‘Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga’: What The Critics Are Saying

Max Goldbart and Andreas Wiseman
·3 min read
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‘Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga’: What The Critics Are Saying
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The first reviews are in for George Miller’s anticipated Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga and the notices are largely positive so far.

Deadline’s Pete Hammond said Miller had “perhaps given birth to the greatest Max yet, a wheels-up, rock-and-rolling epic.” Pete was one of many to praise the cast, production design and visuals. “Shout-out to action designer Guy Norris and his team, who show the need for a stunts Oscar.” You can check out his review here.

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The movie currently has an 87% rating from 45 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. Below are a spread we’ve collated from across the globe.

Reviewing for The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw gave the movie four stars, and he was one of many to heap praise on leads Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth. He called Taylor-Joy an “overwhelmingly convincing action hero” who “sells this sequel.”

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The Au Review in Australia said Furiosa is “an exhilarating actioner from one of the greatest blockbuster filmmakers of our time…In so many ways the odds were stacked against Fury Road, and yet genius and grit persevered, resulting in a bombastic, exaggerated, emotional action extravaganza that spoke to the unmatched creativity of its director,” wrote Peter Gray.

The South China Morning Post described the action film as being as “bombastic” as 2015’s Fury Road but Hemsworth provides an “added bonus.” “It is the little moments that really sell the film,” said the review. “A lizard pops out of a skull before it is crushed to death by a monster vehicle; a hairpiece falls onto a branch, which grows and sprouts leaves, shown using time-lapse photography to mark Furiosa’s transition from youngster to young warrior.”

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IGN Africa praised the “immaculate crafting” of the pic. “Weaving together top-notch worldbuilding, an emotionally resonant directorial eye, searing performances, sharp cinematography, and a hell-raising score, this is a remarkable hero’s journey punctuated by incredible action scenes,” it added.

Meanwhile, Empire gave Miller’s movie five stars, hailing an “emotionally trenchant, character-driven, nitro-powered action” that is paired with “an astonishing standard of stunts and visual effects sustained throughout these 148 minutes.”

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Veteran UK reviewer Xan Brooks described the pic on X as the “flamboyant, prog-rock fifth instalment” of Miller’s series. While “almost collapsing under the weight of its thunderous set pieces and freestyle ambition,” Brooks said this is “no bad thing.”

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Another seasoned critic, David Ehrlich, took to X to call the movie an “absolute triumph,” going as far as to label it “not just one of the best prequels ever made but also an immensely satisfying revenge epic in its own right.”

Darren Mooney, host of The 250 podcast, sees Furiosa as a “sweeping alternate history of a dystopian world,” comparing it to last year’s Hunger Games: Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes sequel.

Not all critics were so glowing, however.

The LA times posited that Furiosa “forgets what makes the Mad Max movies great,” while the BBC’s verdict was “more exhausting than exhilarating”: “With all due respect to Miller’s bonkers vision, and his incredible ability to put that vision on screen, Furiosa seems like one of those spin-off graphic novels that plug the gaps between two films in a franchise, but which don’t quite match up to the films themselves,” added the BBC, pulling no punches.

Time mag, meanwhile, was damning with its verdict of “all spectacle and no vision,” and was critical of Taylor-Joy’s performance when compared with Charlize Theron in Fury Road. “Theron was the best thing about Mad Max: Fury Road. Even as she played a single-minded and dead-serious character, you could tell she had a sense of humor about herself, a kind of quiet internal clock that prevented her from becoming noble in a drab way. But Taylor-Joy plays Furiosa as a somber heroic icon, and you can hear the gears clicking.”

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