Oli Mould does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga – blink and you’ll miss a solarpunk alternative to series’ usual dystopia

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2024-06-08 20:30:03

Oli Mould does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Since the first trilogy of films in the 1980s, the Mad Max saga has been a staple of post-apocalyptic fiction, with the harsh desert of the Australian outback the perfect stage for an Earth ravaged by ecocide.

The marauding gangs of feral warlords that the films are famous for, with their dieselpunk aesthetic (a combination of petrol-based machinery and a retro-futurist sensibility), conjure the kind of kill-or-be-killed society that English philosopher Thomas Hobbes once imagined of humanity’s distant past.

It’s refreshing then that the newest instalment in the series, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, gives a fleeting glimpse of the alternative: utopian societies that could exist alongside – or perhaps, instead of – the nasty, brutish and short life of a post-collapse world.

The titular Furiosa is a young girl at the start of the film who grows into the battle-hardened feminist icon (played by Anya Taylor-Joy) from director George Miller’s Fury Road, released in 2015. Furiosa is seen at the outset of the new film in her first home, “The Green Place”.