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New Furiosa trailer, revealed! 5 things we learned

The Mad Max saga is fast approaching across the shimmery desert. Here's what we can make out...

20 March 2024

The second trailer for Furiosa has dropped, three months on from the first.

We have around two months to wait until Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is out in cinemas, so what does this trailer tell us about George Miller’s next slice of sandy apocalypse action?

Plenty, actually. And we’re glad to see there’s a bit less of a CGI sheen to all but one of the scenes in this trailer.

Some folks got a bit sniffy about the look of the first preview. Some even suggested Fury Road was a CGI-lite movie. It wasn’t. It was just the computer-y stuff was laid on top of a base of real cars getting trashed in a real Namibinan desert. And, boy, did it work well.

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Anyway, here are five of the things we took away from Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga trailer number two. The film is due in cinemas on May 24.

1. Not all the world may be desert

“She comes from a place of abundance,” we hear Chris Hemsworth’s Dementus (or one of his cronies) say of (presumably) Furiosa. The trailer clearly suggests she grew up not in a barren desert but a green and leafy forest-like place.

Our first assumption was this was a flashback before the fall of the Earth. But the trailer makes it pretty clear this green paradise and the bleak desert co-existed, assuming the former isn’t just a heatstroke mirage.

Does it still exist in the film’s present? That bit is less clear, as we see at least two timelines in the trailer’s two minutes.

2. Tom Burke is the closest we get to a love interest

Both of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga’s trailers let Dementus and Furiousa dominate the spotlight. There’s an almighty face-off coming. But this second trailer also tentatively introduces us to Mank, played by Tom Burke.

We already knew he was on-board, having replaced Yahya Abdul-Mateen II in 2021. But this trailer shows he’s likely the closest Furiosa gets to a partner — of any kind — in the “present” timeline where she’s a fully-grown adult.

As such, he may be the nearest Tom Hardy equivalent, although we expect Burke to get much less screen time in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.

3. Do Immortal Joe and Furiosa team up?

Unless this trailer is pulling a trick on us, there’s a moment where it looks as though Furiosa and Immortal Joe team up, or at least reach an understanding, to take down Dementus.

“If you find him, he’s mine,” we see Furiosa tell Immortal Joe. There are also clear parallels between Immortal Joe in one of the key Fury Road trailers and Furiosa in this one.

In the “main” trailer for Fury Road we hear Immortal Joe say “I want them back,” referring to the freed slaves. In this trailer, Furiosa utters the same words, with an intonation that suggests they are a reply to an 8-year-old trailer. Now that's some cheeky teaser-making.

4. Furiosa was taken as a kid in a biblical kidnap

The trailer begins with a bit of ripe biblical metaphor-making, seeing Furiosa as a child picking an apple from a tree before being kidnapped by Dementus’s goons. There’s no further suggestion this is going to branch out into a full-on biblical allegory, mind.

Furiosa ventures too far in the verdant place in which she lives (as a child), as we hear from what may well be her sister. She’s then kidnapped by bike riders, setting off the chain of events where her mother rides into the desert to try to bring her back.

5. Charlee Fraser plays Furiosa’s mom

Relative newcomer Charlee Fraser plays Furiosa’s mother. She is just a few months older than Anya Taylor-Joy, born on Christmas Day of 1995 according to IMDb.

Like just about every character in the Mad Max universe, she’s aggrieved because she has had something stolen from her. Fair play, though, having your daughter nicked can’t be much fun.

Fraser had a small role in 2023’s Anyone But You, but otherwise has worked as a model since 2016.