Critics reviews

It’s a remarkable achievement by Miller – a piece of world-building that is fully realised down to the last diseased pustule on the last burrow-dwelling maggot farmer. And the action sequences are phenomenal. There is a niggling question of whether there is much substance beneath the blitzkrieg assault of the spectacle.

The chassis may look familiar but there is a very different engine driving Furiosa from that of Fury Road: it’s a rich, sprawling epic that only strengthens and deepens the Max-mythology.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga was supposedly written and to some extent developed at the same time as Fury Road, and aside from merely serving as an origin story for the title character first introduced in the last movie, it’s an essential companion piece; the two movies deepen and enrich each other.

At its best, Furiosa is less concerned with answering these questions than exploring the cycle of violence inflicted upon successive generations — a theme that's writ large, if not always elegantly, in its simple tale of revenge.

Furiosa can’t repeat the sense of novelty, but its deficiencies go beyond that: where are Miller’s famed practical effects? How come, say, Immortan Joe – the jaundiced freak with a lion’s mane – looks like an overstuffed puppet? Even with an original like George Miller at the wheel, this fuelled-up franchise is losing steam.

Almost every piece of Furiosa comes across visceral and real, which reminds you how special it is to get this kind of experience at the movies every once in a while.

The visuals here occasionally tread into unnervingly uncanny territory, particularly in long shots of vehicles that move with a computerized smoothness. What ultimately mitigates such technological flaws is the sense that Miller is forever experimenting, thinking and rethinking his art on the fly.

The worst thing a prequel can do is send a familiar character on a forced march to inevitability, setting up a story we already know while providing no additional insight or illumination into someone we have already met. The worst thing a sequel can do is to laboriously recreate the highlights of its predecessor, only without the shock and delight of the new. Furiosa is guilty of both sins.

It’s majorly refreshing to have a film of this scale awash with Aussie accents... This latest instalment feels contemporary and timely, with themes of resource-based conflict and endangered species.

Miller isn’t here for tawdry melodrama, algorithmic plotting, or art designed for the small screen. “Furiosa” aims to blow you away. And it does. To Valhalla and beyond.

[Y]oung Furiosa, played by Anya Taylor-Joy, sets the tone of vengeful rage that runs through George Miller’s immersive, spectacular prequel to his Mad Max reboot from 2015.

Furiosa reportedly cost around $170m (£134m) to produce, and it looks it, Miller unleashing sheer carnage at every turn. The wonder here, though, is that a film with so many bells and whistles also bears such an emotional kick.