Critics Are Calling ‘Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga’ A ‘Masterpiece’ And An ‘Ingenious’ Prequel From George Miller

Oh, what a day, what a lovely day: the Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga reviews are here (still waiting on the Garfield movie). And would you believe it? Director George Miller has added another classic to his wild filmography. I believe it.

The prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road is being hailed as a “masterpiece” and “astonishing” by critics. Miller and the cast, including Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth (sadly, Piss Boy couldn’t make it), were also greeted with a nearly eight-minute ovation at the Cannes Film Festival. That’s enough time for Adam Driver to smoke two cigarettes!

Let’s get to the reviews.

David Ehrlich for Indiewire:

Rather than reaching for — and failing to clear — the impossibly high bar that he set for himself, Miller has chosen to do something even crazier and more rewarding: He’s created a symphonic, five-part, decades-spanning revenge saga so immense and self-possessed that it refuses to be seen as the mere extension of another movie, even though it manages to deepen the impact of Fury Road at every turn.

Hoai-Tran Bui for Inverse:

Miller has always been a maximalist auteur, but he takes his visually bombastic sensibilities to new heights with Furiosa — a spectacular, utterly deranged epic that is unlike any Mad Max movie ever made. Furiosa trades in the franchise’s western vistas and lone-wolf narrative for a heavy-metal riff on Homer’s Odyssey, delivering a sprawling, immersive saga that manages to outdo its predecessor for the most bonkers action that’s ever been injected into your eyeballs.

John Nugent for Empire:

There is, once again, an astonishing standard of stunts and visual effects sustained throughout these 148 minutes, with at least six audacious set-pieces — including a three-day chase across a desert, and a staggering airborne assault on a War Rig — that must be seen to be believed.

Bilge Ebiri for Vulture:

This wouldn’t be the first time Miller has taken a big franchise sequel and turned it into something strange, sublime, and potentially off-putting. He is, after all, the man who almost ended an entire Hollywood studio with Babe: Pig in the City. Still, whether the new movie is deemed a hit or not, it’s nice to know that, after all these years, George Miller seems determined to stay true to his mad self.

Siddhant Adlakha for Mashable:

A bombastic wasteland folktale, George Miller’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is an ingenious, eye-popping prequel to his near-perfect action romp Mad Max: Fury Road. While it revisits several characters and locations we’ve already seen, it’s also a wildly different beast, one that replaces its predecessor’s mile-a-minute chase structure with a years-spanning story that elevates the series’ operatic imagery to the level of biblical myth.

Hannah Strong for Little White Lies:

Furiosa is still miles better than the dreck Hollywood usually treats us to over the summer, and provided it doesn’t take another decade to get the Fury Road sequel that Miller has been promising, perhaps we’ll reach Valhalla yet.

Manohla Dargis for the New York Times:

Miller is such a wildly inventive filmmaker that it’s been easy to forget that he keeps making movies about the end of life as we know it. It’s a blast watching his characters fight over oil, water and women, yet while I’ve long thought of him as a great filmmaker it’s only with Furiosa that I now understand he’s also one kick-ass prophet of doom.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga opens in theaters on May 24.