Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga Parent Guide

It turns out that the end of the world…isn’t. After global catastrophe brings down modern society, humanity continues to scratch out a brutal living in the sprawling emptiness of the apocalypse. Furiosa (Aylya Browne, later Anya Taylor-Joy) is fortunate to grow up in the Green Place, an oasis with plentiful food and water. One day, her good fortune runs out and she’s kidnapped on the fringes of the settlement by bikers working for Dementus (Chris Hemsworth).

Dementus wants to know where Furiosa comes from, since she’s obviously well fed and in good health – rarities in the wider world. Knowing the significance of the secret she carries, Furiosa would rather die than tell him. But it doesn’t look like it will come to that: Furiosa is courageous, resourceful, and just a little bit crazy. She just needs an opportunity to escape and get back home.

Mad Max: Fury Road was a bit long at two-hours, but the blistering pace of the action let it get away with the extra runtime. With 20 minutes on its predecessor, Furiosa noticeably drags in spots, but it packs a lot of the same high-octane energy. As prequels go, this is excellent, capturing the complete insanity of a world that’s past the best-before date and is running exclusively on gas and bullets.

Furiosa is truly an epic film. The scope is massive, and seeing these colossal formations of cobbled-together death machines racing across the Australian desert on a big screen is hugely impressive. Lunatic stunts and a pericardium-pounding score further blow up the scale of the movie. You’re not going to have to wade through much dialogue either, as Furiosa is nearly as laconic a protagonist as Max ever was.

Much like Fury Road, this movie has quite a bit of violence, and it’s graphic enough to earn a Restricted rating. You’ll find the usual deluge of shootings, stabbings, explosions, and general maimings, but hardly any issues in other content categories. With an R-rating, that kind of restraint is a little surprising, but action fans who want all the gruesome consequences of getting in a firefight with a heavily armed semi-truck without also encountering scenes of sex and drug use are in luck. At the end of the day, we’re all in luck here. It may run a little bit long, but it runs fast, loud, and crazy. I can’t say better than that for an action epic like this.