It is really disappointing the movie isn't doing better financially. It is a solid 8/10 and the best movie I've seen since Dune 2.
Chris Hemsworth is awesome as a villain. He is interesting, smart, ruthless, and just the appropriate amount of psycho with principals to keep a horde of raving lunatics who only respect power in check.
Anna Taylor Joy is really great as an agile bad-ass that uses her wit, speed, skill, rather than her muscle to fuck people up. She was a great casting choice.
The world building is pretty great in this, but they dumbed it down for the audience. In Fury Road, it's show-don't-tell, which was incredibly effective. They did a lot of telling in this one. Nevertheless, the world feels how you expect it to and lives up to the Mad Max Universe's billing. This movie felt like it lived in the
Mad Max video game and that is a good thing.
Midway through the movie you get a Tanker chase scene that was exhilarating. It was very reminiscent of Fury Road, but added enough new interesting wrinkles to stand on it's own.
As for critiques...
- Soundtrack- I love that they used theme's from Fury Road, but most of the time the music mix felt turned down really low in favor of letting the vehicle engines rumble even more. Fury Road's soundtrack kept the action pacing forward and your hearth pumping. In Furiosa it is much more understated to it's detriment. Nowhere on the Furiosa soundtrack did I hear anything approaching the epicness of Brothers in Arms.
- Young Furiosa- Too much time was spent on her childhood (not a critique of the actress, she was good). This made the runtime of the movie too long. Why did we get 45 minutes of Young Furiosa and then a "yada yada" 15 second narration of the of The 40 Day War? This is a huge miss.
- Too Much CGI- There was so much CGI in this. It felt like nearly every scene was touched up with digital effects. It was completely unnecessary stuff too, like when Furiosa's mom gets on her motorcycle and rides off along the top of the sand dunes pursuing the kidnappers about 15 minutes into the movie... why? This might be the most disappointing critique I have because the Mad Max series own's the practical effects/stunts space in cinema history. They went to the dark-side of modern cinema. I fucking hate it.
- Furiosa- She is a great character, but should not have been the focal point of the movie. The movie should have been about Dementus and the other Warlords and have the protagonist Furiosa come in to their story. This would have been much more true to the universe that they are playing within and fit within the theme of a "Mad Max Saga".
- The Ending Credits- Not sure why they inserted shots of Fury road into the ending credits. Very strange choice that feels a bit desperate and disrespectful to the Furiosa movie. Like they thought it couldn't stand on it's own feet and they were begging people to go watch Fury Road? Totally unnecessary.
I would still highly recommend the movie and I think you are shorting yourself if you skip the theatre experience and wait for streamers.
