Nine years after Mad Max: Fury Road sped into view and made off with six Oscars, this exhilaratingly deranged, stupendously well-realised prequel fills in the backstory of its predecessor’s stand-out star, Imperator Furiosa. The doyen of dystopias, George Miller, returns for the fifth instalment in his Mad Max franchise.

Fury Road’s Charlize Theron hands the baton to a younger actress, Anya Taylor-Joy, with Alyla Browne playing Furiosa as a kid. We witness our heroine’s abduction from the Green Place of Many Mothers, followed by the death of her own mother Mary (Charlee Fraser) at the hands of Chris Hemsworth’s warlord Dementus and his pack of ‘mad bastards’. Later, the canny Furiosa becomes a cog in the towering Citadel, overseen by the monstrous Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme, taking over from the late Hugh Keays-Byrne).

If it’s less frenzied and relentless than its masterful predecessor, Furiosa feels visually and tonally consistent (helped by returning collaborators such as editor Margaret Sixel, costume designer Jenny Beavan, and composer Junkie XL). And it still contains plenty of surging vehicular action, this time captured by cinematographer Simon Duggan. Taylor-Joy is magnificent in her rage, delivering a taciturn and emotional performance blazing with grit and guts, while Hemsworth is a fun, full-throttle adversary: camp, exuberantly indignant and lip-smackingly wicked. But, as brilliant as Tom Burke usually is, he feels an odd fit for Furiosa’s war-rig-driving mentor, Praetorian Jack (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II was originally cast in the role).

At 148 minutes, is it a shade too long? Perhaps. It’s certainly an epic tale of resilience and revenge. Yet with the survival of the moviegoing experience very much in the balance, Furiosa could hardly have come at a better time; a film of such outrageous style and audacity, it’s enough to restore your faith in the power of big-budget cinema.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is in cinemas from Friday 24 May.