PREVIOUSLY ON MIDLIFE CRISIS CROSSOVER: MAD MAX FURY ROAD WAS THE WINNER OF SIX ACADEMY AWARDS, A BEST PICTURE NOMINEE, ONE OF MY TOP 5 FILMS OF 2015, AND THE GREATEST MAD MAX MOVIE OF ALL TIME! I WATCHED IT AGAIN THE OTHER NIGHT AND IT WAS STILL LIKE BOBBING FOR GRENADES IN A BARREL FULL OF ADRENALIN! IT WAS EXTREMELY LOUDLY MIND-BLOWINGLY EXTREEEME! I WISH I COULD LEGALLY DRIVE LIKE THAT! AND I WROTE MY REVIEW IN SCREAMING MODE JUST LIKE THIS! IT WAS ONE OF OUR TOP 5 MOST POPULAR POSTS THAT YEAR! SO HERE WE GO AGAIN!

EVERYONE LOVED FURY ROAD SO MUCH, GEORGE MILLER MADE A PREQUEL! FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA IS NOW IN THEATERS! BUT THERE’S NO CHARLIZE THERON OR TOM HARDY OR THE ONE CANCELED GUY THAT HARDY REPLACED! NO ONE REMEMBERS HARDY’S PART ANYWAY BECAUSE FURIOSA WAS AWESOME! SHE DROVE A TRUCK AND HAD A RAD HEAVY METAL BIONICLE ARM AND SHE STOLE THE MOVIE! BUT NOW SHE’S ANYA TAYLOR-JOY! WHO ISN’T CHARLIZE THERON! BUT SHE SURVIVED THE MENU AND SHE WAS MAGIK IN THE NEW MUTANTS, SO SHE’S BEEN THROUGH SOME STUFF!

EXCEPT THE FILM’S MOSTLY SHOCKING TWIST IS SHE’S BARELY IN THIS! EVERYONE ASSUMED WE’D ENJOY 2½ HOURS OF HER TRYING TO OUT-THERON THERON! OR AT LEAST TO KEEP THERONING AS HARD AS SHE CAN SO WE WOULDN’T ASK WHY THERON HERSELF DIDN’T RETURN FOR THIS! WE WOULD’VE UNDERSTOOD THE (VERY WRONG) AGEIST ASSUMPTION THAT THERON IS TOO OLD TO PLAY YOUNG THERON, BUT TAYLOR-JOY HERSELF ISN’T EVEN PLAYING YOUNG THERON! THE FILM’S FINAL SCENES CLOSE THE LOOP WITH FURY ROAD! THAT MEANS FURIOSA IS NOT THE FIRST IN A TRILOGY, BUT A DONE-IN-ONE! IT’S ALL THE FURIOSA BACKSTORY WE’RE MEANT TO GET! AND THE PLAN HERE WAS FOR US TO ACCEPT HER TRANSFORMATION INTO THERON AS HER FINAL FORM! TAYLOR-JOY IS 28! NINE YEARS AGO THERON WAS 39! TAYLOR-JOY IS PERFECTLY FINE AS A DOUR, TOUGH-AS-NAILS WASTELAND SURVIVOR, BUT SHE’S NOT NEARLY THERON YET! SO WHY NOT JUST BRING BACK THERON? SHE DRINKS FROM THE SAME FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH AS PAUL RUDD! SHE WOULD’VE BEEN MORE THAN FINE! I ASSUME SHE SAID NO, AS IS HER RIGHT, BUT STILL!

IT DOESN’T HELP THAT FURIOSA DOESN’T EVEN AGE UP INTO THERON UNTIL THE SECOND HOUR! SO SHE HAS TO DO TWICE THE AGING UP IN HALF THE RUNTIME! BY THE TIME ADULT FURIOSA DOES SHOW UP, WE’RE DISAPPOINTED TO REALIZE…

[coughing spasms]

…

[long drink of water]

…that, ummm, her big solo prequel spinoff is in fact not a nonstop frenzied death-race. The audience has far more downtime to catch their breath. Fury Road mania may have occluded our memories of all Miller’s other films. Those weren’t nonstop frenzied death-races, either. Maybe the Babe sequel was? I wouldn’t know. I never saw it because I thought it’d be a letdown compared to the original.

At times I was reminded less of Fury Road than I was of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, which I watched for my very first time five days before my Furiosa screening. I can’t speak to how Thunderdome was received back in ’85, but 39 years after the fact maybe two scenes really grabbed me: the catchphrased “TWO MAN ENTERS, ONE MAN LEAVE!” Thunderdome bungee-fight and the spectacular final car crash, a momentary triumph of practical effects, stuntwork and madness. Otherwise I’m guessing the scenery, costumes, and smirking savagery were plenty to engage the original audience.

Rewind to now, as I realized I couldn’t get beyond Thunderdome. Whereas Fury Road paused exactly twice for calm volume levels and rageless exchanges (right at the 30-minute and 75-minute marks, as if placed just so using psychological calibrations), Furiosa is paced more like, well, like an ordinary film. Action sequences come from time to time, but they’re rewards between longer stretches of narrative that reveal Our Heroine’s backstory is exactly as she outlined previously. Her blurted reunion speech to the surviving Vuvulina is practically half the screenplay here.

But Miller couldn’t just re-release that one scene with new chases grafted on, so he’s fleshed out her lines into full acts, energetically if predictably. Once upon a time in the Australian outback, happy li’l Furiosa (Alyla Browne from the recent Sting and Miller’s own Three Thousand Years of Longing) grew up in the impossible oasis called the Green Place — Fury Road‘s paradisiacal quest goal, tragically dried up by the ravages of man and time. She and her mom (Charlee Fraser from Anyone But You) live in self-sufficient idyll until of course kill-crazy raiders show up and stomp all over everything. However far in the future they are, the Battle of the Sexes rages eternal.

Their leader is Chris Hemsworth, relishing a villain role more cartoonish than his previous big-bads in Ghostbusters and Spiderhead, yet far more intimidating despite all indicators. As the loony wannabe tyrant Dementus (a name fit for a Silver Age superhero comic), Hemsworth bears the voice and nose of Frosty the Snowman’s magician nemesis Professor Hinkle, but bends them through an Aussie-Armageddon prism, throws in shaggy locks and a teddy-bear fetish, and fits right in with Miller’s usual lineup of grungy, clanking, out-of-their-gourd minions. He’s no Immortan Joe, but he’s game to de-glam, this time minus his Endgame potbelly.

Yadda yadda yadda, Furiosa ends up an orphan in the unwilling custody of awful, stinking, macho madmen with singular IQs. She grows up to learn their ways, their trades, all their secrets until the day comes when she’s at last motivated to doff her yoke and go on the lam. Much of her oppression and her outlaw upbringing occur amid what passes for diplomatic turmoil among the only three cities still standing, all of which were name-checked in Fury Road: the fuel hub called Gas Town, the equally self-explanatory Bullet Farm, and the Citadel, whence comes water and farm products. Their internecine trade negotiations are a thankfully more simplistic, less dull riff on The Phantom Menace‘s Model U.N. filibusters.

Dementus dreams of taking over one or more of those cities, because what else does one do with an army of loyal followers who apparently have no one better to follow? Two of those cities seem poorly led, but we already know the Citadel’s overlord, Immortan Joe, now played by Lachy Hulme (The Matrix sequels, the aforementioned Years of Longing). He’ll naturally suffer no such foolishness; thence comes all the action between his War Boys and Dementus’ mostly interchangeable goons. Furiosa is caught in the middle, surviving by any means till she can switch teams and reach closure on her vendetta against Mom’s killers.

We’ve seen much of that before in other revenge flicks, with and without apocalypse dressings. Browne’s tween Furiosa has an hour to endure all that and learn to be a little less helpless before we fast-forward to Taylor-Joy’s era, when she’s old enough to drive and go on trucking missions. She’s suitably the ferocious warrior such set-pieces require, but she also takes her cues from Mad Max and barely speaks. Theron wasn’t the minimalist in their road-tripping buddy-duo partnership; here she’s caught his trendy muteness and forfeited her dialogue in exchange for glowering and less-is-more posturing. That was an intriguing novelty when Mad Max kept mum, or when strong silent types populated half the Ryan Gosling antihero catalogue. But as more and more filmmmakers can’t be bothered to craft memorable lines, the more tiresome it gets.

Taciturn staring works a little better whenever Furiosa ain’t got time to talk when IT’S ACTION TIME AGAIN! MOTORCYCLES REVVING! CARS CHASING! THIS ONE HORSE SUPER-GALLOPS! WAR BOYS TRY HIJACKING ANOTHER SOUPED-UP TANKER TRUCK! BUT THE TRUCK’S GOT ALL-NEW WEAPONS! BUT THE WAR BOYS HAVE PARAGLIDERS! BUT DEMENTUS HAS A MONSTER TRUCK!, BUT, LIKE, A DIFFERENT MONSTER TRUCK FROM IMMORTAN JOE’S FURY ROAD MONSTER TRUCK! AND THERE’S A SPIRALING QUARRY SEQUENCE THAT REMINDS ME OF A BORDERLANDS LEVEL! AND SNIPER RIFLES THAT DEFINITELY GIVE ME BORDERLANDS FLASHBACKS! AND EVENTUALLY THERE’S VENGEANCE! BECAUSE DEMENTUS OBVIOUSLY WASN’T IN FURY ROAD!

BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE! WE GET TO SEE ONE OF THE KEY ELEMENTS OF REAL-WORLD RACING: AUTO-MECHANIC INGENUITY! SCENES OF ACTUAL AUTO REPAIR BECOME CRUCIAL TO THE PLOT! ONE DESPERATE CHARACTER REALIZES A CRASHED CYCLE DOESN’T HAVE TO STAY CRASHED BECAUSE YOU CAN JUST SWAP OUT THE FRONT TIRES! AND TOTALLY SWAPS THEM OUT! WITH ACTUAL TOOLS, WHICH ARE LIKE ALIEN ARTIFACTS TO ANYONE WHO’S NEVER USED ANY TOOL BESIDES A SMARTPHONE! IT’S LIKE WATCHING AN INDY 500 PIT CREW STRUT THEIR SKILLS AND GET THEIR DRIVER BACK OUT ONTO THE TRACK! SPEAKING OF WHICH, THERE’S ALSO THE LOVELY, DEMOLISHING SOUNDS OF VOLUME-47 GAS ENGINES ALL OVER THE SOUNDTRACK! THE ROARING, THE GRINDING, THE RUMBLING, THE GROWLING, THE DINO-POWERED, DINO-GUZZLING, DINO-POWERED BASSO PROFUNDO THUNDER OF EVERY SINGLE VEHICLE ON SCREEN! I GREW UP LIVING TWO MILES FROM THE INDIANAPOLIS MOTOR SPEEDWAY AND THRIVE ON THAT NOISE EVEN THOUGH I’VE ONLY ATTENDED THE 500 TWICE! SOUNDLESS, WEIGHTLESS, LIFELESS SPEED RACER ELECTRIC TOY CARS ARE NOT WELCOME HERE! NO ONE IN POST-APOC OZ DRIVES A PRIUS! TESLA DID NOT OUTLIVE THE BOMBS! IN A DOLBY CINEMA THEIR EVERY ACCELERATION IS ANGRY AND ALL-CONSUMING AND AWESOME!

SO IF THAT’S WHAT YOU CAME FOR, EVENTUALLY IT’S GREAT! FURIOSA IS TOTALLY AN EXTENDED PROLOGUE FOR FURY ROAD! ONE DAY THEY COULD BE PACKAGED TOGETHER AS A SINGLE FILM, LIKE A LORD OF THE RINGS EXTENDED EDITION! ALONE, IT’S NOTHING YOU HAVEN’T SEEN BEFORE, BUT NEVERTHELESS INTERMITTENTLY SHINY AND CHROME! AND IT HAS TO BE BETTER THAN THAT STUPID GARFIELD MINIS GARFIELD: THE MOTION PICTURE! WITNESS IT! WITNESS IT!

…

MEANWHILE IN OUR USUAL DEPARTMENTS!

HEY, LOOK, IT’S THAT ONE ACTOR! FOR A WHILE, ADULT FURIOSA GETS A NEW WORK-HUSBAND! TOM BURKE, WHO PLAYED ORSON WELLES IN MANK, CLIMBS ABOARD AS A DRIVER NAMED PRAETORIAN JACK, NOT MUCH MORE THAN A MAD MAX STAND-IN! ACTUAL MAD MAX WOULD’VE BEEN COOL EXCEPT IN FURY ROAD THEY CLEARLY HADN’T MET, SO THAT WOULD MAKE NO SENSE! TOM HARDY PROBABLY ALSO SAID NO ANYWAY!

IF YOU LOVED ALL THOSE FURIOSA VILLAINS, SOME OF THEM ARE BACK! RETURNING EVILDOERS INCLUDE JOHN HOWARD AS THE PEOPLE-EATER (THE METAL-NOSED STOCKY GUY), WRESTLER NATHAN JONES AS LEAD HENCHMAN RICTUS, AND ANGUS SAMPSON AS THE ORGANIC MECHANIC! REMEMBER THE FURY ROAD SCENE WHERE A DOCTOR REMOVES THE BABY FROM THE DEAD TRANSFORMERS LADY? YEAH, HIM! STILL DOCTORING!

JOSH HELMAN (THE X-MEN SERIES’ YOUNG WILLIAMS STRYKER), WHO WAS ALSO IN FURY ROAD BUT AS A DIFFERENT CHARACTER, IS RICTUS’ BROTHER SCROTUS. (DON’T LOOK AT ME, I DIDN’T NAME HIM.) ELSA PATAKY (HOBBS’ COP FRIEND FROM THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS SERIES) IS THE MOST PROMINENT LADY MINION!

HOW ABOUT THOSE END CREDITS? AS SOON AS THE CAST ROLE CALL BEGINS, A FURY ROAD CLIP SHOW BEGINS! REMEMBER FURY ROAD? HERE, HAVE SOME AGAIN!

[coughing spasms]

…UGH. Anyway, the very Australian credits also include a land acknowledgment (similar to what we recently saw in Late Night with the Devil), and the music section leads off by naming the didgeridoo player.

And to answer the burning question that MCC is always happy to verify: yes, there is indeed a split-second scene after the Furiosa end credits. For those who tuned out prematurely and really want to know, and didn’t already click elsewhere: it’s just a quick shot of Furiosa’s distinctive Fury Road gear stick with a monster-headed knife for a knob, vibrating in the roar of her unstoppable engines.