Furiosa is 5 minutes away from the best sci-fi film of the year and the Marvel star is to blame

In 2015, no one could avoid the apocalypse. The sci-fi masterpiece Mad Max: Fury Road hit the cinemas and blew action fans away. It’s understandable that millions are now eagerly awaiting Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, which tells the prequel to the blockbuster with Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth. Is the film good? Yes, very good. But it would be even better without Hemsworth’s chatter.

Is Furiosa better than Mad Max: Fury Road? The action-packed sci-fi epic has two major strengths

Furiosa tells the story of the childhood and youth of Furiosa (Alyla Browne/Anya Taylor-Joy), who appears in Fury Road as a hardened warrior. The prequel shows her as a child who is kidnapped by the biker leader Dementus (Hemsworth) and cruelly robbed of her mother (Charlee Fraser). Only later, in the wake of Dementus’ rival Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme), does she get her Chance for revenge.

Check out the latest Furiosa trailer here:

To put it bluntly: Furiosa doesn’t quite measure up to Fury Road. But that’s not a bad thing. Fury Road was a straightforward, extremely well-made film, a brilliant snapshot, a royal flush in poker. It was as if the stars had aligned perfectly. This cannot be repeated. And Miller doesn’t try either.

Furiosa’s first strength: The action is again extremely thrilling

Furiosa’s story spans 15 years, shows a wide variety of locations, various factions, a love story, dramatic emotions and moral grey areas. Whereas Fury Road is a masterful, lean action film, Furiosa aims for a different scale. The film sees itself as a 2.5-hour epic with many different stations. The action scenes are still absolutely stunning.

When Taylor-Joy’s Furiosa speeds through the desert for the first time in an armed tanker truck, Fury Road is alive again. Motorcycles race, harpoons explode, warriors smeared with white mud throw themselves to their deaths. 1,000 secret weapons, from parachutes to gigantic morning stars, cut through an army of cruel bandits. The action is in no way inferior to its predecessorBut Miller ignites them at select points rather than letting them off the chain for 120 minutes.

As in the previous film, he chose a visually stunning production with an ultra-dynamic camera, time-lapse zooms and panoramic shots. Every cut is spot on. And if you watch the trailer feared the digital look of the filmcan rest assured. It doesn’t ruin the action epic. The focus is on Furiosa, everything else fits well into the flow of the flashy images.

Furiosa’s second strength: Anya Taylor-Joy is simply stunning

Anya Taylor-Joy is the inferno that makes the film burn. She only has 30 lines of dialogue (I felt it was less), but she embodies Furiosa so perfectly that she carries the film in every emotional state. She shoots and beats and stabs with every muscle fiberthat it pushes us, the audience, into our seats. Taylor-Joy’s Furiosa hates and loves with such intensity that it becomes painful. She burns through the film like an open wound.

The Furiosa film has a major weakness and it becomes particularly clear in a Chris Hemsworth scene

When Miller turns his gaze away from Furiosa, the film’s only weakness becomes apparent: the banter between Hemsworth’s Dementus and his allies and opponents eventually becomes irrelevant and boring. Their characters are useful as grotesques or decorations, but not as perspective bearers of Furiosa’s world. This becomes painfully apparent in the finale. Beware of spoilers!

There, Dementus faces death at the hands of Furiosa. And he holds a Speech like they gave 1000 villains in 1000 movies: He and Furiosa are the same. He too has lost his love and hope and has become hard and brutal because of it. The dialogue is intended to emphasize Furiosa’s steep and at times dark development.

Dementus uses meaningless words to open up a new perspective that isn’t even needed. I don’t care about Dementus’ backstory. I don’t care about the sociopolitical mass tragedies of this dystopia. Hemsworth’s words would have weight if we had gotten to know Furiosa as a gentle naive person. But she is an angry warrior from the very first second. Her toughness is a given.

So Chris Hemsworth’s character should keep his mouth shutwhen her words fizzle out so senselessly. The moment seems like a kind of gap filler that is supposed to further enhance Furiosa’s moment of revenge, but briefly robs the film of some of its power. It’s good that it is only one of very few dull moments that are quickly forgotten.

Thanks to visually stunning action, an explosive leading actress and an emotionally effective story, the sci-fi blockbuster is an extremely entertaining almost-masterpiecewhich is only a few meters behind Fury Road. Miller’s apocalypse will also ignite a wildfire in 2024.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga has been running since May 23, 2025 in German cinemas.