Furiosa – A Mad Max Saga

One thing you don't expect from a 45-year-old movie universe is a creative and ambitious fifth installment. But then again, there aren't many movie universes created, written, and directed solely by one single-minded auteur for nearly five decades. George Lucas surrendered control of the Star Wars universe to Disney, but another George — Australian director George Miller — has overseen the production of every frame of the long-running Mad Max saga, ever since Mel Gibson first donned the eponymous road warrior's battered leather jacket in 1979.

Miller's vision of a near-future Australia (and the wider world) sliding gradually into societal collapse, anarchy, and environmental apocalypse has stood the test of time largely because real-world events have served to make the premise of the first movie seem more horribly prophetic with each passing year. Combined with his unerring ability to cast a jaundiced eye on the worst aspects of human nature while delivering high-octane schlock, Miller has distilled a cinematic formula that still feels relevant today.

In 2015, Miller returned to the Wasteland after a 30-year hiatus with Mad Max: Fury Road. Fury Road introduced a new central character: Imperator Furiosa, a battle-hardened lieutenant of cult warlord Immortan Joe. After Furiosa’s huge presence in the film, Miller took a wide detour from the continuing tales of Max Rockatansky to give Furiosa a movie of her own.

Spanning fifteen years, Furiosa's origin story is an epic in every sense of the word. The film opens with a ten-year-old Furiosa living an idyllic childhood in a hidden desert oasis — the Green Place. The peace is shattered, however, when biker raiders kidnap Furiosa and take her to their leader Dementus (played by Chris Hemsworth sporting a mountain of makeup and false teeth). Refusing to give up the oasis' location even when Dementus tortures her mother to death before her, Furiosa becomes Dementus' surrogate daughter. 

Years later, Dementus' horde succeeds in capturing the only source of fuel for the local warlords, Gastown, forcing the leader of the Citadel, Immortan Joe, to make a deal with Dementus. This finally brings the young Furiosa to Joe’s attention. Imprisoning her with his harem of broodmare ‘wives’, Furiosa escapes, disguises herself as a mute boy, and disappears into the ranks of Joe's army.

It's only at this point — more than an hour into the movie — that Anya Taylor-Joy takes over the role of adult Furiosa from the younger character played by Alyla Browne. Taylor-Joy inhabits the adult Furiosa with almost balletic grace; even in the throes of brutal action sequences, she is a sharp contrast with Charlize Theron's sturdier physicality in Fury Road. 

The film as a whole has an epic sweep and grandiosity that is new to the franchise. At times, it can make for some odd juxtapositions, such as when Miller's penchant for Australian ‘bogan’ humor is immediately followed by a breathtaking desert panorama that wouldn't look out of place in Lawrence of Arabia.For fans bred on the grimy, low-budget, pedal-to-the-metal formula of the original trilogy, Furiosa may seem rambling and bloated; but despite the quixotic mix of ingredients, it succeeds in widening the scope of the Mad Max universe while delivering some prime cuts of action along the way.

The Watchers

Hollywood has had a somewhat dubious relationship with the island of Ireland over the years (at least from an Irish standpoint). Every once in a while, the studios decide that it's time to hire a writer from Beverly Hills to pen an ‘authentic’ romantic comedy set on the Emerald Isle, starring a forty-something, former A-list American actress as a recently-divorced New York advertising executive who finds true love over a pint of Guinness in an Irish country pub. All such films must include country bumpkins in chunky Aran-knit sweaters, a hilarious slapstick incident involving a neurotic sidekick with a Bronx accent, and log fires everywhere — never mind that it’s July.  

The Watchers offers a very different view of the Irish countryside. Based on a novel by A. M. Shine, this folklore-horror hybrid is the directorial debut of Ishana Night Shyamalan, daughter of Indian horror veteran M. Night Shyamalan, who financed and produced the movie. Dakota Fanning stars as Mina, a young American woman living in self-imposed exile in Galway, struggling to deal with the trauma of the car crash that killed her mother and estranged her from her twin sister. 

Vaping her way through another dull shift at a pet shop, Mina is tasked with delivering a rare parrot to a client in Belfast. The long car journey takes her deep into a dense and seemingly endless forest, where her car promptly breaks down and she loses cell service. Seeing no other option, she picks up her priceless parrot and plunges into the trees.

After becoming thoroughly lost in the encroaching dusk, Mina stumbles upon an older woman, Madeline, who guides her urgently to the only available shelter: a concrete structure called The Coop. A single room featuring a mirrored glass wall facing the forest, the Coop is an odd cross between a birdwatching blind and a nuclear bunker. Inside, Mina finds two other people, Daniel and Ciara, who have been trapped inside for months. Madeline explains that they are all held prisoner by the mysterious ‘Watchers’, shape-shifting nocturnal creatures that congregate each night to observe their human captives, killing anyone who attempts to escape.

If this scenario is beginning to sound contrived and preposterous, you're not wrong. The superhuman suspension of disbelief required to buy into a race of eldritch subterranean horrors a few miles off a main road in Ireland isn’t helped by an uneven, exposition-heavy script. Scenes in the Coop feel at times like an experimental improvised theater workshop spliced by accident into a creature feature.

This brings us to the elephant in the room. Despite being directed by his daughter, this movie is stylistically indistinguishable from every M. Night Shyamalan movie you've ever seen. Fortunately, that's not a bad thing in this case. The suffocating gloom strikes exactly the right tone. We can only hope that Ishana finds a way to step out from the long shadow of her father with her next project.

Recently arrived in the Tri-Cities from Scotland, Damian Beagan is a former freelancer who has written music and movie reviews for UK websites.