FURIOSA and Why it Failed

By this time most people are aware that FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA is just tanking at the box office and even getting yanked from theaters like that guy you know who can't handle his booze at your favorite bar. But why? Was it really that bad? Most critics I've listen to claimed it was a perfectly enjoyable film but that audiences turned away because there was no Mad Max in Mad Max. But was that really the case? FURY ROAD did just fine, great even and was a tour de force without its titular character. It had all the gear porn, action sequences (mostly executed with practical effects) and was led by Furiosa herself with the insanely talented Charlize Theron in the lead and complimented by the master of rage Tom Hardy as Max Rockatansky. It had all the things. The things we loved. Character, story and payoff. It proved once again that a strong female lead in a dude fest is not just embraced but celebrated if they are written intelligently and with depth. So what went wrong with FURIOSA? It had the brilliantly talented Anya Taylor-Joy (The Queen's Gambit) as Furiosa and paired with the strength of Chris Hemsworth as the evil Demntus and helmed again by director/writer George Miller. So what bloody happened?

Well, a lot of things and none of them are obvious on the surface. The lack of a Mad Max character I think is weak criticism. Fury Road proved that. So let's start with the premise. Furiosa is a prequel of a prequel which no one asked for and is an origin story of Furiosa. Though she's interesting she isn't a character which begged for an answer as to where she came from. Finding out how she lost her arm is cool I guess but does anyone really care? Obviously fans didn't. Why she's named Furiosa is anyone's guess. Yeah, she's precocious and bold and all but it's not like she has severe anger issues that would warrant the name. Whatever, that's the least of the film's problems. And she's not just named 'Furiosa' but Imperator Furiosa to you thank you very much. What an Imperator is I don't know nor do they explain it. Is it like emperor adjacent? Someone sort of imperial but not entirely? I don't have the patience to figure out the vague etymology. So back to the film itself.

The main problem is in the storytelling which is almost always the cause for failure. What's the problem with the story you may ask? Because there is no main character driving the story. But what about Furiosa? She's the lead right? Well…yes but not really. For the vast majority of the film she lurks silently in the background observing and keeping her identity hidden. In other words - she is a completely passive character in her own film with no real agency until late in the game. You can't do that. It's boring. It's a filmmaking 101 mistake. If you don't have a strong lead character advancing the charge then the audience not only has no hero to follow but no motivation to watch and the whole thing falls apart. Which it did. It seems Hemsworth's character drives most of the action, but he's the villain and it's an unwieldy thing to have your villain making all the big choices while everyone else just reacts. George Miller should know better. But to give credit where credit is due, Hemsworth is fantastic in his role. Probably the bext character in the film. But though he's the bad guy he really isn't that bad by comparisson and that was in the writing. Tom Hardy's Rockatansky? That was a bad guy.

Okay so what is the film about? I suspect I'll give everything away, so this is a spolier alert. Okay, we meet Furiosa as a child of about seven or so living in this Edenic forest oasis and she gets kidnapped by Hemsworth's gang who happened to stumble upon the place and find her cutting the fuel lines on their motorcycles. Fair enough, I would have kidnapped her too.

As she's being driven through the desert back to Hemsworth's camp her mother comes after her but she gets captured and killed and little Furiosa is forced to watch because she was plucky enough to go back and try and save her and gets captured herself so the story can happen. I guess this is the roots of a revenge story but that doesn't really manifest itself until nearly the end of the film. And even the bad guys seem to forget where this oasis place even is. One would think they Oh, and the forest oaisis place also has a magical tree. It's a symbol of peace or something. Before her mother dies she gives Furiosa a seed to this tree to keep safe because…the future of life or something. She hides it in her hair for the remainder of the film because apparently that's the safest place to keep it despite all the battles to come which include explosions, crashes, fire and baffling plot points. She occasionally sticks in her jaw to keep it moist. I know a lot of people hate that word but moist she kept it. Moist moist seed of future hope.

Anyways, Hemsworth tries to raise her as his own daughter after his died but she's not having any of it. When his gang encounters the denizens of "The Citadel" which is this massive, mountainous fortress with massive resources, he threatens to take it over. But they're like Nah, we'll just pick you apart with sky hooks and make you flee. Which they do. It's here we get the origin story of the pasty white guys we see in all the other films. They're story? Well, they're just subservient skinny dudes with a paint job and armed with explosive spears and all lined up along a trestle like plucked chickens. So if you were nagged over the years as to where they came from, you now have your answer. Thank you, George.

Then everything just becomes tedious, boring and nonsensical. Hemsworth's gang (Bad Guys A) again attack the Citadel (Bad Guys B) and they work out some sort of trade agreement. Stellar drama, guys. Gripping stuff. Anyways, young Furiosa gets traded to the Citadel peeps and somehow manages to grow up in their ranks without being discovered as a girl because she merely shaves her head and doesn't speak. That's a helluva conceit to ask of an audience. In the presumably fifteen years of being there this model gorgeous woman never found herself in a situation where her gender wasn't called into question? It's a bridge to far for me to accept. Doesn't she have to pee at some point? Meanwhile there are still more bloody negotiations and plotting and by the 45 minute mark I suddenly didn't care anymore. The audience doesn't care how much diesel and cantaloupes you have to trade or the conditions by which they're negotiated. It's dull, convoluted and many of the decisions moving forward just don't make any sense. And we're just left floundering because no one has any moral agency or decision making skills. It's just bad vs kinda bad and you're left with no one to root for. They all just suck as humans and Furiosa is just hanging out in the background still.

It's not until ¾ of the way through the film that Furiosa finally takes on some kind agency. Her one true companion whose name I forget is leading a doomed food delivery when they are attacked by Hemsworth's gang and she saves the day. The battle is cool and all but lacks tension because we're all at a loss as to its purpose. They have to get these watermelons to the people who are attacking them? It makes no sense. Anyways Furiosa's identity is revealed when her hat flies off revealing her long dark hair and the dude is like "whatevs." All of this hiding and in the end no one really cares if she was a woman or not. What follows next is just incoherant.

Then they drive into ambushes which are clearly ambushes and are shocked when they get ambushed. All the pasty white guys have been picked off like clay pigeons and now everyone is dead except companon guy and Furiosa. Then companion guys gets brutally murdered, Furiosa cuts her own arm off to escape, manages to recover and builds her iconic mechanical arm. How she knows the complexity of connecting nerves and musceles to this thing is anyone's guess but whatever, it looks cool.

But now comes the final showdown. She's given the most badass of muscle cars and we know that Hemsworth is toast as she roars across the desert dunes to finish him. It's not even a contest at this point. He's injured, alone and helpless which drains all of the tension from the final encounter. He tries his best to talk himself out of it but we know he's doomed. At no point is she at any real risk which renders her final revenge boring. Now Miller gives it his best effort. He shows multiple iterations of his death according to legend - He's shot, crucified, left for dead but ultimately this was not his end. It was, how shall I say this, very dick centric which leads me to another strange observation.

Miller has one strange obsession in the film - crotches. Yes, character's crotches. Hemsworth's character has his dead daughter's bunny doll chained to his crotch. Fat creepy guy with the Citadel has a gas mask with a long tube strapped self consciously to his junk and we get characters named "Rictus Erectus," "Scrotus" and even a dude named "Smeg." It's offputting. So let me just come out and reveal Furiosa's final revenge. That tree seed she's been carrying around all these years? The one that symbolizes life, hope and the future? She buries it in Hemsworth's crotch to feed off his desiccating body for all eternity blooming a simulacrum of the original tree as he's helplessly trapped alive until he dies. Yeah, here's to you, Mom and the vision of the future you wished for me to carry on in love. What happens to the tree once his crotch food gives out is anyone's guess. Don't think about it too much.

So with her revenge attained Furiosa saves the captured women of the Citadel and escapes unnoticed to presumably take them back to the Edenic forest of her youth. This is also accomplished by stealing a 60 foot battle truck which no one notices. I guess everyone was asleep. But the future awaits so who's going to argue?

Revenge stories rarely have the payoff they desire. They're ultimately cold and make us no better than the perpetrators they're aimed at. Justice is not the same as revenge and though this was not the ultimate failing of this film it certainly reveals its flaws. Evil vs evil is pointless and boring. Audiences want to be lifted up and shown a true north where good triumphs through sacrifice and by characters that inhabit something transcendent that we to can aspire to. Heroic characters take the lead through failure but getting back on their feet and pointing the way for all of us. Storytelling should make us aspire to something better. The characters we wanted to be. They are the Luke Skywalker's, the Ellen Rippley's and even the Erin Brockovich's. Furiosa ultimately failed because we had no real hero and no moral triumph. Audiences are longing for more and Hollywood is failing them.