Furiosa, the next Mad Max movie, is set before the events of Fury Road. As you can tell, it’s all about the origin story of the Furiosa character, started by Charlize Theron and played by Anya Taylor-Joy in her younger form. It takes place about 15 years before the events of Fury Road, and it looks bonkers.
It’s Chris Hemsworth versus Immortan Joe versus Furiosa. So this is like the three-way battle going on during the trailer, and we’ll break it all down.
Starting at the beginning of the Furiosa trailer, we will work our way through, shot by shot, talking about Easter eggs and wtf moments about the other Mad Max movies. There are a couple of Easter eggs here in the trailer that you probably detected, like a couple of mirrored shots and a couple of familiar things.
Those of you who have been clamoring for something like this, like something as big and weird that has nothing to do with Marvel or DC or big comic book movies, this is what you’ve been waiting for. Does it not look like it will be crazy in the best possible way?
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga Release Date
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga movie will be released on May 24, 2024. That will come out pretty close to Dune 2, which is now coming out a little bit earlier in March.
The synopsis for the movie tells us that as the entire world falls, young Furiosa will be snatched from their homeland and will fall into the hands of the warlord Dementus, who’s Chris Hemsworth’s character. They put him in a prosthetic nose, so I think he doesn’t look quite as much like Thor.
Sweeping through the wasteland, they come across the Citadel, presided over by the Immortan Joe, who was the main villain of Mad Max Fury Road. He’s also still the main villain of this. But the whole idea is that you have Chris Hemsworth’s warlord, Dementus, fighting Immortan Joe for control of the Citadel during the movie.
Furiosa is sort of caught between them, trying to survive long enough so that she can escape and try to find the home that she was stolen from. That’s basically what the synopsis continues to say.
Will Tom Hardy’s Mad Max Be In Furiosa Movie?
There are a couple of big-time jumps during the trailer because they cover her origin story from when she was very young. But when she’s like the full Anya Tayor-Joy adult version of the character that’s 15 years before the events of Fury Road.
I think part of the idea behind them calling it “Furiosa” with the subtitle “A Mad Max Saga” is because the Mad Max character probably will not appear in the movie, or if he does, maybe in the post-credits scene. Otherwise, they would probably call the movie Mad Max Furiosa.
I do not think that Tom Hardy’s version of Mad Max will appear during the movie. Famously, on set, Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron got into many battles. There was a bunch of bad blood between them on set. They’ve since made up because the movie was like nine years ago. That’s how long it’s been since Fury Road came out.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga Trailer Breakdown
The beginning of The Furiosa trailer starts with Anya Taylor Joy’s adult version of Furiosa walking away from her bike, looking out into the wasteland. This is meant to mirror the shot from the very beginning of Mad Max Fury Road with Tom Hardy’s Mad Max character doing the same thing.
They cut it with a voiceover of what sounded like her mother telling her to find her way home. Like, “No matter what you do, find your way home eventually.” Later, in the trailer, we see what looks like her home, where she was stolen from.
They call it the Green Place of Many Mothers. And I think the idea is that it gets raided by warlords, Immortan Joe, this Dementus character, and other random warlords in the wasteland for breeding purposes.
There were a lot of women at the Citadel during Fury Road. So I think part of the idea is that most of them get stolen from other places, or they just grow up in that environment. I’m not sure why she left her bike; it might be because it ran out of gas.
In the wasteland, the two most precious resources are gasoline and water. Normally, I would just say water, but like everything they have, it runs on gasoline. That’s part of the whole metaphor of George Miller’s Mad Max movies, and it’s sort of like the downfall of society. So that’s why you don’t see any of the characters or any of the Mad Max movies using any kind of solar power or electric power or anything like that.
Then they have what looks like Dementus’ biker gang with his bikers. Furiosa seems like she becomes one of those at some point. Like he’s the person who steals her from the green place of many mothers where she originally grew up. And they give us a big info dump like a bunch of exposition with these titles flying at the screen, explaining sort of the backstory of what happened before the events of this movie.
The Mad Max Timeline
When it says 45 years after the collapse, that’s meant to have taken place between the first two Mad Max movies like Mad Max and then The Road Warrior. So many people were like, “Wait a minute, didn’t Tom Hardy play the Mad Max character in Fury Road 15 years after this? The timeline doesn’t make sense”.
The funny way that George Miller addressed this is that he said he didn’t care too much about the really specific internal canon of his Mad Max movies. He would just focus on telling really interesting stories with the new movies.
So if their little details and the timeline don’t add up or something like that, that’s on purpose. George Miller intended it to be that way. It is sort of like the Spider-Man Marvel eight years later kind of issue that cropped up, and people are like, “Wait a minute, The Avengers battle didn’t happen eight years ago. The timeline is wrong”. The Marvel people care way more about that internal timeline than George Miller does.
In the trailer, it says, “Furiosa is going to devote the rest of her life to finding her way home,” obviously by the events of Mad Max Fury Road that still have not happened. I love the description here: “This is her Odyssey”; it makes it sound very, very old school, like a Greek Odyssey.
We get a shot of the very young version of Furiosa, who’s just been stolen from her home with a little teddy bear, and a younger version of Chris Hemsworth’s Dementus character talking to the rest of his biker gang. Notice he says, “Lady and Gentlemen,” because she’s the only woman that’s there with them. It’s not clear why he stole her from her home. Maybe it was initially for breeding purposes.
Maybe it was because of happenstance; maybe she just got swept up in their raid. He looks absolutely bonkers, and because this was filmed in Australia, he can use his natural Australian accent. So, even though he is putting on a special voice for the movie, it’s much closer to his natural speaking voice than his voice as Thor. I cannot wait to see some of the Thor memes when this comes out though.
The Crazy Vehicles In Mad Max Furiosa
There are a couple of shots from across the movie in different places. I think this monster truck is meant to belong to Chris Hemsworth’s character.
George Miller talked about a couple of different cars during the movie. And I think the idea is that some of the characters will get a bunch of different cars at different points. They’re a bunch of Immortan Joe’s men with his gasoline truck. Then we see younger Immortan Joe versus Chris Hemsworth’s Dementus.
This person on the bike that looks like it’s raiding Immortan Joe’s gasoline truck is probably part of Dementus’ gang. It seems like when he’s vying for control of the Citadel, they find the gasoline truck, and they try to raid it just like anybody else would try to do, just because gasoline is so precious.
Notice Furiousa is putting the black makeup on her forehead like we saw her wear during Mad Max Fury Road. And there’s that wheel behind her, too. It seems like that room for Mad Max Fury Road is where they all took the wheels from when they went on missions.
