Watch 6 righteous minutes from Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Next weekend, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, will open in theaters, and I am buzzing. Furiosa is a prequel to 2015's Mad Max: Fury Road, one of the best action movies of the century (so far). It stars Anya Taylor-Joy as the title character, a younger version of the same woman played by Charlize Theron in Fury Road. Chris Hemsworth is Dementus, a flamboyant villain who abducts Furiosa from her verdant homeland and trades her to the warlord Immortan Joe, who raises her in a brutal post-apocalyptic wasteland.

Furiosa is directed by the 79-year-old George Miller, who has been making Mad Max movies since the 1970s. Fury Road proved he's still got it, and Furiosa is racking up great reviews. When the movie screened at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this week, Taylor-Joy and Hemsworth got a six-minute standing ovation, according to Variety.

And now, theater chain Odeon has released a six-minute montage of scenes from the movie, each more exciting that the last. Be warned that it does basically spoil a lot of the film. But also, are we really going to the Mad Max movie for the plot? I'm here for the action and the action looks spectacular, gritty and stylish, each frame a heavy metal album cover come to life. Watch below:

Anya Taylor-Joy on the agony of making Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

What do you have to do to get that level of intensity on the screen? The actors were put through the wringer. “What you’re being asked to dig into and display emotionally is exhausting,” Hemsworth told The New York Times. And Taylor-Joy sounds like she was borderline traumatized. “I’ve never been more alone than making that movie,” she said. “I don’t want to go too deep into it, but everything that I thought was going to be easy was hard.”

When the Times asked her to name an example, she got "a faraway look in her eyes" and finally declined to answer. "Next question, sorry," she said. “Talk to me in 20 years. Talk to me in 20 years.” Good lord, what happened?

The production of Fury Road was famously grueling, and I guess Miller revived that spirit for the prequel. Like Theron before her, Taylor-Joy advocated fiercely on behalf of Furiosa, who has barely any dialogue in the movie. She didn't want her to come off as too detached or emotionness. “I am a really strong advocate of female rage,” Taylor-Joy said. “We’re animals, and there’s a point where somebody just snaps. There’s one scream in that movie, and I am not joking when I tell you that I fought for that scream for three months.” That reminds me a story from the set of Fury Road, where Theron fought for and got to film a scene where Furiosa falls to her knees and screams to the heavens for the pain of it all. That ended up being one of the most iconic moments of the movie, so Taylor-Joy is continuing a proud tradition.

Then there's all the action choreography, which Taylor-Joy was determined to get "right every single time." Do that for half a year and see if you don't get a haunted look when asked about your experience.

Furiosa opens in theaters on Friday, May 24.

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