Without permits, caution or anything to prove except everything, director George Miller shot “Mad Max” in 1977 on some beautifully forlorn stretches of Australian road with an ensemble of eager maniacs activating, and hyperactivating, a tale of a desolate near-future. At one point, a very young Mel Gibson as Max Rockatansky, the road warrior-lawman on the edge of insanity, mourns the killing of his boss and comrade. “He was so full of living, you know?” he says, fighting back tears in the super-healthy guy way.
“He ran the franchise on it.” Forty-six years of rough road later, here we are at the fifth “Mad Max” movie. Now 79, Miller remains an action fantasist of the highest order and has become the spiritual if very-much-alive cousin of the eulogized character in his first smash hit.
(Its budget was $350,000, roughly $1.5 million in 2024 dollars.) “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” is a prequel to 2015’s lavishly nutty “Mad Max: Fury Road,” and is the work of a director full of living, albeit guided by an ever-darker vision of humankind barreling toward the cliff.
He has run the franchise on it. I’ll try to explain why I’m all over the highway on “Furiosa,” even as I’m recommending it. The best of it is spectacular, tapping into so many different ways to create and assemble images in contemporary big-budget filmmaking, you can barely keep track.
The story belongs to Furiosa, who we meet as a young girl played by Alyla Browne. In the barely human pa.
