On July 16, Netflix will lose one of 2024’s most underrated movies, and one of the best action movies I’ve seen in the last five years, when Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga exits the streamer for a while.
This spinoff from the Mad Max films was the first movie in the franchise without the title character.
Instead, Anya Taylor-Joy played a younger version of Furiosa, who first appeared in Mad Max: Fury Road nearly a decade earlier.
Before this saga hits the Fury Road, here are three reasons to watch Furiosa before it leaves Netflix.
Anya Taylor-Joy Establishes Herself As An Action Star
Following in Charlize Theron‘s footsteps couldn’t have been easy for Taylor-Joy. Theron’s performance as Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road was instantly iconic in 2015, and that paved the way for the actress to headline several other action movies.
Taylor-Joy has indicated that she didn’t have a very good time while filming Furiosa, but that didn’t detract from her performance. Despite having only a handful of lines in the entire movie, Taylor-Joy conveys Furiosa’s intensity through her eyes and body language. Furiosa practically seethes with anger any time that Dementus (Hemsworth) is onscreen, and she’s very believable when enraged. If Taylor-Joy wants to be in more action films after this, we’ll be the first in line to watch.
Chris Hemsworth Plays an Enjoyably Goofy Villain
Ever since the 2016 Ghostbusters movie and Thor: Ragnarok, Chris Hemsworth has embraced a very goofy onscreen persona. It doesn’t work with every character, but it does for Furiosa’s nemesis, Dementus. There’s something inherently hilarious about Dementus’ inability to understand why Furiosa hates him early in the movie. He thinks “adopting” her will make Furiosa forget that he’s responsible for the death of her mother and for keeping her from returning home.
Alon Amir/Warner Bros. Pictures The Mad Max universe is expanding with an origin story for Imperator Furiosa. Fans of the post-apocalyptic action film were introduced to Furiosa, portrayed by Charlize Theron, in the 2015 film Mad Max: Fury Road. She is a war captain under warlord Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) but ultimately decides to turn […]
What makes Dementus an effective villain is that he’s more than capable of defending himself from Furiosa’s attempts to kill him when she grows up. If anything, Dementus is too competent in a fight for Furiosa to easily handle, even though he proves to be a nuclear-class moron who has run Gastown into the ground. Dementus also accidentally maims himself by putting chains where there should be no chains, which supplies one of the movie’s biggest laughs.
It really says something when Furiosa decides that Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme) is the lesser evil than Dementus, even though she clearly despises them both.
‘Furiosa’ Features Incredible Action Sequences
The biggest knock against Furiosa is that it isn’t Fury Road. That film is widely regarded as one of the greatest action movies ever made, and Furiosa simply can’t match that. It was, however, one of the best action movies since Fury Road, and director George Miller‘s practical approach to filmmaking shines during those sequences.
Unfortunately for sci-fi fans, Netflix just doesn’t have a lot of movies that fall in that genre. Sometimes that makes it very difficult to find a fresh option among the sci-fi films that it does have. There are a handful of big-budget original sci-fi movies on Netflix, but they simply aren’t as good as the […]
Furiosa‘s action fills the screen with spectacle that’s easy to follow and dazzling visuals. Frankly, it blows a lot of its competitors away, and it should have been recognized as a great film in its own right. Furiosa even brings the story of its title character full circle to fit in nicely with the beginning of Fury Road. If we never get another Mad Max movie, the franchise had a worthy swansong.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is streaming on Netflix until July 16.
