ROAD RAGE

The Mad Max world shifts gears.

Back in 2015, George Miller raised the bar for action spectacle with Mad Max: Fury Road, its outrageous vehicular carnage accelerating past, and vaulting over, what he achieved with 1981’s Mad Max 2. Prequel Furiosa will give viewers the origin story of Charlize Theron’s feminist warrior, showing how she’s snatched from The Green Place, once home to The Many Mothers, falls in with the Biker Horde that’s led by Dementus, and is taken to The Citadel, presided over by a young Immortan Joe.

‘This is an epic,’ says Anya Taylor-Joy (Last Night in Soho, The Queen’s Gambit), who plays young Furiosa. And while she promises ‘you kind of get to know [her] better’ in Miller’s much-anticipated prequel, suggesting there’ll be pauses for breath, Taylor-Joy has also undergone rigorous training to cope with the action sequences. ‘You’re striving to make each film better,’ says Miller. ‘You’re looking for it to be as good as it can be.’

Also in the cast are Thor himself, Chris Hemsworth, and Tom Burke, who got his action on as Athos in the BBC’s The Musketeers. Which of them plays Dementus and which plays young Immortan Joe isn’t yet known for certain. What is for sure is that Furiosa is one of 2024’s must-see events.

PLANET TERROR

Fede Álvarez goes for the mother lode…

In space, no one can hear you scream. In Hollywood, everyone’s giving it the silent treatment regards the plot of Alien: Romulus, which is rumoured to take place between the events of Alien and Aliens, but acts as a standalone story.

So far, all that Disney and 20th Century Studios have teased is that it zeroes in on ‘a group of young people on a distant world, who find themselves in a confrontation with the most terrifying life form in the universe’. Presumably the release isn’t referring to Total Film’s News Editor Jordan Farley, but rather the infamous Xenomorph. The towering beast with a nice line in dental work is back, and no less a connoisseur than original director Ridley Scott apparently approves: when Álvarez (Don’t Breathe, the ferocious 2013 Evil Dead) showed the big man an early cut, he said, ‘It’s fucking great.’ This from the guy who had issues with Denis Villeneuve’s extraordinary Blade Runner sequel. A further indication of quality came in the decision to move the film’s release from streaming platform Hulu to cinemas.

The talented young cast will be led by Spaeny (Mare of Easttown, Priscilla), and Álvarez’s horror roots suggest this could be a return to the claustrophobic terrors of Scott’s seminal original. We’re (chest)bursting to see it.