Some indelible imagery, but the kinetic energy of Fury Road is almost entirely missing, and the economy of storytelling is gone with it. It’s tough to follow up a near-perfection action film, and I applaud Miller for basically taking a hard right, but I think this misses the mark.
If Miller was able to make this right after Fury Road, as was his clear intent at one point, and if it were to keep Theron as its lead actress, I think it would have been more coherent. But too much time has passed, and Furiosa feels cinematically like a different world, one replete with obvious CGI, a new lead, and a filmmaking philosophy at odds with everything that made Fury Road so taut.
It’s clearly the same chef, at the same restaurant, operating in the same modality. But the ingredients have changed a bit, and the method is new, and the magic is sadly missing.