Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga leaves audiences high and dry

Warner Bros. Pictures' Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga drifts like a desert storm into cinemas for Memorial Day Weekend. Luckily, not much homework is required to catch up with Mad Max and the gang before the holiday. Furiousa is built to stand by itself and is a spinoff of Fury Road while also serving as a prequel to Imperator Furiosa's backstory.

The dusty tale told in divided chapters begins with a tiny Furiosa snatched from her mother by the Warlord Dementus played by Chris Hemsworth. Enraged personalities battle it out in the dunes throughout the film and Furi's journey continues on even after losing a limb.

Unfortunately, The story runs out of fuel early and doesn't even make it to Gastown this time. There's not much character development along the way and the pace is neither fast nor furious.

Want to make a fashionista angry? Have an opening scene where a character is dressed in culottes in the middle of the desert! 

Mad Max debuted in 1979 its post-apocalyptic Australian wasteland has evolved over the years. Mel Gibson portrayed Max Rockatansky in the first three films and Tom Hardy played the same character in Mad Max: Fury Road.

In 2015, Charlize Theron portrayed Imperator Furiosa in Fury Road and Anya Taylor-Joy/Alyla Browne played the character's younger versions in 2024

Fury Road has left some potholes in the sand although it was the first Mad Max film to receive an Academy Award and took home six of its 10 nominations in 2016.

While Maestro had Bradley Cooper wearing a prosthetic nose to portray Leonard Bernstein, Dr. Dementus is not a real person to warrant facial alteration. The Australian actor has described the nose, the beard and the costume as tools to immerse himself into the role. Instead of using crutches, Hemsworth should have requested better writing. Viewers of this Saga most likely won't understand the symbolic teddy bear strapped onto Thor that was used from an earlier Mad Max idea.

Do we need another hero? Maybe if it was Beyonce to make a music video and pay homage to Tina Turner. Instead, we are left with two dramatic personae named with a 5th-grade mentality of Rictus Erectus and Scrotus. Their accents are so warped that they are almost impossible to understand. The dialogue is not only cumbersome but it accompanies the storyline that feels as inflated as Hemsworth's codpiece.

The Dune movies and the Planet of the Apes franchise, both had previous success in creating dynamic big-screen environments, but Furiosa fails in its attempt to draw in the viewer to a unique Arid landscape.

Looking for an oasis at the box office at the end of May? Some will still feel thirsty for emotional depth after watching this saga and possibly hungry for a blood sausage!

The Mad Max Saga is not hitting the brakes anytime soon with more production possibilities in the works. Until then, Furiosa drifts into theaters on May 24, 2024, like sand through an hourglass.