What is Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga about?
Furiosa is about what motivates us. For some, it’s merely survival. For others, it’s hope. Or hate. We see how, in the wasteland, survival and hate dominate, while hope is a quality that quickly withers. Furiosa struggles to hold onto her hope, especially as Dementus, the embodiment of hate, continues to impact her life. Will she become like him? One of the “already dead”, motivated by, consumed by negativity. Or will that seed of hope survive? In that way, Furiosa becomes a movie that tacitly asks the audience to consider what emotions we let motivate our actions.
The ending of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga explained
Recap
The end of Furiosa begins with Furiosa’s capture of Dementus. Instead of simply killing him, she confronts him about the impact he has had on her life.
Furiosa: Remember me?
Dementus: You fabulous thing. You crawled out of a pitiless grave deeper than hell. Only one thing’s gonna do that for ya. Not hope. Hate. No shame in hate. It’s one of the great forces of nature. [Reaches for a knife in Furiosa’s boot]. That wasn’t hope, that was instinct. So, this is the day I die. I’ve always wondered—
F: Fifteen years ago, there was a woman.
D: Ah, so there’s more to this.
F: Do you remember her?
D: Do I get a clue? Right, um, red head? Even her pub— Was she your mother? Sister? Did she beg? Did she scream? The ones who yell the least tend to—
F: Despite everything you did to her, she was magnificent.
D: Ah, you were there.
F: My childhood. My mother. I want them back.
D: Of course you do.
F: I want them back!
D: That’s exactly how I felt! My own family! My own magnificent beauties! Taken so unjustly, immutably. I’m right there, I’m right there with you. I too crave nothing but revenge. A big belly full of revenge. If, I may, if the shooter goes around the back, the shootee won’t know the precise moment of the execution. Minor torture but every bit counts. Either way, that rat shot will turn my brain into a pink mist so fast I won’t even hear the sound of the gun.
F: I will hear it. I’ll hear it for the rest of my days.
D: Of course you will.
F: I’ll feel the kickback in my hand.
D: Sure.
F: I’ll remember your face as the slug worms its way into the soft matter of your brain taking with it what you call your reason. And your memory. From which my mother will fortunately be absent.
D: Brilliant. And I’ll be dead and you’ll still be furrowing your lovey-dovey and your mommy-magnificent. You idiot. You can never balance the scales of their suffering!
F: Give. Them back.
D: I can’t! What you want, dear, are my cries of anguish, anguish without end. If I could give you that, I would. But I don’t feel absolution in heaven or retribution in hell. I’ve got a freakishly high pain-threshold. Again, do it again! If you can’t do me quick, you’ll have to do me slow. Which you will never get anything close to what you want.
Dementus passes out from blows to the head. When he wakes up, the conversation resumes.
D: Little D? I’ve been waiting for you. I’ve been waiting. Someone like you, someone worthy of me. Now ???, just two evil bastards out here in the wasteland. You do this, you do this right, you become me.
F: I am nothing like you.
D: You are me! Already dead. To feel alive, we seek sensation, any sensation to wash away the cranky, black sorrow. It leaves us for a moment, but then it comes back. And we have to do it all again. And we need more. And each time we need more. Until too much is never enough. We are the already dead! Little D! You and me. The question is…do you have it in you to make it epic?
Narrator: She took away his voice and they spent the rest of the day in silence. There are those who prefer that she did more than shoot him. They claim that she ended him in ways more fitting. They tell of righteous perversities and ??? mutilations. But this is the truth. Whispered to me by Furiosa herself. Deep in the citadel. High up, in the hydroponic gardens. There is a tree unlike any other. Its soil is human. Its nutrients, human. Maggots debriding his necrotic flesh. It was only a ???, growing out of a living being.
We witness Dementus’s whithered body and the tree that’s grown up from his groin.
Furiosa: This is our first fruit, but it’s not for you and me. Each of us in our own way will vanish from this earth. And then, perhaps, some uncorrupted life will rise to adorn it.
We then see Furiosa lead Immortan Joe’s wives in a nighttime escape to the War Rig that she’ll take out to her childhood home. This brings us to the events from Mad Max: Fury Road, some of which we see as the credits start.
Meaning
Furiosa’s final conversation with Dementus establishes two paths. If she takes one, she becomes like Dementus. Someone consumed by revenge. Whose main drive in life is to seek temporary reprieve from the grief that would otherwise consume them. The other path is to reject being “already dead” and to commit herself to bettering the world rather than simply destroying more of it. To choose hope over hate.
So that’s what she does, in her own way. It’s still the wasteland. It’s not like Furiosa’s going to forgive Dementus for his sins and let him have a new lease on life. She punishes him. But the way she goes about it isn’t pure violence that scratches that itch for retribution. Instead, she uses Joe as the nutrient-base for the seed given to her by her mother. Furiosa gets payback while also adding to the world. In a land without vegetation, every new tree is a miracle, a possibility for a better tomorrow.
That’s also shown in her freeing of Joe’s wives. They symbolize the future of humanity. Will they be under someone like Joe, who is, like Dementus, a being of hate? Or will they be clear to lead their own lives, with all the hope such liberty entails?
There’s a personal angle, there, too, as Furiosa wasn’t able to save her own mother. So helping Joe’s wives escape is a bit of redemption.
The themes, message, and meaning of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
Hurt people hurt people
It’s a classic idea, but it’s often quite true—hurt people hurt people. One popular example of this is the school bully. Usually, the bully has some kind of bad home life, one where they’re likely a victim of abuse, which is why they take out their frustrations on someone else.
Dementus lost his wife and daughters. He doesn’t know how to process his anger, grief, and rage. So he makes others suffer. This sets up a fork in the road for Furiosa. For so much of the film, she had only wanted to return home. Then she falls in love with Praetorian Jack. Because of that, she wants to return home with him. Except they run into Dementus and he kills Jack. Suddenly, Furiosa’s mission changes. It’s not about going home—it’s about vengeance. Which is why she hunts Dementus down. Hurt people hurt people.
But at the moment of decision, Furiosa rejects becoming Dementus by giving in to hate and wanton destruction. She could have simply offed him and moved on, subtracting from the world rather than adding. Don’t get me wrong—it’s not like she’s a saint. Furiosa still gets revenge. But she does it in a way that allows a tree to grow.
Obviously, in a movie like this, things are heightened, outrageous. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a real-world equivalent. This is a silly example, but say the owner of a local car dealership was scamming people but no one would do anything. Someone who was scammed could simply go beat the owner up. But they could also gather evidence by talking to other victims, bring that to the police and the news, and not only get the owner arrested but open the way for lawsuits that will allow the victims to get some restitution. The bad person still got their comeuppance. But it was through actions that added to the world rather than simply something petty.
As much as Furiosa can feel like nothing more than a thrilling blockbuster, Furiosa’s ultimate choice is one that many of us face every day. Will we give in to the negative emotions because negative things have happened to us? Which can manifest in something as little as refusing to hold the door open for someone or not leaving a tip for your Uber Eats delivery. Or it can manifest in large ways like road rage or sabotaging a coworker. Instead, be like Furiosa, so to speak, and find a way to turn negativity into progress.
Sacrifices we make for the future
The final bit of dialogue from Furiosa is: This is our first fruit, but it’s not for you and me. Each of us in our own way will vanish from this earth. And then, perhaps, some uncorrupted life will rise to adorn it.
She’s referring to the tree planted in Dementus. But the tree is the result of the seed Furiosa’s mother gave to her. A seed that Furiosa protected for 15 years. The fruit from that tree, if it survives, will feed people for decades. And produce seeds that will feed others. And on and on. While Furiosa doesn’t get to return home to the Green Place with the person she loves, she’s part of a chain of events that will, hopefully, allow someone else to have that life.
That reminds us that what we do is important. Whenever we can choose being good over being evil (or simply lazy) that is a worthwhile thing. The efforts we make today will benefit someone tomorrow. You never know how much that will matter, what a single seed could do.
Why is the movie called Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga?
It’s a prequel movie that digs into the life of Furiosa. So the title places emphasis on the character. But then it also extends that emphasis to what the character represents. Furiosa faces a crossroad of being like Dementus or being better. She takes the better path. So the title gains that quality of hope that Furiosa embodies.
Important motifs in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
Gastown, Bullet Farm, the Citadel, Green Place of Many Mothers
On the one hand, the town names are fun. On the other hand, we know that Furiosa makes a thematic point about hate versus hope. With that in mind, you can argue the place names have a bit more meaning. Gastown is this inky, dark community that Dementus runs into the ground. You can see it as representing his ugliness. Then the Bullet Farm is an insane location. An area dedicated to producing ammunition used to hurt others. Those two contrast greatly with the positive connotations of the “Green Place” and “Citadel”. I know, I know—the Citadel is clearly not great. You have people in extreme poverty, cannibals, and Joe being a jerk, not to mention dummies like Scrotus and Erectus.
But keep in mind Furiosa’s journey across both films. She eventually defeats Joe and becomes the leader of the Citadel. She displaces a figure of hate and brings with her a hope for a better tomorrow. The Citadel will, under her guidance, become the new Green Place, a bastion and beacon in the midst of a wasteland.
War Boys
If Dementus and others embody hate, and Furiosa and Jack embody hope, then the War Boys symbolize a kind of nihilism. An emptiness. Their whole personality is dying for Joe. Life is meaningless to them. Compare them to Furiosa’s mother. Her sacrifice was meaningful. While the War Boys are like a sad version of the minions from Despicable Me. Under someone like Joe, you get War Boys. Under someone like Furiosa, you get people who hope.
The teddy bear
The bear belonged to Dementus’s daughters. So that turns it into a totem for not only childhood but Dementus’s loss. When he lets young Furiosa hold onto it, the bear creates a pseudo parent-child dynamic between them. Furthermore, it ties together their grief and loss of innocence. That’s made more formal by the fact Dementus doesn’t recognize Furiosa until she cuts the bear from him. Then he puts it together. The bear acts as the bridge.
And its not a coincidence that Furiosa takes the bear after yelling at Dementus that she wants him to give back her childhood (amongst other things). So the bear has a lot of symbolic meaning, meaning that’s specific to Dementus and Furiosa and also what’s shared between them.
Notice, too, that, at the end, the bear has lost an arm and has a plastic prosthetic. Much like Furiosa herself.
Dementus’s color palette
When we first meet Dementus, he’s not a great person, but he’s the leader of a decent-sized community that’s seemingly doing alright by wasteland standards. And he himself has a degree of respectability about his appearance. He looks healthy and relatively well-groomed and clothed. As the movie goes on, that changes. The first shift happens when the flare goes off and mists everyone in red smoke. It stains Dementus’s hair, beard, and cape. And soon after, he leads his caravan into a slaughter, then sacrifices the men loyal to the Octoboss. When we see him again 15 years later, as the leader of Gastown, his palette is much darker, as if he was reborn in that lake of oil. And we see how Gastown has fallen, how much more desperate and selfish Dementus is.
He was never a good person, but he becomes a worse person as the movie goes on, which the final conversation puts into context. He says: To feel alive, we seek sensation, any sensation to wash away the cranky, black sorrow. It leaves us for a moment, but then it comes back. And we have to do it all again. And we need more. And each time we need more. Until too much is never enough. That black sorrow has consumed him, and it’s reflected by his wardrobe.
Questions & answers about Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
How much older is the Charlize Theron version of Furiosa compared to Anya Taylor-Joy’s Furiosa?
Get this! They’re the same age. Furiosa leads right into Fury Road. So the Furiosa we see at the end is supposed to be the same one from Fury Road. Which is kind of crazy.
What happened to Furiosa’s arm?
When Dementus chases down Furiosa and Jack, there’s a moment where Furiosa has her arm out of the car window, trying to fire at Dementus. He steers into her and her arm gets mulched between the two vehicles. So it’s pretty mangled. Then Dementus shackles her by that arm and has her watch Jack get dragged around and torn up by dogs. It seems her arm was severed enough that it fully ripped apart when she applied tension. Which is then how she escaped.
How did Furiosa hide for 15 years? Why did Immortan Joe not recognize her?
This is kind of a weird one. The simple answer is that we see she shaves her head and pretends to act like a boy. So it’s as simple as that—for 15 years, she hid her gender by wearing a lot of layers, never speaking, and making clandestine trips to the bathroom.
For most people, that’s good enough. But you would think Immortan Joe would…care a bit more? She was the centerpiece in the trade with Dementus. Then she disappears in just a few days? You think Joe would have looked harder? Or put word-out to look for her and others might be like “Hey, this kid could be the missing girl, just with a shaved head…” Even if we accept that Joe was busy or lost interest, what happens when Jack shows up with Furiosa and says she’s part of his crew? Where’d she come from? Isn’t she the age of the girl who disappeared? Was Joe not suspicious?
This actually retcons the “original” backstory. In a comic that came out with Fury Road, Furiosa was a breeder but was infertile so ended up given to an Imperator who trained her. Eventually, the Imperator died and Furiosa replaced him and became an Imperator herself. Except in Furiosa, it seems she escaped life as a breeder before it ever started, then was already a skilled fighter when she met Jack. Most of her reputation-building would have been under Jack rather than on her own. Meaning that by the time Fury Road starts she wouldn’t have been a trusted, top-tier general of Joe’s, so much as a mostly anonymous figure who was a crucial part of Jack’s crew who then makes one strategy recommendation to Joe about Dementus.
What’s the viewing order for the Mad Max franchise?
- Mad Max
- Mad Max 2
- Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
- Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
- Mad Max: Fury Road
- Mad Max: The Wasteland
What is the relationship between Max and Furiosa
Everything we see in Fury Road. Furiosa shows that she and Max had never crossed paths until the events of Fury Road. So they’re only temporary teammates who respect one another. No history.
Why did George Miller recast Charlize Theron?
He didn’t like de-aging technology. And it’s been 10 years since they filmed Fury Road. As amazing as Theron looks, she would have been 46 years old playing a 25 year old. So Miller opted for someone closer in age to the character.
Does Furiosa have bad CGI?
It kind of seemed that way. Granted, it’s a huge movie with a lot of practical moments and big effects. The budget of $168 million is on par with the $165 million for Dune: Part One. Personally, I see it in Dune more than I did in Furiosa? But Furiosa also filmed some insane scenes in the desert and had some extended action sequences that had to take a lot of technical work. So if there are some moments of wonky CGI…so be it. Also, it kind of feels like a callback to the B-movie roots of the franchise. Not saying that was intentional, just that it’s actually kind of fitting.
Cast
- Imperator Furiosa – Anya Taylor-Joy
- young Furiosa – Alyla Browne
- Mary Jo Bassa – Charlee Fraser
- Praetorian Jack – Tom Burke
- Dementus – Chris Hemsworth
- The Octoboss – Goran D. Kleut
- Immortan Joe – Lachy Hulme
- Rictus Erectus – Nathan Jones
- Josh Helman – Scabrous Scrotus
- The People Eater – John Howard
- The Organic Mechanic – Angus Sampson
- Max Rockatansky – Jacob Tomuri
- Written by – George Miller | Nico Lathouris
- Directed by – George Miller
Now it’s your turn
Have more unanswered questions about Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga? Are there themes or motifs we missed? Is there more to explain about the ending? Please post your questions and thoughts in the comments section! We’ll do our best to address every one of them. If we like what you have to say, you could become part of our movie guide!
Chris, this is the single finest analysis I’ve seen of “Furiosa”, a film I’ve fallen in love with and already watched 6 times in full, getting more and more out it with each viewing. Thanks so much for sharing this with us!