Meh

Had some exhilarating moments but for the most part feminist garbage

Controversial

"Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga" packs a lot of action, but the plot left me in the dust. As another minus, I judge some elements as a bit woke.

Debates rage across the Internet about whether "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga" is super woke, totally non-woke, or somewhere in between. I suspect that "Furiosa" has a case of bad timing with the anti-woke movement crescendoing. The main bone of contention is that for the back story exposé they chose a female character from "Mad Max: Fury Road" rather than a young Max. I'm not so bothered, as studio execs might have been thinking in terms of broadening the audience as opposed to virtue signalling. Some say she is a "Mary Sue". My "Mary Sue" radar is basically broken, sorry, though I will say I did not care what happened to her. Also, some complain that she's tough. Nothing wrong with a tough woman, but I agree that sometimes it might go too far here. My eyes rolled a couple of times, and that is what moves my woke meter from 0 to 1.

A bigger problem for me is that I felt confused by the plot. It's been 9 1/2 years since I watched "Mad Max: Road Fury". I remember Immortan Joe, but not much about the old Furiosa or the factions. I think I needed to rewatch "Road Fury" beforehand.

Also, I found the road combat ridiculous. I know, I know, it is supposed to be ridiculous, but this time it went too far, LOL. To be believable, the vehicles, weapons, and tactics have to be effective either for combat, surveillance, stealth, or psychology. I doubt anyone involved in the production has combat experience or military history knowledge. Imagine if they had Ukrainian and Serbian army mechanics and soldiers consulting on the best way to improvise armored cars, projectile weapons, and novel tactics. Imagine if they consulted the guy photographed in the meme, "Hey friend, I know the world is scary right now, but... it's gonna get way worse."

Basically, I wish I had not seen this movie, as I cared nothing for the characters and I found the combat absurd even by Mad Max standards. However, the woke elements are minor.

I went into fully expecting this to be woke and to not like it. Surprisingly I didn't really see anything woke. I mean yes the title character is the
usual tiny 100lb female but they don't have her overpowering large men in one on one combat. Everything she does is using vehicles or weapons.
Yes some of the things she is able to do are ridiculous but then so are the men. I don't see the Mary Sue complaint either as she is trained to survive as a child in a wasteland then spends her entire captivity doing nothing then trains with the truck driver and his squad for years. The movie just jumps past all this and its literally a scene transition and its
over. I remember only one other female in the warriors all the rest are men. This is about on par with Fury Road in quality. The acting is all decent with some excellent stunt work and action scenes marred by overuse of mediocre CGI and green screen. I also found the first hour or so to be worst as they really ramp up the weirdness factor and it just feels like a silly self parody. However the second half drops a lot of this and focuses more on the action scenes. The story is a little hard to follow at time with odd scene cuts and transitions that just happen out of nowhere especially in the first half. Everything is over the top in these movies and that's always been the point so lack of realism doesn't really bother me at this point. The writing has some problems and some things make no sense as they are happening. This also has the problem all prequels have in that you already know what happens
and which characters survive. If they are in Fury Road you already know they don't die so there is no real tension in any dangerous situations. All in all not a bad Mad Max movie and if you liked Fury Road you will probably feel about the same with this one.