Ten years after introducing Charlize Theron’s iconic Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road, George Miller once again revisits the post-apocalyptic Australia he created back in 1979. The latest entry fills in fifteen years of backstory for the title war rig driver-turned-liberator by way of five chapters of audacious set pieces. As fan service, it’s exceptional. As stunt coordination, it’s reliably jaw dropping spectacle. But in terms of storytelling, it’s about as essential as a Doof Warrior and a flame-throwing electric guitar on a desert-racing military convoy. Which is to say that even if you don’t absolutely need it, there’s nothing wrong with making sure that you’re having a good time.

Over three films in the 2010s, Rupert Wyatt Matt Reeves crafted — with the motion-captured performance of Andy Serkis — a surprisingly successful prequel series exploring the earliest days of what would become a planet ruled by intelligent apes. The Caesar trilogy envisioned a world at a crossroads, one at the precipice of being dramatically transformed by a virus that made humans stupid (prescient, huh?) and gifted their non-human primate brethren super-intelligence and the ability to speak. As the final film in that series ended, Caesar, the lab chimpanzee who started it all had emerged victorious over the humans, leading his non-people to a prosperity that he wouldn’t live to see for himself. Where do you go from there?

There are many reasons to be skeptical of the current Nineties Revival, but one undeniably good element is that is Hollywood’s hottest people are finally get to have fun being hot in movies again. Joining the likes of Anyone But You, Challengers, and Hit Man is David Leitch’s unlikely reimagining of the 1980s action-adventure procedural The Fall Guy. Dispensing with the formalities of a strict reboot the stuntman-turned-director instead lets Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt – the Oscar-nominated supporting cast from Barbenheimer– cook in a towering inferno of undeniable charisma.