Pictures: Mad Max Furiosa premieres at Cannes Film festival to standing ovation
A-listers swarmed to the launch of Mad Max Furiosa at the Cannes Film Festival, with early reviews praising the latest in the saga featuring Chris Hemsworth. See the pictures.
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George Miller has done it again. The Oscar winning Australian director has delivered yet another critically acclaimed masterpiece if the early reviews from the world’s biggest and most prestigious film festival are to go by.
Miller, along with stars Chris Hemsworth, Anya Taylor-Joy and Alyla Browne presented Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga at the Cannes International Film Festival.
“Miller is such a wildly inventive filmmaker that it’s been easy to forget that he keeps making movies about the end of life as we know it,” New York Times critic Manohla Dargis wrote. “It’s only with ‘Furiosa’ that I now understand he’s also one kick-ass prophet of doom.”
Geoffrey Macnab from the Guardian wrote: “This is a film made with purposeful savagery, and with considerable wit and lyricism, too.
“It has the concentrated intensity of 2015’s Fury Road, to which it is a prequel, and yet it unfolds across a far broader canvas.”
Furiosa is the prequel to Miller’s Fury Road that starred Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy and comes 45 years after Miller’s original Mad Max film that had Mel Gibson in the title role.
Browne plays a young Furiosa in this film while Taylor-Joy picks up as she gets older and Hemsworth thrives as bad guy, Dementus.
The stars received a seven minute standing ovation at the Cannes screening.
Within hours of the screening, the early reviews have Furiosa had an impressive 87 per cent score on Rotten Tomatoes.
“Furiosa is a fine prelude to that mighty arc,” Vanity Fair’s Richard Lawson wrote. “Its initial rattling gradually gives way to the robust and satisfying purr of Miller, despite everything, making it work.”
“A friend of mine was saying that the Americans have Star Wars, the Brits have Harry Potter and we as Australians have Mad Max, so this is a dream come true,” Hemsworth said at the time. “To be a part of the Mad Max universe, something that has been around for 45 years, something that is so iconically Australian … is incredible.”
The movie was shot in various locations across NSW, including in the iconic red desert sands outside Broken Hill. It is believed it injected some $350m into the NSW economy with a crew of 3100 people and 4500 extras employed for the shoot.
Taylor-Joy spent several months here making the film and particularly loved shooting in the remote locations.
“It was myself and my cat, who is a proud Australian. It was just the two of us in the Outback together,” Taylor-Joy said. “I loved it.”
A who’s who of the international film scene arrived at Cannes for the global premiere.
Donning a crisp white suit, the film’s Australian star Chris Hemsworth was spotted posing for selfies on the red carpet.
And he appeared more smitten than ever as he hit the red carpet with his wife Elsa Pataky at the Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga at Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday.
The pair were joined by Hemsworth’s co-star Anya-Taylor Joy who was wearing a strapless gown with a corset-style top.
The Thor actor stars alongside a huge ensemble cast including Tom Burke, Lachy Hulme, Nathan Jones, Angus Sampson, Goran D Kleut and Josh Helman as Scrotus in the action adventure film.
‘I’m not nervous’: Sydney teen joins Hemsworth at Cannes Film Fest
On Wednesday, the nerves were yet to set in for Sydney teen Alyla Browne ahead of walking the red carpet at what was set to be the biggest and most prestigious film event in the world.
The 14-year-old star is in France to attend the global premiere of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga alongside co-stars Chris Hemsworth and Anya Taylor-Joy, and Oscar winning director George Miller.
“I’m not nervous, I might be nervous the day of or when I am getting ready,” Browne told The Daily Telegraph.
“Hopefully I won’t be. At the moment I am not.”
Browne is already one of our most in demand actors with some enviable film and television credits to her name, including The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, Nine Perfect Strangers, True Spirit and Three Thousand Years of Longing.
She is in year nine at the Newtown Performing Arts High School and has a few Zimmerman dresses to choose from to wear on the red carpet.
Furiosa is the prequel to Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road that starred Charlize Theron as Furiosa and Tom Hardy as Max.
In this film, Furiosa is played by Browne and Taylor-Joy while Hemsworth is Dementus.
“I have to pinch myself and say I am playing an amazing post apocalyptic warrior and I am so proud and amazed that I got to be her for six months,” Browne said. “It is still crazy to me.
Because it is George Miller’s baby and he has been making these films for over 45 years, there is such a big legacy behind Furiosa and Mad Max. Everyone is so excited to see it and they should be because it is incredible and I am so proud of it.”
Many of Browne’s scenes were shot without dialogue as the young Furiosa attempted to keep her identity secret.
“I don’t particularly enjoy lines, they don’t get along with me and I don’t get along with them,” she said. “I don’t get them wrong but I always freak out, I get so anxious that I am going to get them wrong.”
Browne was excited to have flown business class to Europe and even more excited about the flight from Cannes to the UK.
“Between Cannes and London I get to go on a private jet, which is going to be really fun. I always see them in the movies, never see them in real life. It is going to feel like I am in a movie, which is insane.”
Reminded she is in fact a teenage movie star, Browne giggled: “Right, I am in movies. Oops I forgot.”
— Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga opens in Australian cinemas on May 23.
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