'Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga' (2024) directed by George Miller

 It appears I am not a fan of prequels. This one is kind of a heartbreaker. 'Mad Max: Fury Road' was a reinvigorating foundational movie for the series and the Wasteland Warrior genre. The crazy vehicular stunts and sets and the world it returned us to after decades since the last adventure with Mel Gibson's Mad Max films from the 80s all came together and created a framework for a feminist morality play of sorts, which basically worked for me in that movie. And I understand the appeal of the Mad Max world and the impulse to flesh out Characters and the background of the world of that movie. And the Mad Max vehicles, who doesn't want more of that? They are very evocative elements, I get that. But just like star wars when fleshing out the backgrounds and spending time with the evocative background characters that were just there to dress up the story, and hint at the world it turns out if there is not as inspired or compelling a story the second time around its just boring. It falls flat. It lacks.

There is still a lot here to like. Chris Hemsworth is kinda dumb but his psychopathic wasteland warlord monologue at the end won me over to liking what he did overall. Anya Taylor Joy taking over for Charlize Theron brings a badass toolset and does a good job I guess but the story to me was not compelling.

The Vehicles and the world of the warboys, and pretty much everything else was done better in the previous film 'Fury Road' So unless you are just so burning with desire to find out how Charlize Theron's badass character from the previous film became that way. The film is a meh. A meh, with some seriously badass stuff in it to be fair. but a meh nonetheless.

spoilers

The ending is a major let down that makes no sense. How do you plant a tree growing out the groin of a living dude who can clearly wiggle around. I guess the feminist take would be the woman is taking his seed and killing him. OK thats fucking, weird makes no sense and is not fun. In Fury Road she was liberating the women who were being treated as property. I think everyone could get behind that. Here its just nonsense and coming from a male director its seriously nonsense. Literally everything here in this film is inservice to another movie, a better movie with better performances, better stunts and better stuff in it.

Mediocre