Hollywood’s obsession with rehashing old IP would seem to necessitate churn, but that must not be how they do things down under. With George Lucus giving up the reins to Star Wars, Steven Spielburg relieved of duty on both Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park, and even James Cameron openly musing about an Avatar future without his guidance, George Miller’s reluctance to hand over the keys to the war rig stands out as the ultimate outlier. Having regained the rights to Mad Max from Warner Brothers right around the end of the century, Miller spent the better part of two decades trying to turn his trilogy of Wasteland films into a quartet, with myriad production delays finally leading to what was, by all accounts, an acrimonious set during the filming of a fourth installment. The final product? Mad Max: Fury Road, a certified platinum thrill ride with enough audience adulation and Academy Award plaudits to merit yet another entry. We wondered then how a man in his 70’s could make such a break-neck spectacle for the ages. We wonder now, as his pair of safe hands nears 80 years of age, why he would want to again.

As with all prequels, the question of necessity is the first that comes to mind when the lights dim on Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, especially when considering its position in the twilight of Miller’s career. Though Fury Road earned its praise as an exercise in world-building, the storytelling always took second chair to the gobsmacking set pieces on display, rendering our understanding of their setting largely superfluous. The same could be said of providing the movie’s heroine with a feature film’s worth of back story; one of the most compelling aspects of Charlize Theron’s instantly iconic Furiosa was her enigma, a welcome dose of under-explanation in a world determined to grind all sources of intrigue into mush with the merciless blades of exposition. These concerns prove to be warranted, and while Furiosa detractors would be forgiven for finding this latest chapter redundant, it’s worth wondering why they bought a ticket in the first place.

From a pure razzle dazzle perspective, it’s difficult to remember a movie with this many sequences of blistering forward momentum since its predecessor. The phrasing here is key, because while Fury Road unfurled as a near non-stop two hour chase sequence, Furiosa stretches out its 148 runtime with scenes of maudlin dialogue and side quests to locations that were mentioned off-handedly in the 2015 installment. Talking isn’t really Miller’s thing, and while the syrupy spoken interactions between his characters run the risk of alienating an audience whose desires could be measured in miles per hour, they clarify the archetypal narrative he’s attempting to weave. In a world of smart aleck superheroes and brooding protagonists who only say what they don’t mean, there’s something refreshingly old-fashioned about watching characters cut straight to the point, subtlety be damned. What reads as ham-fisted from one angle can be seen as classical from another, a grisly dystopia that plays like an offering from the silent film era, when placards and meaningful stares did the chronological grunt work while the camera entertained the guests.

The silent era would not, however, have been capable of the audio pyrotechnics on offer here, a thunderous cacophony of roaring engines and deafening gunfire set to the doomsday maximalism of Tom Holkenborg’s ever-imposing score. The auricular onslaught is far from the only production element hell bent on blowing audience members back into their chairs, with cinematographer Simon Duggan’s searing desert vistas searing retinas as often as it pleases them, and Margaret Sixel’s razor-sharp editing ramping up tension even during fleeting moments of calm. For all the hand wringing over some less-than-stellar CGI in the film’s promotional material, Furiosa is never a movie of half-measures, dangerously hungry to fray your nerve endings from one frame to the next, and with enough behind-the-scenes fire power to realize its ambitions.

The intention to harm isn’t relegated to elements of presentation, but rather feeds off of them to spin a yarn that’s far more harrowing than we’ve come to expect from summer tentpole fare. Ripped from her idyllic Green Place home as a pre-teen in the film’s opening moments, our titular protagonist spends the entire runtime escaping one gruesome scene only to encounter another. From macabre torture and dismemberment to imprisonment and sexual assault, Furiosa stands as one of the cruelest blockbusters you’ll ever encounter, and while its deviousness will prove too forthright for the faint of heart, there’s no doubting Miller and company’s commitment to their vision. Ever the ecological parable, the Mad Max saga writ large envisions a world in decay without the safeguards to which we’ve become accustomed. Turns out there’s not much smiling to be done come apocalypse time.

What grinning there is to be had is mostly done by Chris Hemsworth as Dementus, the movie’s antagonist and gnarled avatar for twisted empathy. Despite perpetrating many of the film’s monstrosities, Dementus is afforded a whisper of a backstory that elucidates his rotten core without seeking to absolve it, an irredeemable villain who still lacks the level of viciousness required to ascend in what’s left of the outback. Anya Taylor-Joy might have the titular role, but her sparse dialogue and limited screen time make way for Hemsworth and his devilish smirk to drive away with the movie. He’s certainly thirsty for it, both on the page and in the performance, a hollowed-out husk in search of enough thrill to get through another day. Which is maybe how we should be viewing the movie’s director as well.

It’s difficult to parse what exactly made George Miller want to return to these movies, especially given the pain-staking difficulty of their production, and Fury Road’s invitation to walk away on the highest of highs. Our understanding of Furiosa’s trauma isn’t deepened by specificity, and the world is only broadened by measure of a few brush strokes. When you’ve reached the summit of kinetic filmmaking, maybe all that’s left is chasing that high again, and for elongated stretches, that’s exactly where Miller arrives, still peerless in the field of on-screen chaos. Whether evading a slew of hang gliding attackers or staving off death at the edge of a staggering valley, the trials Miller’s players endure cross-pollinate pleasure and panic with breathless mastery, bristling with vivacity, vibrating off the screen. Call it uneven if you must, but this one’s got the gasoline, fully leaded, and there’s no substitute for the real thing.