You can lose yourself in the awe inspiring excess of George Miller’s latest “Mad Max” movie. “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” is two hours and 28 minutes of action epic that gives “Dune” a run for its money in “Best Filmed Use of Sand Dunes ‘Since Lawrence of Arabia.'”

Revel in the fun, villainous turn by Chris Hemsworth as the hunky, shirtless and long-maned villain, Dementus the Red, appreciate the clever casting of “It” girl Anya Taylor-Joy as the younger version of Charlize Theron’s warrior woman from “Mad Max: Fury Road,” and acknowledge the acceptable job of back-engineering the story to get us to that film.

But this is the first “Mad Max” movie I can remember that just drags through the violent and occasionally exciting later acts. Miller, who has made a career out of these movies, seems to have less to say, and simply runs out of anything to say at all for the drawn-out finale.

The energy wars parable of the ’80s films became more of an environmental one for this renewal of the saga — remember, Miller also gave us the “Happy Feet” save-the-planet animated musicals. But even that seems half-hearted here.

“Furiosa” feels, at times, like a Miller take on the “Fast and Furious” franchise, with motivations for actions and action beats themselves a struggle to invent and work-out because of all that he’s done with rat-rodded “survivor” cars, trucks, motorbikes and ultralight aircraft in the films that came before.

But it begins with grand promise and achieves spectacle — via digitally-assisted stunts, explosions, etc. — on a scale that raises the bar on popcorn pic action. If only it all seemed justifiable and logical.

Little Furiosa (Alya Brown) is kidnapped by bikers who get a tad too close to her tribe’s Edenic “place of abundance.” She eventually falls in the hands of the Messianic biker lord, Dementus (Hemsworth, over the top and fun) who cannot talk her out of directions to her solar powered valley of plenty, run mostly by empowered women.

A girl “all there,” with all her reproductive organs instact, is a valued asset in “The Wasteland.” Dementus, who lost his children in the cataclysm that ended society, raises her. And when his grandiose schemes to rule The Wasteland by beseiging The Citadel (seen in “Fury Road”) come to naught, she becomes a bargaining chip sold to the genetically-damaged, breathing-apparatus dependent leader/breeder of the hellish society there.

Only her wits and toughness will save her. Her mother (Charlee Fraser, in a fierce, breakout turn) hunted her down and came close to freeing her. But at least the child learned that she doesn’t have to be a concubine to the patriarchy from her.

When she grows up “useful,” brave and tough (and played by Anya Taylor-Joy), she is the perfect partner to take on in “the crew” that driver Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke) needs to make transport runs between Gastown, The Bullet Farm and The Citadel. But Dementus and his ever-growing “great horde” threaten this already unjust, dysfunctional nascent civilization. And he and Furiosa have unfinished business.

The film’s best sequence is the long pursuit, mother for child, that opens the picture. Things afterward start to seem repetitive because if you’ve seen one LTD, Valiant, Charger or Microbus rat-rodded for post-Apocalyptic service, you’ve seen it all.

There’s the suggestion that some have worked out just what this “Wasteland” can raise and sustain life with, but there’s little in the way of showing that. This world is all about the gas, bullets and a violently sexist society that’s spun out of notoriously sexist Australian culture.

Promising ideas are hinted at, the best of them being that the women-empowered “green place” is an achievable Eden, while the short-sighted, violent and testosterony male societies ended civilization and are now monstrous, inhuman dictatorships where life, even among the alleged elite, is cheap.

Everybody else lives off scraps in caves, it is implied.

George Shevtsov plays “The History Man,” a learned fellow kept at the right hand of Dementus to remind him of the world that’s vanished and the English language that’s in steep decline as well. Angus Sampson is Organic Mechanic, a guy with some knowledge of biology, physiology and cuisine.

But too few supporting players make much of an impression and few set pieces seem remotely original, as there’s nothing as gonzo of having marauders hunting prey on “Fury Road” with their own guitar hero shredding away on the prow of a truck.

Hemsworth’s Dementus travels in a chariot pulled by three motorcycles, and a lot of the lads in his gang have taken on names like “Mr. Harley, Mr. Norton, Mr. Davidson” and “Mr. Honda.” But that’s about it for wit.

“Where are they going so full of HOPE? There IS no hope!”

Taylor-Joy makes a solid impression as our focused fury of a Furiosa. There’s meant to be chemistry with her fellow “Praetorian.” There is none.

A bigger gripe here is that this film feels more obviously production-designed than any “Mad Max” film. There’s less sense that what everybody’s using, wearing, driving and fighting out is “what’s left after the Apocalypse.” The biker gangs have improvised skis for “war boys” to ride on behind bikes and souped-up cars. The Citadel manufactures an amored supertanker to make those Fury Road runs. It’s covered in chrome. Why?

For one sequence, our heroine is dressed in jodhpurs. Again, why?

There’s a lot of that in “Furiousa,” which one can dwell on when the repetition sets in, when the political parables to today prove too thin to sustain serious thought and the story itself grinds towards an end that points to the beginning of “Fury Road.”

Whatever these films have done for Miller’s career as an action auteur, “Furiosa” is what happens when you saddle your horse to old cars and bikes chasing each other through “The Wasteland” for too long. Even without Vin Diesel, “Fast Slow and the Furious” gets to be a repetitive drag.

Rating: R, graphic, grisly violence

Cast: Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Burke, George Shevstov, Alya Brown, Lachy Hulme, Angus Sampson and Charlee Fraser.

Credits: Directed by George Miller, scripted by George Miller and Nick Lathouris. A Warner Brothers release.

Running time: 2:28