Gun blazing, blood spilling, and gas-guzzling motorcades of doom have returned to bring about another heatwave of death in the wasteland as the fifth movie in the Mad Max franchise, Furiosa hits the screens today in theaters worldwide. For the first time, a prequel spin-off installment has found its place in George Miller’s epic dystopian franchise, thanks to the positive reception of Imperator Furiosa, the hard-boiled, no-nonsense, battle-hardened warrior played by Charlize Theron, who had outshined everyone else in her first appearance in Mad Max: Fury Road.
In a time when a lack of good female-led action movies is evident, the solo venture of Furiosa could have been a major game changer like its predecessor. Especially with the scope of her intriguing past being explored, the roadmap was already charted, and fans expected a hard-hitting origin story for the character. However, despite being packed with adrenaline-fueling action sequences, the trademark overstylized sets and automations, and all the classic Mad Max tropes that fans have cherished through the years, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga remains way too cautious to go full throttle. The story of how Imperator Furiosa came to be is decked with blood, guts, and glory, but a passive approach makes us miss the fury in Furiosa.
Spoilers Ahead
Why Was The Reason Behind The Death Of Furiosa’s Mother?
In true Mad Max fashion, the 2024 film begins with an update on societal, ecological, and nuclear collapses leading the world to a dystopian future. The boundless outback of Australia has turned into the wasteland, in a hidden corner of which exists the safe haven of the Green Place, a region where natural vegetation still grows under the protection of a matriarchal community known as Vuvalini, aka The Many Mothers. A young Furiosa, daughter of the Vuvalini leader Mary Jo Bassa, is seen venturing into the forest area of Green Place along with her friend Valkyrie while plucking fruits, and all of a sudden they take notice of an intruding biker gang.
Knowing the fact that if the biker gang returns to where they came from and informs others about the Green Place, an inevitable seizure and destruction will follow, a sharp Furiosa tries to stealthily dismantle their bikes. However, Furiosa gets cornered by the gang members, and right at the moment, she alerts the community, prompting her mother, Mary, to rush in order to save her. The bikers capture Furiosa and decide to take her back to their leader, Dementus, which leads to a prolonged chase with Mary on their trail. Eventually, over the course of several days, Mary manages to kill every member of the gang except one, who reaches their gang outpost with Furiosa. However, Furiosa shows great bravery and skill in rendering him mortally injured by slicing his throat, ensuring that the secret of Green Place remains buried. The megalomaniac, eccentric leader of the biker gang, Dementus, realizes that Furiosa belongs to a place that is like heaven in comparison to the wretched wasteland and decides to keep her captive in the hopes of somehow prying the information out of her later.
Later that day, Mary infiltrates the biker gang outpost to rescue her daughter, and using a desert storm as her cover, she frees and takes Furiosa away as well. However, Dementus and his crew chase them, and to get them off their trail, Mary decides to stay and fight, sending Furiosa back to the Green Place by providing her star-system-oriented direction. Before parting ways, Mary conveys her wish to her daughter that she protect the Green Place and their people. Unfortunately, while battling a horde of Dementus’ crew, Mary gets captured, and seeing her mother in mortal danger, little Furiosa returns and gets herself captured again by Dementus. The sadist despot tries to force the information about Green Place out of Furiosa by taunting her about her mother’s fate, but the little girl remains resolute and keeps the promise made to her mother by staying silent. Dementus forces Furiosa to watch as his gang tortures Mary to death, a severe trauma that lasts forever in her mind and marks the death of her innocence.
How Did Furiosa Come Across Praetorian Jack?
Keeping Furiosa in captivity like a caged animal, Dementus takes her along with his biker gang as the scavenging barbarians spread their chaotic fervor across the wasteland. Furiosa’s silence perpetuates, and taking a cue from Dementus’ History Man, she tattoos the star direction of the Green Place on her arm.
As the gang comes across one of the War Boys, Dementus is able to navigate his way to the Citadel, the fortress of the tyrant psychotic ruler of wasteland, Immortan Joe. Underestimating Joe and his horde of War Boys, Dementus goads him into a conflict as he aims to take control of the resources of the Citadel, but ultimately retreats after the War Boys launch a destructive assault on them. Dementus discovers the details about the trade relationship between Citadel and Gastown, and using his crew as a decoy, Dementus easily takes over Gastown, the fuel capital of wasteland. Having seized the prime source of fuel, Dementus forces Immortan Joe to consider a deal with him, and this is when Joe takes notice of Furiosa. Considering her to be a future prospective breeder, or, as he likes to call them, his ‘wives’, Joe demands Furiosa be left in his care for the deal to happen. At the same time, Joe takes Organic Mechanic into his crew as well, who was formerly a part of Dementus’ gang.
Furiosa found acceptance among the wives but realized their plight of living under Joe’s whim soon enough. Additionally, the pervert, barbaric son of Joe, Rictus Erectus, tried to put his lecherous gaze upon the kid, leading to Furiosa hiding her identity and joining the War Boys to serve in Joe’s cavalry. Furiosa’s sharpness and bravery impressed Joe’s second son and war commander Scrotus, who promoted Furiosa. Furiosa grew up among savages but had her intuitiveness intact, as she knew that to deal with power, she needed to be in a powerful position. Eventually, she joined as one of the mechanics of the behemoth juggernaut of a vehicle, Immortan Joe’s War Rig. Upon the completion of the mean machine, the revered general of Joe’s forces, Praetorian Jack, becomes its driver. During a supply run to Gastown, the War Rig gets attacked by the Mortiflyers, a biker gang formerly part of Dementus’ crew, and Furiosa manages to protect the Rig by showing her skills as a mechanic and as a fierce marksman. In the attack, all the escorting War Boys meet their end, and Furiosa tries to force Jack out of the rig to initiate her most-awaited escape plan—to no avail, as Jack easily thwarts her attempt.
Did Jack manage to take Furiosa back to her home?
Jack offers Furiosa a chance to learn more about survival and promises to let her escape to freedom when the time is right. For the first time since her mother’s death, someone has shown kindness to Furiosa, and after some initial hesitance, she trusts the upright, honorable general. Under Jack’s mentorship, Furiosa finds a missing part of her life and chooses to trust him about her past and her home at Green Place. Jack shares that he comes from a military family, and both his parents sacrificed their lives for a noble cause. He is willing to help Furiosa return to her home, as it will provide him with much-needed solace by honoring the lives of his parents.
Just as Furiosa started to consider that her life was moving in a positive direction after all, Dementus returned to her life as a nemesis once again. Since taking control of Gastown all those years ago, the flamboyant, deranged biker gang leader has lost control over the huge number of subjects who depended on him and has started to threaten Joe with consequences if the supply isn’t increased soon enough. In the absence of Bullet Farmer, Dementus covertly takes control of the third fortress of the wasteland as well and starts preparing an ambush by luring Immortan to Gastown. Meanwhile, Jack and Furiosa finally hatch upon a plan to escape during a supply run to Bullet Farm and get ambushed by Dementus’ crew there. Furiosa saves Jack’s life; the duo demolish the Bullet Farm and almost manage to escape, until Dementus catches up to the duo by engaging in a prolonged chase. During the conflict, Furiosa gets her arm severely injured, the one where she had tattooed the star map to Green Place.
An enraged Dementus forces Furiosa to watch as he tortures Jack to death, not knowing her true identity—and the fact that this is the second time he has taken someone close to Furiosa away from her. A distraught, beaten up Furiosa manages to escape by amputating her injured arm, and as she reaches a relatively safe location, she falls unconscious. It is shown that a young Max Rockatansky rescues her and leaves her near the Citadel, and upon waking up, Furiosa warns Joe and his crew about Dementus’ attack plan. A prolonged war of the wasteland begins between the forces of Immortan Joe and Dementus, which continues for forty days.
Did Furiosa Finally Avenge Her Mother?
Losing everyone dear to her at Dementus’ hand, having her hopes and dreams shattered with the slight chance of returning to the Green Place getting closed off, Furiosa becomes a wraith of vengeance and decides to take matters into her own hands. Furiosa prepares for the battle in her iconic appearance, and after running a gauntlet on the remaining members of the biker gang, she finally chases down Dementus and reveals her identity to him. After being used as a puppet her whole life, at this moment she is in absolute control as Dementus remains at her mercy, and yet she attains nothing that could have put out the burning rage in her heart. Dementus mocks her, stating that as someone who has lost close ones to injustice enacted by others, he knows that she has been dead since the day she lost her mother, and the desire for vengeance is the only thing that has taken her so far. The barbaric violence to which Furiosa has become accustomed is a telltale sign that she has lost a part of herself forever, and in that sense, she is quite similar to Dementus as well.
What happens to Dementus is not clearly revealed, as the History Man recounts that some say Furiosa tortured him to death in the ways Mary and Jack met their end, while others believe she offered him a quick death. However, History Man shares that, according to Furiosa, she enacted a revenge of the ages by planting the seed that her mother gave her to protect in Dementus’ body and leaving his body in the dark recesses of the citadel. The seed gave birth to a tree, while Dementus remained in perpetual agony due to oscillating between life and death, and as the tree bore fruit, Furiosa offered it to the captive wives of Immortan Joe. The seed, a reminiscent of the Green Place, is a symbol of hope for Furiosa to reconnect with her past, which she wants to share with other hapless women like her as well. And what could have been more befitting than letting the seed of hope grow in the body of the person who sowed vengeance in her heart! Now that Furiosa has avenged her mother, and as the final moments of the movie show, she later prepared to take off from the Citadel, taking the wives along with her, willing to take them to her home, the Green Place—events that get explored in Mad Max: Fury Road. However, as the credits highlight key sequences from Fury Road, viewers already know that her attempt to reconnect with her past will be rendered futile, as Green Place has ceased to exist after all.
