I took a flight and finally had the time to sit (ha!) and watch Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga after somewhat avoiding it.

It’s an odd thing to admit that I was “somewhat avoiding” a Mad Max film because, well, I’m a HUGE fan of George Miller’s Mad Max films.

That is, until Furiosa was released and I read what it was about. Then, unexpected hesitancy on my part.

Let me give a brief backstory about my love of Mad Max films.  I first saw The Road Warrior (aka Mad Max 2) way, waaaayyyy back in the Stone Age when it was originally released and it rocked my entire world.  To this day I feel it is one of the very best action films EVER made.  I eventually saw the original Mad Max and loved it as well… though it wasn’t quite up there IMHO with The Road Warrior. I also caught Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome in theaters and felt it was one-half of a terrific film but its climax/conclusion didn’t quite click for me.

And then, in 2015 and after many years, Mad Max: Fury Road came out and, unlike many, I felt it was a little less than The Road Warrior (still IMHO the pinnacle of Mad Max films) even though the spectacle was arguably greater (some thanks to CGI) and the character of Charlize Theron’s Furiosa fantastic.  Thomas Hardy was good in the Max role but felt it was obvious they wanted the character to be older… ie, they wanted Mel Gibson for the role again in his then current age.  But it wasn’t a “deal breaker”.

When Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga came out, though, I was torn.

A part of me very much wanted to see what Miller was up to again.

But another part of me wondered: Did this film really need to be made?

You see, prequels are a tricky thing.  We already know where many of the characters must wind up.  For example, going into Furiosa we knew that the charcter of Furiosa would obviously survive whatever she goes through -minus her arm!- to fight again in Fury Road.

Because of this, any sense of tension around the question of whether she will survive is effectively thrown out the window.

Of course we know she’ll survive.

Thing is, the same goes with many other characters within the movie.  Obviously, every character that would reappear in Furiosa and reappear in Fury Road had to survive as well. Using that same logic, any major characters introduced in Furiosa and which didn’t show up again in Fury Road most likely would not make it.

The problem? There goes a lot of the movie’s suspense.

Next up: One of the bigger complaints against Fury Road was that the film had a minimal plot.  The characters go out into the desert, are pursued by the forces trying to stop them, make a U-turn, then come back.  Fin.

The same cannot be said about Furiosa.  This film has plenty of plot and while its all good for the most part, I worried before seeing the film and felt after seeing it that maybe those elements simply didn’t need to be explored.

Fury Road’s “minimal” plot worked so excellently because we had to use our imagination to fill in many of the blanks regarding Furiosa.  We had to imagine the extreme traumas the character went through in the past and the moment she first appeared in that film.

Imagination is a powerful thing. I hesitated seeing Furiosa because I felt whatever traumas the character went through leading up to her first appearance in Fury Road were likely much stronger in my mind than anything I would eventually see in Furiosa.

…and this turned out to be exactly the case.

What I imagined was darker than what was presented in that movie and, if I’m being honest, I felt the first acts were especially dull. I enjoyed seeing Furiosa’s mother and the actress playing the very young Furiosa was good but… I dunno.

Things got better when Anya Taylor-Joy appears as a younger Furiosa but even then… again… my imagination simply trumped whatever was on the screen.

Worse, Furiosa has so much plot that you wind up feeling that if they were intent on making this movie, it should have been much, much longer.  Events happen too fast -again IMHO- and were presented so much information so quickly that it feels almost like we’re seeing an outline of a story rather than a story in full.  Characters thus come and go almost too quickly. A perfect example of this is the segment with Preatorain Jack. It was easily the most intriguing segment of the film but it felt like it came and went a little too fast for my taste and the relationship between Furiosa and him could have used a little more fleshing out.

Now, what is possibly an even more controversial opinion: I didn’t like the way the character of Dementus was presented in this film.

To my mind, he was a little too goofy and never quite as scary as some of the villains presented in the other Mad Max films.

When I saw the original Mad Max, the character of Toe Cutter was terrifying. In The Road Warrior, Humongous and Wez were also quite terrifying. But Dementus, as played by Chris Hemsworth (who I usually enjoy in just about any role) was a little too “goofy”.  I blame this, frankly, on George Miller himself. Even when the character went “dark” at a certain point in the film it was as if Miller couldn’t quite show the scary results in full (Note: I’m avoiding getting into too many SPOILERS here).

The effects, sadly, were also something of a let down.

Again, my favorite film of the series is The Road Warrior and seeing those practical effects was incredible back then.  I realize over time they may have lost their sting but there’s something about practical effects versus CGI that makes you think about how some of the later is just not quite as “real” and that winds up taking away much of the excitement you may feel with practical effects.

Alas, I felt too much of that when watching Furiosa.  There’s one big chase set piece and, frankly, I thought it wasn’t as exciting as most of the others Miller presented in previous films, including the more CGI heavy Fury Road.  Yes, he tried to push the limits and give us something new (paragliders!) but… it looked like what it was, a CGI enhanced set piece.

I’ve said a lot of negatives but, ultimately, I have to acknowledge my feelings are likely shaped by those expectations and the fear that I would be let down by the prequel nature of the film.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, had it been completed and released before Fury Road, I suspect would rate much higher in my mind.

As it is, I feel its ultimately a “good” film that truly didn’t need to be made, given we already could perfectly well picture all the tragedy Furiosa likely went through before Fury Road.

Still, I would recommend the film to Mad Max fans but with those reservations.

3 stars out 5.