How Chris Hemsworth channels his favourite movies in ‘Furiosa’
His recurring role as the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s ‘God of Thunder’ may have turned him into a star and made him a very wealthy man, but Chris Hemsworth doesn’t have the best track record at the box office outside of his hammer-wielding comfort zone.
While commercial success is guaranteed any time he straps on the cape and suits up as the franchise’s Thor, the underwhelming performance of Mad Max prequel Furiosa runs the risk of adding yet another notable flop to a filmography that’s quicky stacking up with an alarming number of them.
Hemsworth was the top-billed name in Ron Howard’s In the Heart of the Sea, Michael Mann’s Blackhat, fantasy sequel Huntsman: Winter’s War, and sci-fi successor Men in Black: International, all of which bombed hard. He wasn’t the focal point of Paul Feig’s Ghostbusters do-over or Drew Goddard’s Bad Times at the El Royale, but they tanked too.
Furiosa is a particularly sore one because George Miller mounts a more than worthy return to the Wasteland with Anya Taylor-Joy leading the line, but for whatever reason, audiences weren’t that interested in showing up on the opening weekend for the latest instalment in a legendary franchise that boasts at least three-stone cold classics among its back catalogue.
Hemsworth gives what might be the best performance of his career as the overly-ambitious warlord Dementus, who reveals that the loss of his family ignited his despotic tendencies. He’s basically Max Rockatansky if he’d decided to embrace the darkness, then, but breaking bad allows the actor to both ham it up and exude an era of underlying menace, hinting there’s much more to him as a performer than he’s regularly been allowed to show.
No stranger to the world of high fantasy, then, but three of Hemsworth’s four favourite films as listed to Letterboxd evidently influenced his turn in Furiosa, whether it was intentional or not. Jim Henson’s Labyrinth revolves around a charismatic and duplicitously charming villain scurrying away a child for their own agenda, very similar to the way Furiosa spends years under the thrall of Dementus after he murders her mother.
Wolfgang Petersen’s The NeverEnding Story unfolds in a mythical land in danger of being swamped by darkness that’s crying out for a hero, and parallels can be drawn between Dementus muscling in on Immortan Joe’s turf to become the de facto big bad of the Wasteland, at least until Furiosa enters full badass mode.
Even Rob Reiner’s The Princess Bride follows a standard good versus evil template with memorable supporting characters coming out of its ears, something that’s entirely applicable to the entire Mad Max saga. If anything, the franchise itself is a lot closer to being a fairy tale than it is a standard action series, with Miller having always favoured the mythological connotations.
Admittedly, It’s a Wonderful Life is the outlier among the quartet because nobody in the Wasteland gets a happy ending. Still, Hemsworth’s trio of top-notch fantasies have more than a hint of Furiosa about them in their own way.
