It took almost a decade, but Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is finally in theaters. The long-awaited prequel to 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road, the latest entry in director George Miller’s post-apocalyptic franchise, centers on Imperator Furiosa’s backstory and makes for a fascinating contrast with the previous film. Where Fury Road was essentially one long high-octane thrill ride, Furiosa is a far more patient wasteland odyssey, telling the story of its heroine over many years. It’s a great movie for many reasons, particularly Miller’s strong direction and the film’s deliberate pace, but most of all because of Anya Taylor-Joy’s performance in the lead role.

Of course, we love what Charlize Theron brought to the part in Fury Road, but the recasting goes to show not just how much new life a franchise project can be injected with by allowing a new actor to take on an iconic character, but also that Taylor-Joy is one of best examples of a 21st century movie star. How so? Let’s take a look.

Building an Imperator

The road to bringing the Furiosa film to the big screen was quite different from most other blockbuster prequels. In an interview with AV Club, Miller said the screenplay for Furiosa was “virtually complete” before Fury Road’s production, meaning the story of this film was known to Miller and his collaborators before the former was even released. Charlize Theron even confirmed that she read the script for Furiosa as part of her preparation for shooting Fury Road. Her deep knowledge of Furiosa’s backstory informed her performance in that film, and helps this movie feel like a perfectly natural extension of its predecessor in terms of character, theme and world-building. Conventional wisdom would hold that Theron would reprise the role, but Miller decided to move in a different direction.

Part of that was because he wasn’t convinced by the current state of digital de-aging technology. Speaking to Variety, he said “I saw not only The Irishman, but Ang Lee’s Gemini Man, with Will Smith. Both of them were masterful directors, but it was never persuasive. I thought all people would be watching is Charlize looking young and knowing it’s an effect.” The long hiatus between Fury Road’s release and Furiosa’s production also made it clear to the veteran director that he wanted to find a new actor to take up the part, which he finally found in Anya Taylor-Joy after seeing her performance in an early cut of Edgar Wright’s (underrated) psychological horror film Last Night in Soho. Wright elaborated on this story on social media, saying that he connected the pair a mere two days before the COVID-19 lockdowns in March of 2020.

Given how well Fury Road was received by both critics and audiences, recasting such a pivotal character for her spin-off film was certainly a gamble. After all, Furiosa really is the main protagonist of Fury Road anyway, with Tom Hardy’s Max Rockatansky being more “along for the ride” as opposed to driving the action in any significant capacity. A project that further explores the characters, factions, and visual motifs established by Fury Road would necessitate Furiosa’s inclusion because of how intertwined she is with them. Yet, more so than any other creative choice he makes in the final product, Miller allowing Taylor-Joy to bring her own spin on the character is what most helps the film feel like an essential installment in the Mad Max mythos.

Anya Taylor-Fury

At a moment when plenty of digital ink has been spilled wondering if we still have movie stars, Anya Taylor-Joy has emerged as one of the few actors to rise within the last decade or so who deserves the title. Ever since her phenomenal debut performance in Robert Eggers’ 2015 horror masterpiece The Witch, Taylor-Joy has captivated several of the industry’s top directors, such as the aforementioned Edgar Wright, M. Night Shyamalan, Denis Villeneuve, and of course, George Miller. Beyond her work with auteurs, she’s also made a distinct impression on audiences in the Netflix show The Queen’s Gambit (for which she received an Emmy nomination), the surprise hit black comedy/horror film The Menu, and even added a billion dollar grosser to her resume with her voice role as Princess Peach in The Super Mario Bros. Movie.

That’s a lot to achieve in such a short time, and if Furiosa is any indication, the Argentinian sensation’s career won’t be slowing down anytime soon. What makes her performance as Furiosa so enthralling besides her natural talent is how well the story takes advantage of the differences in performing style between her and Theron. Where Theron played Furiosa as raw rage barely contained, Taylor-Joy is far calmer, her anger simmering behind the glares she gives from across the room (or the wasteland). There’s a palpable sense that the terrors she sees and endures in this movie are what leave the Furiosa of Fury Road such an exhausted and enraged main hero. During much of the prequel’s events, Furiosa’s will to survive and fire to take vengeance on her tormentors is still driven just as much by the vestiges of her idealism as her darker impulses. Her one-woman war against Dementus (Chris Hemsworth) is what finally breaks her down, what forges her into the character audiences fell in love with in Fury Road.

That Taylor-Joy communicates all of this mostly with her eyes and physicality — since the script gives her minimal dialogue — reinforces how forward-thinking of a choice it was for Miller to recast the role. Theron is perfectly capable of conveying those emotions, but the part of Furiosa’s internal journey we see in this new film is ideally suited to Taylor-Joy’s skills. More so than most actors currently working, Taylor-Joy is at her best when we can read everything her character is thinking along the lines of her face, in the details of her eyes. That sense of patient fury, of holding in her true feelings until she simply can’t anymore, is what gives her take on Furiosa an entirely new dimension.

Kill Them With Courage

It takes serious artistic courage to step into the shoes of a pre-established iconic character and put so much of her own spin on the material, but that’s exactly what Taylor-Joy does. It’s a stark reminder that if there’s any one thing that’s pushed her to the front of the pack in her generation of actors, it’s her insistence on making bold choices, a mindset she’s embraced as far back as the beginning of her career. In an interview with Harper’s Bazaar, she revealed that she had to choose between her role in The Witch or a Disney Channel pilot. On the reason she went with the former, Taylor-Joy said “I just had this really good feeling about ‘The Witch’ that made me willing to forgo the Disney experience for the thing that felt unknown to me, the thing that felt sacred.”

Choosing roles where she digs deep into dark and messy territory with her characters has been the key to her artistic success ever since. Sure, she has screen presence and charisma to burn, but she also makes a point to challenge herself by playing characters where there are no easy answers as to how you’re supposed to feel about them. We’ve seen this with Thomasin in The Witch, Beth Harmon in The Queen’s Gambit, and Sandie in Last Night in Soho, all of whom register as sympathetic but thorny in equal measure. Even some of her lesser known films, such as Thoroughbreds and the 2020 adaptation of Emma, feature her playing with the boundaries of what’s expected out of conventional protagonists (and in the case of the latter, she even willed herself into a nosebleed in-character. Really.)

If anything, Furiosa is simply one more entry in a long line of confirmations that whatever else is going on in Hollywood, Anya Taylor-Joy is certain to be a big part of its future. She’s the kind of brave and idiosyncratic performer we only see a few times in a generation, and so many brand name directors falling over each other to get her in their films should be more than enough evidence that she has the proverbial “it” factor. As a film, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is a stunning piece, but it wouldn’t get quite that far without an actor like Taylor-Joy in the lead role to help it over the finish line. She was trusted to take a character audiences knew and loved and make her her own, and given how well she knocks it out of the park, it’s practically guaranteed that even more high profile filmmakers will trust her with their projects going forward.

Carlos Morales writes novels, articles and Mass Effect essays. You can follow his fixations on Twitter.

Streaming Wars is a weekly opinion column by IGN’s Streaming Editor, Amelia Emberwing. To read the last entry, check out Who Really Wins With Comcast’s New StreamSaver Bundle.

Inside me there are two wolves: one wolf will defend the fact that streaming originals have won Oscars and can be remarkable; the other believes that sometimes the best part of films on streaming is finding the dumbest thing imaginable, kickin’ your feet up, and breaking out the popcorn (with Reese’s Pieces sprinkled in and Sour Patch Watermelon on the side, obviously). Madame Web speaks to that second wolf.

Now, let me make one thing abundantly clear before y’all rush down to the comments: Madame Web is a terrible movie. It’s ugly to look at, much of the dialogue is laughable at best and, even as a woman who embraces “cringe”, the second-hand embarrassment from the movie’s terrifically bad ending made me curl up in my seat.

And I am glad that this idiotic movie and every second of its one-hour and fifty-six minutes exists.

Madame Web has spent much of the last week at #1 on the Netflix Top 10 (recently dethroned by A Simple Favor, which is actually a great film), and frankly? A high-ranking spot on a streamer’s Top 10 list is exactly where a movie like Madame Web belongs.

Back when the movie came out, Rosie Knight posited that Madame Web is the perfect sleepover movie. Y’all did not like that much, but I regret to inform you that she’s right. Madame Web is the perfect sleepover movie in the same way that it is a perfect streaming movie. Both are often watched with a myriad of distractions (like, say, mercilessly heckling the film with your friends), and frequently miss the critical mark.

Madame Web manages to hit the sweet spot between awful and delightful group (or distracted) viewing for a host of reasons, whether in how entertaining it can be to make fun of, how easy it is to turn into a drinking game, etc. But, what makes me want to come back to this silly thing with my friends is the sole fact that I am simply happy it exists.

Movies — particularly in the superhero genre — featuring a woman in the leading role were so few and far between for such a long while that, whenever we did get a movie that represented us, it always had to mean something. I love impactful stories! (The first Wonder Woman movie made me feel like I could fight an ox! Y’all know how I feel about The Marvels!) They’re very important to me. But when every story has to be that story it does more harm than good to both the genre and the viewers.

Madame Web could not be further from “that” story. This movie means nothing! It is a bad, bad superhero flick that joins the swaths of other bad, bad superhero flicks! I’ll undoubtedly pay for this sentence in the comments section, but women deserve bad superhero movies too, dangit!

And yes, there have been other bad female-focused superhero movies, but most of them fall into the “bad” category because they’re stumbling over themselves trying to be a movie that they’re not. Elektra tried. Catwoman… grew on me over time. Point is, movies like those fall into the category of “bad, but not that fun,” with “fun” here ranging in definition here. Sometimes it means “so bad it’s good,” others it’s as simple as “it’s easy to laugh at.” And, well… Madame Web isn’t so bad it’s good. But neither was Morbius — a film with absolutely zero redeeming qualities that was skyrocketed to infamy because of the internet’s insistence on meme-ing everything — and folks still rallied behind that monstrosity for some reason!

In short, Madame Web may be the butt of all of our jokes, but it’s also already showcasing its ability to bring people together. Was that the intent of the movie? No. But hey, at least we’ll always have the baby shower scene. (A scene of which I do unironically love, because that is me at every baby shower I have ever been forced to attend. Baby showers are awful, y’all.)

At the time of publishing this piece, the flick remains at #2 on Netflix’s Top 10. Turns out her web really did connect us all.

This article contains full spoilers for Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga and Mad Max: Fury Road. If you’re curious about a post-credits scene for Furiosa, there isn’t one!

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga has finally hit theaters and, if you’re here and have moved on past the spoiler warning, we assume that you’ve already gotten your dose of the wasteland. If not, well, you were warned.

The Fury Road prequel has a pretty cut and dry ending, largely because its takes us directly into one of the most universally beloved films of the last 20 years: Mad Max: Fury Road. The final scene before the credits roll takes place maybe only hours before we meet Furiosa at the beginning of the 2015 installment of the franchise, as she smuggles Immortan Joe’s harem into her War Rig. Still, Furiosa does get a few moments to herself before she gathers the wives into the belly of her death-dealing semi and attempts to race their way to freedom.

Furiosa Ending Explained

As Anya Taylor Joy’s Furiosa and Chris Hemsworth’s Dementus see their grudge match crescendo, their confrontation leads to an ending that’s almost entirely up to the viewer to interpret. A narrator (who we believe is George Shevstov’s History Man, but don’t quote us) describes the methods with which Furiosa is rumored to have dispatched Dementus while the different scenarios play out on screen; a single bullet, roasting on a makeshift cross, and being dragged behind her wasteland hot rod. The point is, it’s a story that’s becoming legend, being passed down through the ages. What ages? We’re not sure, because no time passes between the end of Furiosa and Fury Road. Still, this is an idea that George Miller has very explicitly toyed with since Max Rockatansky’s V8 interceptor first sought revenge in the Wasteland. Speaking to IGN’s Scott Collura, Miller had this to say about the revenge tale…

“There is a kind of cultural evolution,” Miller starts. “Where stories are told over and over again. But somehow they have to have some sort of resonance with their times. And we've been telling revenge stories in all cultures, specifically with Greek mythologies and mainly biblical stories, particularly Old Testament. It's big in that world. In all mythology. So how do you tell a variation of it?”

The Dick Tree

The really interesting version of the Legend of Furiosa’s Revenge — and simultaneously the most and least plausible one, even if it’s also the ending that the film implies is the true outcome — finds Furiosa planting a seed she’d kept since Dementus first abducted her as a child somehow in Dementus’ midsection. High in the citadel, Dementus is doomed to exist as the living soil for a tree from which he takes his only bit of sustenance, the condensation falling from its leaves. It’s an image that’s part freaky symbiosis, part snake eating its own tail but all classical mythology vibes.

The idea that this man might be fated to literally bare fruit for a woman whose childhood he irreparably destroyed, so that she might continue her quest to return home ranks right up there with an eagle eating a dudes liver every day or some asshole having to push a boulder up a hill for eternity.

Miller found inspiration for this ending in the mythologies found in his home, Australia. “They always go to something larger” he said of indigenous Australian stories, “where it becomes unapologetically mythological. So that's what we offer up. Taking vengeance brings you to a full stop or a downward spiral. But we are looking for something else.”

The image of the tree (ignoring the placement of the trunk on his lower abdomen that’s gotten us IGN folks referring to it by the shorthand “that dick tree”) does have an additional bit of significance attached to it, however. It represents Furiosa’s ability to coax some growth out of her lifelong commitment to revenge. The single seed that she clung to flowers into a tree, which bears the fruit of her long lost home once again. She demanded that Dementus give her mother back and, in a strange, symbolic way, she forced him to do just that.

But that’s just another element of Miller’s entire goal with Furiosa and the Mad Max franchise at this point in its narrative. With each successive entry, the series gets more and more steeped in an oral tradition, including more legend and less hard fact. But that doesn’t mean Miller left everything wide open to interpretation. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga did begin its life as backstory for Charlize Theron’s take on the character in Fury Road, which blossomed into concept art and a screenplay and eventually the film. They took a similar approach to Fury Road’s other lead character as well.

“We did the same for Max, in the year before we meet him in Fury Road… that was written not as a screenplay, but as a novella,” Miller explains. “So we had those two stories and everybody, including the cast, every designer, every member of the crew got those as a way of understanding what was happening in Fury Road. There are very specific design organizing ideas behind them all.”

But while the worldbuilding done by Miller and his team is undeniably extensive. What happens in the Wasteland, the truth of it all, should still be taken with a grain of probably-irradiated sand.

As Miller put it, while talking to us about the dick tree, “I shouldn't interpret what it means. It's for everybody to take what it means.”

The Return to the Green Place

What’s less up for interpretation are the final moments of the film. Furiosa claims her peach, sharing it with the wives as she loads them in the war rig, sure that she will take them to an oasis where none of them will ever have to deal with the cruelty of man or the harshness of the wasteland again.

Of course, where Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga ends, Mad Max: Fury Road begins, and we know that Furiosa and the surviving wives find her remaining Vuvalini family only to learn that the Green Place is now uninhabitable swampland. As for what happens next, well, that’s a different ending explained. (Suck it, Immortan Joe.)

So what did the ending of the film mean to you? Did you like the sizzle reel of Fury Road that played during the end credits because oh man did we run home and watch that one again. Let us know about it in the comment section and check out the rest of our Furiosa coverage, including the 10 our reviewer gave it, and a more extensive version of our interview with Miller on why Mad Max movies don’t necessarily need Mad Max anymore.