It has been nearly a decade since the premiere of Mad Max: Fury Road, George Miller’s dazzling action opus—an intensely odd and inventive riot of practical effects that, one hoped at the time, would inspire a new era of artful blockbuster fare. That, sadly, did not come to pass, and so Miller has returned to give us another offering himself. Furiosa, which premiered here at the Cannes Film Festival May 15, is an origin story for its title character, loudly setting the stage for the endgame of Fury Road.

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Prequels are rarely inspiring. Suspense is dulled by familiarity; backstories too often fit awkwardly with what came before (but happens after). The studio miscalculation is that audiences will always want to know more about a character who was once only tantalizingly detailed: surely we all crave a specific recounting of how Furiosa came to be a formidable lieutenant in the army of a wasteland warlord. I, for one, didn’t—not really. Such skepticism proves hard to shake as Furiosa slowly lurches into gear.

The film begins with a young Furiosa (Alyla Brown) living in a verdant eden, a matriarchal society hidden away from the guns-and-gasoline mobs prowling the desert beyond. (The place is so lovely one wonders why anyone living in it would give their children so bellicose a name as Furiosa—which I’d always assumed was a nom de guerre.) As we know is going to happen, because it was alluded to in Fury Road, Furiosa is snatched from her community and made a pawn in the tribal wars of men fighting for resources. Her tragedy is the start of our adventure.

Furiosa first finds herself in the wretched company of Dementus (Chris Hemsworth), the preening leader of a biker gang who transports himself, quite cleverly, on a chariot pulled by three motorcycles. He sees Furiosa as prize, ward, and bargaining chip in his campaign against rivals who control what’s left of civilization. We are thus reintroduced to Fury Road villain Immortan Joe (now played by Lachy Hulme), fearsome tyrant of the Citadel, which uses its water supply to grow crops that are traded for bullets (at the Bullet Farm) and fuel (in Gastown). Because we have seen Fury Road, we know that Furiosa will eventually fall under Joe’s command and later escape it.

That inevitability is a weight around the movie’s neck; it is hard to be surprising or narratively nimble when everyone knows what’s coming. Miller must, then, rely on his set pieces to get the blood up, to make all this careening toward fate worth the time. Once the politics of food and gas and guns have finally been sorted, Furiosa revs its engines and goes chasing after the grandeur of its predecessor.

It doesn’t quite catch up. But it comes close enough that we can at least glimpse Fury Road’s tail lights in the distance. Furiosa, with its motorcycles zipping and paragliders raining fire from the sky, works best at top speed. When the movie roars to life, about halfway through, its cacophony of machines proves thrilling. It’s strangely comforting, too: ah, yes, there’s that good old glorious noise again.

There’s a heavier reliance on green-screen this time around, but Miller still keeps things far more analog than many of his blockbuster brethren do. The crunch of metal and bone is felt; the strain of stunt people and lead performers pushed to their limits is palpable and appreciated. Each locale—Gastown, the Bullet Farm, the dizzying heights of the Citadel—is richly realized, small cities vividly dotting Miller’s map of hell. Miller conjures a vastness, then zooms in on the alternately stirring and pitiable spectacle of a few small people fighting to survive it.

Once Furiosa has grown up a bit, she is played by Anya Taylor-Joy, who handles the physical demands of the role with graceful rigor. She drives and shoots and strides across the top of a tanker truck barreling at high speed with flinty composure. It is easy to trace the line between her Furiosa and Charlize Theron’s version, aided by the film’s increasingly compelling emotional arithmetic. Furiosa is given something of a love interest, Tom Burke’s Praetorian Jack, who may offer her an out, a path leading back to the lush home from which she was stolen. But hope is a terribly fleeting thing in the world of Mad Max; Miller’s vision of relentless and all-consuming cruelty looms and terrifies.

It can also be grimly funny. Hemsworth gives the flashiest and most indelible performance in the film, complicating Dementus’s villainy without diminishing it. As he flares the nostrils of his prosthetic nose in indignation, he occasionally lets slip an echo of what might be Dementus’s past humanity—the person who may have existed before this dystopian nightmare turned him so greedy and merciless. Hemsworth bellows and growls with the fluid theatrics of a seasoned Shakespeare performer; here, at long last, could be the piece of acting that convinces Hollywood of his serious chops.

When Dementus and Furiosa have their grand reckoning, the film slows to consider the utility of personal vendetta amidst so much chaos and horror. In that way, Furiosa does its prequel job, setting its title character on her righteous course. She will endure much more before coming out the other side clarified, ennobled by higher purpose. Furiosa is a fine prelude to that mighty arc. Its initial rattling gradually gives way to the robust and satisfying purr of Miller, despite everything, making it work.