Furiosa is a 15-Year Journey Through Its Heroine’s Life

Mad Max: Fury Road was a revelation when it released in 2015, and a lot of that can be owed to Charlize Theron’s Furiosa. Even with Max Rocktansky getting top billing, it’s more her movie than his, and we’ree now primed to get an origin story with the upcoming Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.

“Saga” is an apt word, it seems. In Empire Magazine’s new write-up on the prequel, the outlet reveals we’ll watch Furiosa—played here by Anya Taylor-Joy—throughout 15 years of her life. “The story is the saga of Furiosa,” explained director/co-writer George Miller, “and how she gets taken from home, and spends the rest of her life trying to get back. ”

In that first trailer, which calls the film Furiosa’s “odyssey” of finding her way back, you get a sense of how much time will be covered. Not only do we see Furiosa as a young child and a young woman donning her black forehead paint for the first time, she also has both of her arms. That trailer ends on the sight of the Furiosa will come to know, prosthetic included, and it’ll be interesting to see how she gets to be an eventual enforcer for Immortan Joe. And while it may be a prequel, Miller has no intent of coasting on the almost 10-year goodwill of that previous movie. “It’s a different animal,” he said. “It’s an odyssey. No question.”

15 years is a long time—Fury Road, for comparison, took place over a couple of days—and as a result, Miller teased we’ll be seeing “many different locations.” Since this is meant to lead directly into its predecessor, he was asked if this meant there’d be a cameo from Tom Hardy’s Max at any point in the film. To that, all he said was the Road Warrior was “lurking in the background. I won’t give away too much about that.”

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga releases on May 24.

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