Furiosa: They Don’t Make Them Like They Used To

I’m a cinematic traditionalist and rival to today’s overuse of CGI and all the disbelief it forces us to suspend when we really know we’re looking at unnatural pixels on a screen. The George Lucas-derived, Michael Bay-exploited “video game movie” bores me to visual fatigue, and I’ll never forget when Rogue One: A Star Wars Story actually put me to sleep in the movie theatre in 2016. (Also, moving Peter Cushing’s corpse around a la Weekend at Bernie’s would have been more effective than digitally resurrecting him.)

Although there are masterpieces that apply context and moderation to their visual magic (e.g., Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Jurassic Park, Interstellar, and anything Denis Villeneuve), my favorite antidote to the never-ending CG-eye numbing in action films is The Road Warrior (1981).

Per Director George Miller’s vision, each body-sacrificing stunt, pyrotechnical explosion, bizarro costume, and nitrous-boosted vehicle demonstrates how intensity on celluloid can provide wonders without a computer.

To me, Fury Road (2015) cheats its own primitive upbringing with supplemental CGI effects. Of roughly 2,400 shots, around 2,000 incorporate visual manipulation. Yes, the stunt work and explosions are extraordinary, but there’s evident chroma key plating and over-graded orange hues that make the dirt look too clean and the desert too paradisiacal. I liked it, but I missed the sheer minimalism of George Miller hitting the record button amid the arid elements and untethered human factors.

Now we have Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024), and the question of whether or not they used too much CGI is superfluous.

They did.

In fact, the line between practical effects devotion and an entirely different movie is as thick as the characters’ Australian accents.

I’m not sure what Furiosa is, but it’s certainly not anything “Mad Max.”

Maybe it’s George Miller’s take on Mad Max: The Graphic Novel. It certainly looks like one.

Furiosa covers the backstory of its title character ferociously played by Charlize Theron in Fury Road. As a younger Furiosa, Anya Taylor-Joy equally commands the screen and represents the only part of the movie to root for. Yet, what could have been a female empowerment force in the desert ends up more like a world building narrative you encounter in a video game.

Between The Citadel and Bullet Farm, we meet our main antagonist, Warlord Dementus, played by Chris Hemsworth. Chris has fun in his role, no doubt, but it’s nowhere near the sadism of “Toecutter” in the original Mad Max (1979) or the madness of Lord Humungus in The Road Warrior (1981).

The action—the primary reason to see the movie—never feels chronologically or practically dangerous. The sequences are noticeably enhanced post-production and spliced in the safety of the editing room. And, if the digital “touchups” in Fury Road were detectable, wait until you see the cartoonish filtration going on with Furiosa.

Action once brutalized becomes action beautified.

None of it feels real, and if that is the point, then the franchise has officially replaced the death-defying stunt with a physics-defying gimmick. It’s sad and tonally monotonous.

What used to be a corporeality of survival in George Miller’s vision is now washed away by a computer-generated shower of bullet casings.

Mad Max would turn in his sand dune grave.

Although millennials will eat this up, I’m proudly at the age when I can say they don’t make them like they used to.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) **1/2 out of *****