Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga Review: A Fascinating but Frustrating Spectacle

Childhood is a ripe playground for corruption. Innocent minds yet to be molded can switch on a dime when faced with fear or threat. In adulthood, we ache to crawl back to the safety of youth, and we may even spend a lifetime seeking its return, even if it's no longer where we belong.

George Miller's Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga takes the character established by Charlize Theron in Mad Max: Fury Road and gives her an origin story. Starting in early youth, Alyla Browne plays Furiosa before Anya Taylor-Joy steps in to star as an older version.

Miller takes the earliest image of original sin and flips it on its head, making it about survival as opposed to guilt and shame. Furiosa lives "in a place of abundance". Elsewhere, food and water are rationed, and everyone must fend for themselves.

Furiosa is ripped from her home and dragged through the wasteland to share the secret of where she comes from, but when the plan backfires, they decide to keep her hostage. Like a dog, she spends her days muzzled and leashed, with only a bedraggled teddy bear to hold.

Miller is meticulous in his spectacle. The sheer scale is commendable on its own merit, let alone what's happening inside of it. It is evident that he walked onto set with a vision and didn't stop until he got it. With that same signature hyper-realism blended with surrealist magic that made Mad Max: Fury Road a phenomenon and a six-time Oscar winner, Miller leans on what he knows to deliver another extravaganza.

The film does feel a tad inaccessible to people unfamiliar with Mad Max lore. While it is a prequel, it doesn't feel as though it's looking to invite new audiences to join the chaos. Instead, it leans heavily on some incredible performances from Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth, who deliver the compelling narrative that so desperately wants to leap out of all the ambitious action.

Miller made a point to highlight Anya Taylor-Joy's lack of dialogue in a recent interview, but he relies on what little she does have to make any sense out of his action epic.

Hemsworth and Taylor-Joy have to be commended for their efforts on the project. Taylor-Joy must put her whole body into her performance to relay any feeling, and Hemsworth equally commits his entire being to the character of Dementus, a comedic, violent, dictatorial figure who killed Furiosa's mother.

Furiosa , while thrilling, is, at times, an exhausting watch. The audience is desperate to catch its breath, and before there is time to make sense of what is happening, a large portion of the film is over, and there's little left to make of the rubble.

However, despite this, Furiosa does want to be a compelling study on revenge, hatred vs hope, and the "eye for an eye" argument that people still cling to in order to justify the actions they take after facing trauma. If only it could've been what drove the film the whole time.

It toes the line of giving into the spectacle while wanting to say so much more. The Mad Max: Fury Road lovers will likely get what they want from Furiosa , and it feels as though the Mad Max cinematic universe is only getting started.