George Miller’s most provocative Mad Max film rivals Fury Road as the Best in the Franchise with a stellar 4K UHD package

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George Miller’s Mad Max saga has long been defined by its breakneck speed and relentless forward momentum. Each sequence harkens back to silent-era film grammar, every action screaming louder than a thousand words as Miller pulls out every visual trick in the book to immerse audiences in his disturbing, inventive vision of the apocalypse. Furiosa sees Miller revive the world of the wasteland with no shortage of mad creativity and stunning set pieces–but what truly allows Furiosa to thrive is that it isn’t a Mad Max film at all. 

At least initially, the same could be said of Mad Max: Fury Road, as Miller introduces the instantly iconic Imperator Furiosa, the cruel warlord Immortan Joe, and the tripartite kingdoms of the Citadel, Bullet Farm, and Gastown. However, Fury Road primarily unfolds through Max’s perspective as he’s introduced as a war-boy captive, with the struggles of Furiosa and the brides of Joe evolving as a supporting arc to Max’s perennial revitalization of purpose. Furiosa breaks away from Max Rockatansky’s redemption story, allowing Miller to explore similarly complimentary perspectives in the wasteland, while also delving into darker, more provocative places that our Road Warrior hadn’t yet trod.

Where Fury Road is a non-stop action film, Furiosa is a 15-year odyssey of patient vengeance, unfolding with the simmering tension of the first Mad Max film. As Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy) imbues herself in the world of the Citadel, she deconstructs and rebuilds her sense of identity to physical and mental extremes, all in the pursuit of climatic vengeance against the cruel warlord Dementus (Chris Hemsworth). Gender roles come to the fore in ways that Max’s secure masculinity was never quite threatened, as Furiosa’s identity as a woman goes from commodified (as a member of Dementus’ wagon train, then bartered to Immortan Joe as a peace offering) to concealed as she passes as a mute boy in Joe’s motor pool. Max’s survival instincts rendered him almost asexual after the death of his wife; Furiosa’s pursuit of vengeance is similarly ascetic, yet she still forms and loses strong connections that become crucial to her journey.

In fellow War Rig driver Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke), Furiosa has the chance to reclaim an independent, human life like the one stolen from her as a child in the Green Place. Importantly, their relationship isn’t overtly romantic; it’s expressed in Furiosa and Jack’s mutual respect and care for one another rather than something more physical. What’s more, it’s a relationship that allows Furiosa to reclaim something repressed throughout the years of the film: her voice. 

While the above may still seem ripped from George Miller’s Art of Road War, Furiosa’s execution feels like Miller stripping down his familiar storytelling techniques to their bare essentials, pivoting them to someplace new and exciting along the way. As the film’s central, all-timer chase sequence shows, Furiosa would have likely found a way to escape the Citadel and confront Dementus regardless. However, her relationship with Jack is so vital in developing the skills Furiosa’s mother first instilled in her, and most importantly, it helps Furiosa carve out the space to become a woman whose power isn’t founded in her ability to be meat for men. As an Imperator, Furiosa can make her voice heard, and in her growing relationship with Jack, she manages to tap back into the vulnerability and humanity that was once equally repressed. Both Mad Max and Furiosa explore how the apocalypse distills humanity to its base impulses and ideals. Yet, where Max has been on similar journeys of self-rediscovery, Furiosa’s story is far more deeply tied to the immutable core of her being. 

Furiosa is also the first Mad Max film to have just as strong of an arc for its villain as its protagonist. While Toecutter, Lord Humungus, Aunty Entity, and Immortan Joe are all iconic in their own right, Dementus is such a thrillingly realized tragic figure in ways that parallel and contradict Furiosa’s multi-year warpath. As Miller illustrates in the accompanying special features, Dementus is the Wasteland’s showman, constantly adapting situations to his advantage by showcasing how he (and only he) can meet the needs of others. Like the Wasteland itself, though, he’s a deeply hollow and cynical man.  Ruined by the loss of his family, much like Max and so many others, Dementus finds purpose in the found objects left behind by the world. But where others see value in rusty vehicles and broken goggles, Dementus retools the misfits and psychos of the Wasteland like a corrupt messiah into an army willing to do his bidding. As the film progresses, however, Miller systematically undermines Dementus until he’s reduced to nothing. Dementus cosplays as a savior or villain, seizing upon iconography where he can find it, much like his last-minute transformation into “Dementus the Red” on the way to the Citadel after a chance encounter with “Sky Blood” from a War-Boy, and an exciting weaponization of Hemsworth’s pop culture clout as part of the MCU. However, like his personality, these are all empty, unearned symbols that crumble under the weight of others’ true power. Dementus never fully understands why and how others achieve immortality or resilience in the Wasteland–how they transcend their suffering to mythic status–and that’s what makes him such an effective presence in Furiosa.

Where so much of Fury Road’s exposition is inferred “on the run” per Miller, Furiosa allows us to witness how her trials seed and grow to triumphant or tragic fruition. These moments are couched in the incredibly non-verbal storytelling that Miller’s pioneered for decades, but the length of the journey, enduring it alongside Furiosa, is far more the point this go-around. Myth and memory are nothing without time. It’s time–how it passes, how there’s never enough of it, how it changes everything in its path–that gives these icons their lasting power. It’s time that gives Furiosa the skills and tools needed to confront the moment she’s honed her life toward; it’s time that sees the color drain from Dementus like all hope, until he’s nothing but a wizened despot fleeing the consequences of his actions in the desert. For a story of how this savior of the Wasteland came to be, it would be a disservice if Furiosa had been forced to operate at the frenetic pace of its predecessor. Instead, Furiosa is gratefully indebted to Miller’s previous film Three Thousand Years of Longing, a work whose unrestrained intimacy and provocative questioning of the nature of storytelling allow Miller to bring patience and depth to such an explosive franchise.

This evolution as a filmmaker also allows Furiosa to climax in one of the best scenes of 2024, and possibly Miller’s entire career. In a moment that echoes Von Stroheim’s silent classic Greed, years of near-wordless internal and external carnage culminate in a conversation at gunpoint in vast desert nothingness. It’s a sobering meditation on the useful fuel vengeance and hate provide for decades, while acknowledging the empty catharsis that lies at the end once that emotional tank runs dry. At first glance, it feels like an anticlimax after two-and-a-half hours of signature Miller mayhem. There’s no explosive finale, no overpowering sense of humanity triumphing over bleak cynicism. Miller acknowledges our impulsive craving for “righteous perversities and witty mutilations,” but that’s not what he’s aiming for. There isn’t any growth and future found in such baseless satisfaction–just surrender to the same darkness that Dementus calls his home. Instead, in a beautifully mythic fashion befitting a storyteller like Miller, Furiosa finds literal and figurative ways to have hope grow from the soil of hate. It’s an image and ending that’s fittingly polarizing, a Three Thousand Years of Longing leap of imagination that seems somewhat out of place from the Mad Max universe’s harsh realism.

However, it aligns perfectly with the larger ethos of both Mad Max and Miller himself–it’s an injection of fantasy that, regardless of its veracity, lends an emotional truth to a beloved hero,  providing the champions of her story the fuel they need to survive in a hopeless world. 

Video/Audio

Warner Brothers present Furiosa in its original 2.39:1 aspect ratio in 4K UHD with Dolby Vision and HDR10. Audio options include a main English Dolby Atmos track, as well as an accompanying Dolby Digital 5.1-Surround track in English, French, Italian (also in Atmos), and Spanish. English Descriptive Audio tracks for the US and UK are present. Subtitle options include English SDH, French, Italian, Spanish, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, and Swedish. These subtitle options are also included for all of the accompanying special features.

While some may miss the more crisp, grainy cinematography of Fury Road, this 4K transfer of Furiosa dazzlingly preserves the pointedly hyper-digital comic book feel of cinematographer Simon Duggan’s visuals. The granular found-object detail is well represented, from the scribbles on the face and clothes of George Shevtsov’s History Man to the intriguing ruins of the Car-thedral. Practical effects blend well with their more computer-generated counterparts, especially when flames and twisted metal grow to exaggerated proportions. In contrast with the more unified color palettes of blacks, browns, and reds of Fury Road, there’s a heightened embrace of primary reds, blues, and yellows, granting Furiosa extreme pops of color and vitality.

The Dolby Atmos track absolutely rocks, with a symphonic blend of motors and desert ambiance alongside Tom Holkenborg’s score. Every rumbling engine in Furiosa sounds so distinct from one another, evenly distributed across speaker systems to create an immersive experience. Holkenborg’s score utilizes this methodology well, as everything from synths to organic instruments like didgeridoos push deep into the far ranges of sound system capabilities.

Special Features

• Highway to Valhalla – In Pursuit of Furiosa: The labor of love among the package’s special features, this is an hour-long comprehensive making-of documentary that tracks the mammoth history of Furiosa’s production. Beginning with the completed script that was written alongside Fury Road, we see how Furiosa was a constantly evolving saga that reflected George Miller’s fascination for storytelling and myth-making. There are some incredible snapshots of world-building here on the production design side (the phone wall! Five bike teddy!), but crucially there are gems of BTS footage of the early rehearsal process featuring Miller, Taylor-Joy, Hemsworth, and Burke drilling into the personal mythologies and internal battles these characters face when fighting for their lives in the Mad Max universe. 
• Darkest Angel – Anya Taylor-Joy as Furiosa: Taylor-Joy, Miller, and the costume crew discuss the vulnerable process of creating a new take on Charlize Theron’s iconic character, from the individual hairs punched into the wigs made to create the crew-cut caps, to stunts and motor training, to the individual relationships cultivated alongside actors Tom Burke and Chris Hemsworth. One interesting anecdote, in particular, revolves around the implementation of Furiosa’s metal arm–in how the character, merging with the objects that the creatures of the Citadel worship, seizes control of a new method of iconography and authority. 
• Motorbike Messiah – Chris Hemsworth as Dementus: Hemsworth and Miller discuss the Greco-Roman inspirations between Hemsworth’s megalomaniac lead role, as well as the flamboyant yet hollow and unfulfilling rage that Dementus is meant to evoke in the long line of Mad Max villains. It’s interesting to watch Hemsworth go out of his comfort zone to lock onto a far more abrasive and villainous character than he’s previously tackled–notably in how he collaborated with Miller to focus on what they refer to as “the pageantry of the tyrant.” 
• Furiosa: Stowaway to Nowhere: An in-depth depiction of the grueling 76-day shooting period necessary to capture Furiosa’s centerpiece action sequence, from the combination of on-location and CGI trickery that emphasized seamlessly blending various stunts with jerry-rigged effects, on-set improvisation, and the trust needed to endlessly repeat various actions and takes in the faith that it would assemble into the sequence’s dazzling final edit.
• Metal Beasts and Holy Motors: Production designer Gibson takes us through the imaginative found-object history of many of Furiosa’s vehicles, including a brief crash course into the various subcultures found even within Dementus’ “locust plague” of motorbike riders, how Dementus’ chrome bike chariot draws inspiration from William Wyler’s Ben-Hur and jet-engines, the process of casting the murals on this early form of the War Rig, and how monster-trucks were retrofitted to fit within Miller’s vision for the vehicles of the wasteland. Gotta love how decades later, Miller still remembers the names and backstories of individual car designs.

Furiosa is now available on 4K, Blu-ray, and DVD courtesy of Warner Brothers.