, right?
Which goes like the, you know, the there’s no real canon in or continuity in the Mad Max Saga and the end narrators like, oh yeah, some people say she just shot him in the head.
Some people say like she dragged him around behind the car until he was dead.
But what she told me, so even it’s not even the first person in the count.
It’s like, he’s telling us what she told him is that she planted this tree and chained him there so that the tree kind of grew up and around through him and his kind of grew up and around through him and his body is like nourishing.
So he’s like still alive, but he’s all withered and and like a bag of bones while the tree is kind of growing up through his midsection.
And it’s like, what a terrible, awful, gross, disgusting, terrible, you know, when the title credits, like they had to broken up into scene, different scenes in the movie.
And the scene was like, it was like scene four, scene five, like beyond vengeance.
I was like, I thought I’d seen every possible permutation of vengeance in movies.
And this one was like, George Miller still shocked me.
It was like, it wasn’t bloody or gory, but just like the thought of it was just like, this is sick.
George Miller, you’re sick.
You need help.
Yeah, like going back to your R rated question at the beginning was like, again, I couldn’t tell you what this movie is rated, but it seems almost borderline where it’s like, that is a pretty disturbing piece of imagery there.
But like you said, there’s no gore.
There’s no, it doesn’t look really disgusting.
It’s just the implication of what you’re looking at.
And when you think about it afterwards, like There’s a few things about when the guy’s torn apart and the motorcycle is going in different directions or like the dog has like the foot in its mouth or they see when the guy has his throat torn open at the beginning or when Furiosa kind of loses her arm.
It’s gory enough without it lingering on the gore, right?
It’s not a celebration of it, I guess, despite how over the top the movies are.
Speaking of which, how did you feel about how Furiosa lost her arm?
Were you just like sitting there the whole time like waiting for it?
How’s it going to happen?
Is it this scene?
Is it this scene?
Is it this scene?
Yeah, you’re just like, there’s a certain expectation of like how epic are they going to make this arm coming off?
And it’s like that she had a part in removing her own arm seemed rather fitting.
And just as I was like, that’s how she like, they strung her up right by this arm.
It was already damaged.
It was already mangled.
So yeah, I guess the impression I got was like, it was starting to separate already, and she just like finished the job.
Yeah, she did like a 127-hour business on that with a little knife and a…
It’s just so, it’s so brutal.
Like, it’s just so brutal.
But what they were doing to Jack was so nasty to it.
It was like hours and hours and hours go by of just like dragging them around.
It’s just like…
Having the dogs eat him as he’s being around too.
That is not a nice fate for Jack here, who…
Poor Jack.
It was interesting that there was not like an overt like chemistry or love story between the two of them.
But what I was reading, especially in the…
What they call the stairway to nowhere action scene where she’s kind of like stowed away on one of the war rigs that he’s driving and all the war boys eventually get taken out.
And now it’s Jack and Furiosa.
They don’t know each other, but they’re building like that trust that’s possibly like only like an established relationship like you would build over a great amount of time.
And it’s like that is their love story right there is like the two of them coming together to overcome all these obstacles to get this war rig to where it needs to be and like fight off all the bad guys, right?
And then they become partners afterwards.
And it’s like, it’s never inferred that they’re like together together, but it’s like that level of trust in the wasteland goes so far where it’s like you really can’t trust anyone.
And you see that again, like in Fury Road, it’s like, here’s another dude who looks like Jack is Mad Max.
And you’re like, all right, what’s this guy’s backstory?
What he’s like every single person is just inherently like a potential problem, right?
Yeah, because in in George Miller’s apocalypse, the wasteland is so harsh and so uncaring and people are so, you know, that they succumb to their worst base, base instincts and base desires that to have those moments of of genuine compassion, right?
Those genuine human moments of compassion or even love or just connection where this person isn’t actively trying to kill me.
It just makes it all the more powerful, right?
When she meets Jack and Jack isn’t a total dick and he’s not trying to rape her and he’s not trying to kill her or he’s not trying to induct her into his harem.
It makes it stand out all the much more when somebody is not a complete jackass.
It’s similar to Mad Max himself where he’s rough around the edges and he’s a man reduced to a single instinct, survive.
But what keeps getting the better of him is his instinct to also help other people.
I think it makes those moments of tenderness and caring and compassion and those human moments stand out all the more against that background of all the chaos and the murder and the horrible things people are doing to each other.
It made it all the more tragic even though you didn’t see a whole lot of the backstory.
I wasn’t sure whether it was more of a father-daughter relationship or a lover relationship.
There were some moments that seemed like they were a bit closer.
I guess they were closer in age than I thought.
For some reason, I thought he was a bit older, but I guess they were the same age or close to the same age-ish.
Either way, they were pretty close to each other.
He was the only person who really showed her compassion aside from her mother who was killed.
His death just made it all the more brutal.
He didn’t have a whole lot of screen time, but I still felt like this was a huge loss for this character.
It was like, damn, that was super brutal.
You knew he wasn’t in Fury Road, so you knew he wasn’t going to make it one way or the other.
But how they did it, it was just like, damn, that’s cold.
It’s cold, man.
Speaking of people doing horrible things to one another, we have the other in Morden Joe’s son, Rictus Erectus, who is basically trying to take away Furiosa when she’s a child and get intimate with her.
It’s really awful.
These are all awful people, right?
They’re all awful people.
Morden Joe’s harem, they’re not having success with him because he’s super attractive.
But it’s like I needed to see even more comeuppance against Erectus in Fury Road, like in his death, knowing that he was trying to do this and possibly doing it with other children.
His first one is like, man, the movie is not afraid to, it doesn’t shy away from some of these dark things.
Well, I mean, you look at Road Warrior where it shows a woman getting full on raped in the wasteland, right?
Like bad stuff is happening out there.
And that’s what, you know, like it’s awful and it’s horrifying to kind of watch.
But at least in the movie world, these people get their comeuppance, right?
So there’s at least in the movie world, you can always enact some kind of vengeance.
So there’s a hint of justice, at least.
Exactly.
One thing we have to talk about is that Furiosa, as played by Anya Taylor-Joy, doesn’t properly show up until about 40 minutes into this movie.
I was surprised about that.
Major legwork is done earlier on with the young Furiosa, Alyla Browne, and forgiveness of mispronouncing my name, who does a pretty tremendous job as a child actor here, and just going through really awful things.
But it really sets forward the whole tone of the movie.
And supposedly, from a technical side, is that, I don’t know how accurate this is, but they may have digitally altered her face as she was getting older to bring in elements of Anya.
And I’m just like, that is some next level stuff.
I don’t even know if it was necessary, because it’s like, they’ve gone through the pains of really going through the pains of recasting Charlize in a prequel, because I’m not sure how much time has passed here, but it’s like, instead of trying to de-age Charlize, which no one should ever do anyways, they just recast her.
And it’s just like, all right, you know, I have to respect that decision.
If they did digitally alter this little girl’s face to look more like the adult actress, I understand the consistency there for the film, but it’s like, that’s a step beyond what I thought they would do for a movie like this, right?
It like, maybe it was worked on a subconscious level.
Yeah, I think, I don’t know, I think it worked really well.
And like going through it was like, yeah, I think it was like more like it was, it was subtle.
So like subconsciously you’re seeing the kind of through line, right?
Because it wasn’t an overt thing like, like in Looper, for example, where they really made up Joseph Gordon-Levitt to look like Bruce Willis to get the continuity home.
It was like a bit more subtle than that.
I’m not dumping on Looper.
I absolutely love that movie.
But it was like, it was kind of glaring how they did the, especially the nose, because Bruce Willis has a very unique nose, right?
But yeah, that act, that young actors did an amazing job.
It must always be weird on set to bring young people into this kind of twisted, demented world to do that, create a safe environment in, you know.
And that’s what I keep seeing all night is basically people saying George’s praises of like keeping a very safe, secure, like he’s working with confidence because there’s a lot of stunt work here.
Like I think Anya, she has very few dialogue in the movie, but she still worked relentlessly.
Like this movie took a long time to film.
And you’re like out there on these speeding cars, on these big rigs, and it’s like the safety on there was like really paramount and present throughout the whole thing.
It’s just a testament to what a great filmmaker, he is obviously on screen, but he’s not sacrificing his actors or anything off screen either.
It’s like we can make safe movies look absolutely epic.
Oh yeah.
And people talk about like, oh, Fury Road was all like practical effects.
Like, no, there was quite a bit of CG in there.
It was just done, just like Fury, it was done really, really well, right?
It’s done seamlessly.
And I think Furiosa, there were a couple of scenes where it seemed a bit more obvious than Fury Road, but most of it was still like, excellence to…
So I want to say, everything like close up on the road, everything looked great.
It was only where we pulled the camera way, way, way back and it would be like a seamless…
You know, all of a sudden that is a CGI camera now and those are CGI cars and they’re not moving quite the way they did before.
That’s the only part that really brought me out of the special effects.
It was minimal.
Some people were saying like, oh, it looks terrible compared to Fury Road.
And it’s like, nah, it does not.
Go back and watch Fury Road and you’ll see.
But speaking of the action though, because I’m always one of the ones harping on like how all movies are so dark and they’re edited so fast and I can’t tell what’s going on.
And I love…
And you go back and watch the original Mad Max movies too, especially like I think my favorite of the originals was Road Warrior.
All the action happens in the middle of the day, super bright.
I can see everything that’s going on.
The editing, well, sometimes it’s fast paced.
I can still easily follow every single action beat.
There’s a sense of space.
There’s a sense of pacing.
You know, if anybody can do action, it’s George Miller.
He’s this maestro of destruction.
Like you think about how does he…
Like how do you even translate?
Like, okay, I want this to happen.
I want this car over here.
And I want like, there’s like a hundred motorcycles and then I want this one to blow up and this one gets something caught in its wheel.
I was like, how do you like, you go to the stunt coordinator?
Like, what do you…
What’s that process look like?
It’s insane to have all of this in his mind and then to coordinate this.
I mean, I’m sure there’s obviously collaboration with the stunt folks.
It’s like, oh, this would look really cool.
And George Miller is probably just like, do it.
It’s like, what’s my motivation in the story?
It’s like, it looks cool.
Do it.
But yeah, the action was phenomenal.
I love it’s like, it doesn’t have to be, you know, I don’t want to take shots of the Batman because it’s a great movie.
But it was like, the movie was so dark.
Be careful.
I was like, it’s tough to see stuff.
But like, I love what George Miller is like.
He takes it, like, it’s not hard to hide the magic tricks or anything, right?
It’s bright daylights.
You can see every explosion.
You can see every everything going on perfectly.
It’s like, this is the action I want to see.
You don’t have to hide everything behind fog and turn off all the lights in the city.
Stage all your action during the day looks beautiful.
The movie looks gorgeous.
It’s got the same kind of aesthetic as Fury Road.
I think the same color scheme of the, you think, like the blues and the oranges and the reds kind of.
It really pops.
It looks incredible.
Almost comic book-y in a good way, right?
It’s like that really contrast of colors, right?
I think of like George A.
Romero’s, Dawn of the Dead, with the zombies and everything.
They have a specific color.
It was a bluish hue to them, and he was going for more of a, it was like a comic book feel almost, right?
You get that sense here too.
It’s a weird connection to make, I know, but this is how my brain works, I guess.
Well, it’s a very visual, both are very visual mediums, and obviously the visuals in Fury Road and Fury Rosa are noteworthy.
They’re part of the main appeal of the film.
You pop in the 4K of Fury Road when you’re watching it at home, and you’re like, you’re happier in this medium, you know?
And then you go to the big screen, you watch Furyosa, it’s like, I want to see these movies on the big screen again in all their glory.
There’s so much visual delight.
Well, you see those, there was the chase scene to gas down, there was the whole fight sequence, I think, in the bullet farm.
I think it was like the standout, one of the standout action set pieces.
That was just amazing.
Another maestro behind the scenes here, is something we don’t talk about on the show really at all, is the score of the movie.
Oh, yeah.
Tom Hulkenborg, probably mispronounced in that, AKA Junkie XL.
Fury Road, if you haven’t gone on to your streaming service and listened to this, just do it.
It’s such a good score.
I put this on at least once a day in my Spotify playlist.
It’s so great.
It’s so great, his music.
And he’s doing the same thing for Furiosa.
He’s coming out with some incredible, incredible music.
I haven’t fully listened to the album yet, because it’s been a little too recent there, but I look forward to popping this on.
It’s just the music is so good.
I was reading one bit of trivia on Wikipedia, I think, where Tom was looking to put a piece of music that was like Furiosa and Mad Max like together, working together, that piece of music into the bullet farm sequence, and George had to stop him.
It’s just like, no, that is like a special piece of music between, like represented that relationship between Furiosa and Mad Max working together.
Furiosa and Jack work together a little bit differently, and it’s like it should sound different to the audience too, right?
It’s just like, just that level of detail that, you know, when I’m watching movies, completely over my head, but maybe on a subconscious level, you can appreciate it.
And when you read about it, you’re like, oh yeah, this is why I like movies.
Yeah, I think, too, the soundtrack, I need to listen to it again, because the soundtrack for Fury Road was a lot more in your face.
There’s a sense of urgency because it was a Chase movie and the music fit that.
And so the music was a bit more subtle.
I heard traces.
You can hear that, again, the continuity of music between Furiosa and Fury Road.
You can hear it’s obviously the same composer, which obviously it is, but it’s a little bit more subtle, right?
It’s not as in your face as the soundtrack from Fury Road.
And I actually love that, because I was like, I wasn’t…
It was good, but it wasn’t catching my ear the same way that Fury Road did for the first time.
I realized it’s not supposed to, right?
It’s a different type of movie.
It’s a different feel of movie, and it’s evoking a different kind of emotional resonance here.
So it was like, I love…
Again, like you saying, I’m really looking forward to not just watching this movie again, but listening to it and being able to download the soundtrack on Spotify, because, man, that first…
Like the Fury Road music is like it’s on there all the time.
Like that Chase music.
I can’t remember what the actual track is called, but it’s…
Man, if I’m down, I need to get pumped up.
I’m listening to Fury Road like 100%.
And now if I want to get vengeance on somebody, now I’m listening to the Furiosa soundtrack.
My own tale of vengeance.
I mean, both are probably dangerous soundtracks to play while driving in your car.
You don’t want to be reminded that you’re in the wasteland and need to drive over everything.
Did you drive to the theater to see this?
Yeah, yeah.
When you got in your car to drive home, were you driving a little bit faster and taking turns a little bit tighter than normal?
I wouldn’t dream of doing so.
I obey the laws on the roads.
That’s what I thought, too.
Neither did I.
I’m just wondering if my car can make such jumps.
When you look at the detail in some of the cars they make and seeing the structures they put together, I love that multiple trunks of the same vehicle would be stacked on top of each other.
It’s just like the crazy suspension they build into these things.
Obviously required for jumping these sand dunes and stuff, but I just love it, hacked together.
And I love the reveal of a new war rig.
It’s just like it gets all its glory on the screen.
You’re like, oh yeah, I’m looking forward to see that thing drive around.
What kind of tricks they have there.
And then they have the Tommy Knockers.
And you’re like, yeah, these guys think of everything.
And they got it due to, right?
It wasn’t the checkout’s gun paid off.
It was like they showed the shiny new war rig or shiny old war rig because it came before the one in Fury Road.
But it was interesting, too, because the war rig in this one, it felt like it was shinier and newer.
It felt like the war rig in Fury Road was pieced together from more parts.
It was almost like they had more resources.
And that’s diminishing resources as time goes by.
Because they had some newer stuff.
The war rig in this one compared to the one in Fury Road, it’s like, oh, yeah, we had new resources to make it exactly one awesome war rig, all this stuff.
And then the second war rig is like, we’ve got to piece together what we have left to build a new one.
Right.
I mean, they just went through a 40 day war and lost everything.
And a few years later, they still need to get a war rig going.
And that’s what we got.
You’re like, I love it.
Any other notes you have?
Anything you want to bring up before we jump into ratings on Furiosa?
Yeah, I think we mentioned it briefly before, but Anya Taylor-Joy, I wasn’t entirely convinced.
You know, I had to take it out because Shirley Starrin is like, she’s a once in a lifetime talent, but she’s like, she’s, you know, like top talent.
And Anya Taylor-Joy is really good as well, but it’s hard to replace Shirley.
But I think Anya Taylor-Joy did a really good job.
And there are some moments where she was channeling Charlize Theron’s Furiosa, even her voice sounded almost exactly like Charlize Theron.
I was like, did they get her in there?
I was like, I don’t think so.
I think Anya Taylor-Joy is just like a really good actor.
And she was just, you know, like she’d studied the original movie, obviously, and studied Charlize’s speech patterns.
It was uncanny sometimes.
And then even the way she, her demeanor and the way she held herself was like, you know what, I can actually see continuity between like the child actor and Anya Taylor-Joy and Charlize Theron is like, you know what, putting aside my own preconceived notions and all this stuff, taking it for what it is and in George Miller’s, you know, insane vision of this post-apocalyptic dystopia, I can see that continuity in the character.
And I think they did a really good job giving the resources they had, right?
Definitely.
Two top tier actors doing great, great things, like there’s ratings.
Before we jump into our own ratings, we like to make Nathan try and guess what ratings are, how well this movie was received on different sites.
Feel free to play along at home.
First up is the Ron Tomato site.
Critic rating, they use the 100% scale.
What percentage of critics rated Furiosa favorably?
84.
Go a bit higher at 90%.
90%, oh wow.
How do you feel the audience rated on Ron Tomatoes is?
82.
90% again.
Oh, awesome, awesome.
IMDb, they use a 10-point star system.
What’s its user’s average rating?
I don’t know.
I think it was 8.6.
It is 7.9.
Which is good.
And then finally Letterboxd, which you can find us, you know, logging all our activity and ratings on.
What’s its user’s average rating for Furiosa?
3.4.
Oh, it’s got to go a bit higher.
It’s 3.9.
Oh, wow.
Which again, we’ve called that before, like recency bias.
Bias, it might be a bit higher.
But I think in this case, it’s probably pretty deserved.
I mean, IMDb is 7.9, 3.9.
It’s really 4.
Double that date.
They’re basically identical scores.
Bonus round of Fury Road.
Going way back in time, nine years ago now, if you go, as you said before, 2015, Rot Tomato Critic rating for Fury Road.
For Fury Road?
87.
97%.
97, okay.
Wow.
Audience rating on Rot Tomato.
I’m going to go higher.
I’m going to go 92 then.
It’s 86%.
It’s interesting, right?
Again, we don’t want to spend too much time talking about that box office.
You made some really good points earlier where it’s like audience liked this movie more, but they’re not going out to see it as much as Fury Road.
Sometimes there’s no rhyme or reason.
There’s no direct correlation.
Trends in going to the movies altogether.
People are calling out, oh, Furiosa had bombed on this weekend.
It was actually the highest grossing movie that weekend, opening weekend.
All the movies were historically low.
I think Garfield might have beat it.
No, I think it edges out slightly.
Can you believe we have a Mad Max movie fighting a Garfield movie for top spot at the box office?
This feels like 1980s again, right?
So moving on to IMDb for Fury Road.
IMDb, let’s go 9.1.
8.1 there.
IMDb always seemed lower on average.
And Letterboxd finally on Fury Road.
This movie is gestated for 9 years on Fury Road.
Or on Letterboxd, I should say.
I’m going to say it has at least a 4-star rating.
At least.
Okay, I’ll do 4.1.
You’re so close.
It was 4.2.
You have gone ones absolutely spot on in the past.
That one’s pretty darn close.
So with that in mind, where is your star rating?
We use the same system as Letterboxd, the 5 stars and a possible like on top of it.
What’s your rating for Fury Road?
No, not Fury Road, Furiosa.
I’m still in Fury Road mode.
It’s too furious.
No, I give it a 4 out of 5 stars.
That might change after multiple viewings, but I really, really enjoyed this movie a lot more than I was anticipating.
I had some trepidations in terms of something that George Miller hadn’t done before, and it was a story in the Mad Max universe not featuring Mad Max, except for that one random scene in there.
Which apparently was Tom Hardy’s stunt double from Fury Road and many other productions, which was a nice detail.
So it was interesting.
Mad Max was in the background.
He was in the area.
He was active in the area for a while.
But yeah, four or five stars.
Honestly, I didn’t want to spoil this before, because I almost said this before, but I don’t think I’ve given any Mad Max movie fewer than four stars.
I absolutely love all these movies.
Like I said, I grew up with them.
I’m still torn as to whether Road Warrior or Fury Road is my favorite, but they’re all great.
And Furiosa is no exception.
It truly surprised me.
I wasn’t expecting it to be that good, but it fit perfectly in the world.
I felt pumped up leaving it.
It’s weird watching these movies about all these people doing terrible stuff to each other in desperate situations and to feel excited and vigorated afterwards.
But there’s always a feeling of hope.
Despite Dementis’ assertions otherwise, there’s this feeling of hope when Mad Max comes in or Furiosa comes in as like, yeah, there is actually a spark of hope left that things are going to get better.
But Furiosa doesn’t need that spark because it’s already really good just the way it is.
You don’t need to hope.
Brian, what’s your rating on this?
This was a very difficult one for me to rate.
Uh-oh.
I really enjoyed the movie, and I found myself right afterwards kind of like in our little group discussion like nitpicking some details there.
And I think being like just, I love Fury Road so much.
Oh, yeah.
It’s like, oh, this one didn’t feel like it fully compared, but it is quite a different movie.
There’s a very different structure to it.
But I landed on four stars as well.
I…
The system works.
Right?
It’s like I kind of wanted to just put it at four and a half.
It’s really…
It’s one or the other.
It doesn’t really matter that much, but I landed on four stars officially on Letterboxd.
And I have to admit something here.
I’ve been on Letterboxd for a little while, and I like that I can watch movies multiple times, and it shows me my reviews over time.
I was called out on this before watching Furiosa by my friend and listener of the podcast here.
He saw my Fury Road initial rating, and I had given it three and a half stars when I first watched it in 2015.
Get off this podcast.
Second time I watched it in 2016, I also gave it three and a half stars.
I watched it a year later.
2017, I gave it four and a half.
And then I watched it one month later in 2017 to give it a full five stars.
I don’t know why I watched them so close together, but I feel ashamed that I had ever given Fury Road three and a half stars.
And this is the thing with start ratings and attributed numbers to reviews.
It’s like sometimes there’s a lot of factors at play, like your mood, your situation.
Maybe I feel a little more generous in my older age now.
Sometimes you just hate fun, I guess.
Sometimes you just hate fun.
So for the record, Fury Road is sitting at a five star rating now.
I fully suspect that Furiosa will be climbing up that scale as well.
And you know what?
That’s great for these Mad Max movies to climb the scale.
I could appreciate even more over time.
Do you happen to have your Mad Max ratings?
Like, did you watch these and log them on Letterboxd or anything?
Like, I know you said they’re all four stars and above, but…
Yeah, let’s see.
Just for the record, my rating is six out of five.
I have the five stars and a like for Fury Road.
Let’s see.
What did I do for…
Okay.
Mad Max, what did I do?
Yeah.
Oh, that’s interesting.
I did three and a half plus a like.
Okay.
So, that’s interesting.
I would bump that up to four stars.
Apparently, I don’t know what I’m talking about.
Road Warrior, Mad Max 2.
Oh, that’s a five and a like.
Five and a like.
So, that’s what…
Like I said, Road Warrior and Fury Road from Ear Tied.
Basically, I can’t decide which one’s best.
And then Beyond Thunderdome, which a lot of people don’t like that much, but I always had a soft spot for Mad Max, Beyond Thunderdome.
I don’t have logged.
I missed that because I know it’s in the past couple of years, I watched all three of them.
So I definitely missed logging this one.
All your stats are…
All my credibility is down the window.
For myself, I watched all these movies in the past 10 years, so I have proper ratings for them.
I gave the original Mad Max three and a half stars, I watched it twice now.
Mad Max 2, I gave four and a half stars too.
I guess I liked that one quite a bit more.
And then Beyond Thunderdome, I went down to two and a half stars, Nathan.
No, I would definitely not go down two and a half for Thunderdome.
See, I get that because people in general felt it was a little bit different than the first two.
People didn’t like the kids for whatever reason.
I loved all that stuff.
You can’t go wrong with Tina Turner as the main bad guy.
Got Master Blaster in there.
You got a final chase on, I think it was the railroad tracks on that one.
You got the railway and then you got the Thunderdome itself where two men enter, one man leaves.
Then chainsaw fights and whatnot.
It’s like, I don’t know, you just can’t go wrong.
And then you got the gyrocopter guy again.
I think it’s probably, I mean, those viewings I did of those other two were from 2017.
That’s quite a long time ago now.
I think it’s time for a full rewatch of all of them.
2017 is a long time ago.
But yeah, looking forward to watching those, really looking forward to revisiting Furiosa.
I don’t know, I don’t think I’ll put a pre-order in for it, but I’ll probably run out to the stores the day that comes out and grab it.
The 4K event for sure, it’s going to be a gorgeous film.
It’ll be a lot of fun to get back into.
And for those looking to get into the films, if you’re into physical media, I just happened to be out at a store the other day, Cinema One.
All the Mad Max films are down to like 21 bucks on UHD.
So I don’t know if it’s because the new movie is just coming out and they’re trying to build a lot of hype, but it’s pretty inexpensive to get into the UHD Mad Max collection these days.
So if you have a chance, get out there, pick them up.
Cinema One, we want our sponsorship money.
We’ll plug it all day long.
Incredible.
I have nothing else to add to the conversation.
Mad Max is good, Furiosa is great.
Witness us.
As always, we appreciate you hanging out with us today and taking the time to listen to our podcast.
You can find us online over at realfilmchronicles.com where we have not just a repository of podcast episodes but many of our written reviews as well.
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All the links should be within the show notes here.
So, until next time, take care of yourself and others and be sure to enjoy your film journey.