It will be a real shame if George Miller doesn’t get to make his mooted follow-up, The Wasteland, because of the low takings of such a creatively ambitious and oddball film as Furiosa

The film industry is obsessed with box office figures. The Tinseltown trades spend far more time focusing on whichever recent blockbuster has lost $200m than they do on the movies that pick up critical plaudits. There is a constant sense that, with such huge budgets flying around in the era of Avatar: The Way of Water ($350m, reportedly) and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny ($326m, same) that the entire financial Hollywood house of cards could be about to come crashing down faster than one can mutter “massive CGI mega-budget” under one’s breath.

I was once fortunate enough to share the same rarefied air as Willem Dafoe, who asked me politely, in response to an impertinent question regarding the elevated budget of the sci-fi flick in which he had just portrayed a four-armed, green-skinned, 15ft Martian, whether I or anybody else really cared how much a movie cost. For all I know, Dafoe had trotted this one out with trademark sly and irresistible charm for every hapless interviewer that day at the Dorchester, but either way I was reminded of it this week after George Miller’s excellent Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga was greeted with brickbats after only making $32m (£25m) over its debut weekend at the US box office. “Worst Memorial Day opening in three decades” screamed the Hollywood Reporter, before suggesting that Furiosa’s box office results “puts brakes on George Miller’s next Mad Max movie”.

George Miller’s world-building spectacle is an assault on the senses that’s given a human heart by its remarkable star

“The question is: do you have it in you to make it epic?” Garrulous and utterly deranged despot Dr. Dementus (Chris Hemsworth) is making small talk with Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy), who is in no mood for idle chatter. The moment comes towards the end of the movie; by this point in the film, Furiosa is a single-minded, flint-eyed avenger with a customised power tool for an arm. It’s a great line, which Hemsworth delivers with a lip-smacking relish. But given the barnstorming action onslaught that has preceded the exchange, it’s a question that is probably redundant. This is a George Miller picture, after all. Epic is all part of a day’s work. But even by the standards of the previous films in the Mad Max series (Fury Road is the closest in tone, but there are marked differences between the two pictures), this is a huge, marauding monster of a movie. See it on the biggest screen if you can; let the thunderous rumble of customised war rigs shake your seats, and the sandblasted angry ochre colour palette grind itself into your pores.

As the title suggests, we follow the backstory of Furiosa, the character played in Fury Road by Charlize Theron. Here, she’s performed as a child by Alyla Browne and as a young woman by Taylor-Joy. On the physical resemblance alone, it’s superb casting – the two look almost uncannily similar. Beyond that, they are both independently impressive in the role. Browne lets us see the wily calculation beneath the shell of trauma in the little girl ripped from her mother and her community and forced to see things no child should witness. And Taylor-Joy is a pleasure to watch in the action sequences, which take up probably 90% of the film. Her lithe agility and cunning is a refreshing counterpoint to all the lumbering muscle and firepower. She’s tiny in comparison with most of the cast, but give her a grappling hook and a set of wheels and you genuinely believe she could best any of them.

Trend for the bold, aspirational, high-fashion statement enters the more affordable mainstream

And just like that, Sarah Jessica Parker kicked off a mood. On Monday, the actor posted a photo of herself on the set of the next season of the Sex and the City spin-off wearing a gingham hat the size of a car steering wheel.

It cements a brewing moment for the very big hat that has seen actors such as Margaret Qualley and Anya Taylor-Joy wearing scene-stealing headgear at the Cannes film festival this week.

The weather didn’t play ball, but Magnus von Horn’s fierce fairytale and Andrea Arnold’s kitchen-sink take on English mysticism should count among the first-week highlights for Greta Gerwig’s jury

The Cannes film festival opens just as the heavens do, too. It’s raining on the red carpet and on the black limousines and on the immaculate white pavilions that line up on the beach. The rain falls on the A-listers as they climb the stairs to the Palais, and on the stoic huddled masses who gather behind the police cordons. Everybody’s bedraggled and windswept; it feels as though the whole town’s been at sea. “My main wish is that we see some great films this year,” says Iris Knobloch, the festival’s president, casting an anxious eye at the sky. “But also I’m wishing for a little sunshine as well.”

If it’s raining in Cannes, it means there’s a glitch in the script. It’s one of the event’s in-built paradoxes that a festival which predominantly plays out in darkened rooms should be so dependent on good weather; so in thrall to its complementary circus of photocalls, yacht parties and open-air film screenings. All it takes is a downpour to trigger a disturbance in the force, a creeping sense of existential dread. The punters came expecting Technicolor. But the scene is all wrong: the world has gone monochrome.