CCXP, the impossibly huge comic con held annually in Brasil, is happening right now, and yesterday—last night? This morning? Time is fake—Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth appeared and presented the first trailer for Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.
This is the Mad Max: Fury Road prequel with ATJ taking over the role of Furiosa from Charlize Theron. Fury Road is such a titanic film unto itself, a legit instant classic, never mind its part in the larger legacy of Mad Max, the expectations for Furiosa are through the roof. The trailer looks very promising.
Furiosa tells the story of how a girl was taken from her family and became Imperator Furiosa. ATJ looks the part, if more wide-eyed and less “steely cold killer” than Theron was, but then, this is Furiosa before she’s an imperator, before all the f-cked up sh-t that turns her into the character Theron portrayed happens to her. That transformation is the story, and they’re hardly going to give it all away in a trailer, but I like everything we’re seeing here, especially whenever ATJ gets that hard look in her eye. She can do hardened survivor SO well, we’ve been seeing it since The Witch, and she only ever gets better at it. I can buy that this Furiosa turns into THAT Furiosa.
Chris Hemsworth, meanwhile, is virtually unrecognizable under a beard and prosthetic nose. He plays Warlord Dementus, a new character. There is a brief look at a younger Immortan Joe, the villain from Fury Road, though the name of the younger actor now playing Immortan Joe hasn’t been confirmed. (Hugh Keays-Byrne, who played Joe in Fury Road—and Toecutter in Mad Max before that—sadly passed away in 2020.) But it’s for sure not Hemsworth, as was previously speculated, as we see his character facing off with Immortan Joe.
Furiosa is giving a little bit Mad Max: Thunderdome vibes, mainly in that it seems centered on a race in the same way Thunderdome is centered on a post-apocalyptic gladiator fight. I won’t be mad if Furiosa is this new Mad Max generation’s Thunderdome but given how quickly Fury Road became a revered genre classic, I wonder if everyone else would be okay with that. I just don’t know if we should be expecting Fury Road again. That film feels like lightning in a bottle. But a cool ass race movie with Anya Taylor-Joy being a hardass boss and Chris Hemsworth doing whatever the hell that is? I’m into it.
