Mad Max Beyond ThunderdomePeople will always long for what they used to know and crave what they used to have. Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome is a post-apocalyptic action movie and the third entry in the Mad Max series of films. Ex-cop turned nuclear desert nomad, Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson), finds himself in a makeshift community called "Bartertown", named ostensibly for its economy derived from an exchange of goods and services. But Max's arrival coincides with a power struggle between its founder, "Aunty Entity" (Tina Turner), and the brains behind Bartertown's fuel supply, called "Master" (Angelo Rossitto). When Max accepts a job to eliminate Master's other half, "Blaster" (Paul Larsson), in the eponymous "Thunderdome", he is reminded that "law" comes in many forms, and is rarely equal.
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Following on the success of the exciting and practical stunt-rich Mad Max 2 (a.k.a. The Road Warrior), Beyond Thunderdome is built around action set pieces, some of which are a direct call back to the prior film, like the climactic dune buggy chase at the end. In fact, it's safe to say that after watching the most recent entry, Mad Max: Fury Road, that this series these kind of car chases requisite. I first watched Beyond Thunderdome when I was a kid, and it didn't make a lot of sense to me; not much has changed many years later. To be fair, these movies place the action in center stage, leaving the post-apocalyptic narrative and characters to settle in the background. Interestingly, after watching Mad Max 2, I was reminded that the fall of civilization wasn't due to nuclear warfare, per se, although Beyond Thunderdome has all but retconned this to be the case. So instead of barren wastelands resembling the Australian outback, everything is instead a complete desert, including dunes and deadly sinkholes. Despite this, Bartertown somehow manages to procure enough supplies (like fruit and fresh water, not to mention its porcine livestock) to sustain itself. Of course, this--like most post-apocalyptic movies--is because the movie is a romanticized version of the end of civilization, where malnutrition and disease aren't present because it doesn't test well in Pomona, so to speak. At the start of Beyond Thunderdome, Max is ambushed by an aircraft piloted by someone named "Jedediah" (Bruce Spence), who makes off with something of Max's and flees to Bartertown, hence why Max is pursuing him. Now for those of you keeping track at home, Bruce Spence also played "The Gyro Captain" in Mad Max 2, so this is easily one of the most baffling casting decisions I've ever seen. Fans of the prior film would be forgiven for concluding that this is the same character, and that perhaps the begrudging friendship they forged at the end of the last movie had fallen apart. Not so, however, once again reminding us that continuity is pretty much irrelevant in the Mad Max series, save for that he was a cop before civilization fell, and that a gang killed his family (and that little detail doesn't even come up in this move at all).
After Max arrives, trying to make his way inside Bartertown on the basis of his skills alone, he is eventually introduced to Aunty, who is soon revealed to be no different than any other despotic warlord who make up the villains of the series. "Master Blaster" (as Master and Blaster are collectively called, no relation to the NES video game) manages the methane-powered fuel in the "Underworld" of Bartertown, and constantly reminds Aunty of it. (There's a colorful name for everything here.) The semi-clever Max filches a whistle to give him an edge in the bungie-clad battleground that is Thunderdome. But when the time comes to execute Blaster, Max discovers that his opponent is intellectually impaired after knocking Blaster's helmet off, so he relents. Max may be an anti-hero, but he's still not willing to murder someone mentally handicapped, so Aunty breaks her own law to finish the job, suddenly conjuring up another arbitrary law on account of Max "busting their deal", leaving him to "face The Wheel" for his judgment. This, in turn, sends him off into the desert where he meets yet another collective of colorful characters. In this case, it's a batch of teens and kids right out of "Peter Pan", who worship a crashed airplane. (Although their unique, slang-addled language reminds me a bit of A Clockwork Orange, if I'm being honest.) These kids have built up a tribal religion about a mythical "Captain Walker", which one of them called Savannah (Helen Buday) mistakes Max for being. After clearing up the misunderstanding, Max tries to discourage Savannah from leaving to find this nonexistent Captain Walker--who is no more than a stock image in a view finder they keep as a relic of the past--leading to a schism in their ranks. Abandoning their oasis, Max, Savannah, and the others find themselves back in Bartertown, where they manage to recruit the recently enslaved Master, cross paths with Jedediah (were suddenly all is forgiven between him and Max), and all but Max escape Aunty's wrath by flying out of the desert on Jedediah's plane...but not before that big vehicular combat set piece, mind you! Virtually every scene is saturated with Maurice Jarre's musical score, which is so big and emotional that it tends to dictate the audience's response to nearly every scene. The problem with that is that it makes Beyond Thunderdome feel "overdressed", so to speak. It makes you feel that the events are on an epic scope (à la Lawrence of Arabia, which Jarre also composed the score for), yet Beyond Thunderdome just isn't really that epic. There is something haunting about the epilogue to the film, however, like it was with Mad Max 2, but even more so. "The Tribe Who Left"--as they're credited as, which includes Savannah--flies into the ruins of Sydney, with its faded, fallout-covered skyscrapers. This is a far cry from their dream of the bright and shining "Tomorrow-morrow Land". Undefeated, they lay the foundation for their own tribal civilization, a hopeful sign that, in time, civilization will be restored, and on firmer ground than of the exploitative kind the likes of Aunty Entity sought to cultivate.
Recommended for: Fans of a high-octane (because nobody's ever used that to describe a Mad Max movie before) action movie that shoves coherent narrative off of a cliff in favor for loud and exciting set pieces instead. Beyond Thunderdome feels like the most "Hollywoodized" entry of the series, complete with a hammy end credits song for the movie by co-star Tina Turner. Compared with its predecessor, this movie feels a bit like a Saturday morning cartoon version of Mad Max, and feels just a little too comfortable with its superficiality to make such a story resonate like it should.
After Max arrives, trying to make his way inside Bartertown on the basis of his skills alone, he is eventually introduced to Aunty, who is soon revealed to be no different than any other despotic warlord who make up the villains of the series. "Master Blaster" (as Master and Blaster are collectively called, no relation to the NES video game) manages the methane-powered fuel in the "Underworld" of Bartertown, and constantly reminds Aunty of it. (There's a colorful name for everything here.) The semi-clever Max filches a whistle to give him an edge in the bungie-clad battleground that is Thunderdome. But when the time comes to execute Blaster, Max discovers that his opponent is intellectually impaired after knocking Blaster's helmet off, so he relents. Max may be an anti-hero, but he's still not willing to murder someone mentally handicapped, so Aunty breaks her own law to finish the job, suddenly conjuring up another arbitrary law on account of Max "busting their deal", leaving him to "face The Wheel" for his judgment. This, in turn, sends him off into the desert where he meets yet another collective of colorful characters. In this case, it's a batch of teens and kids right out of "Peter Pan", who worship a crashed airplane. (Although their unique, slang-addled language reminds me a bit of A Clockwork Orange, if I'm being honest.) These kids have built up a tribal religion about a mythical "Captain Walker", which one of them called Savannah (Helen Buday) mistakes Max for being. After clearing up the misunderstanding, Max tries to discourage Savannah from leaving to find this nonexistent Captain Walker--who is no more than a stock image in a view finder they keep as a relic of the past--leading to a schism in their ranks. Abandoning their oasis, Max, Savannah, and the others find themselves back in Bartertown, where they manage to recruit the recently enslaved Master, cross paths with Jedediah (were suddenly all is forgiven between him and Max), and all but Max escape Aunty's wrath by flying out of the desert on Jedediah's plane...but not before that big vehicular combat set piece, mind you! Virtually every scene is saturated with Maurice Jarre's musical score, which is so big and emotional that it tends to dictate the audience's response to nearly every scene. The problem with that is that it makes Beyond Thunderdome feel "overdressed", so to speak. It makes you feel that the events are on an epic scope (à la Lawrence of Arabia, which Jarre also composed the score for), yet Beyond Thunderdome just isn't really that epic. There is something haunting about the epilogue to the film, however, like it was with Mad Max 2, but even more so. "The Tribe Who Left"--as they're credited as, which includes Savannah--flies into the ruins of Sydney, with its faded, fallout-covered skyscrapers. This is a far cry from their dream of the bright and shining "Tomorrow-morrow Land". Undefeated, they lay the foundation for their own tribal civilization, a hopeful sign that, in time, civilization will be restored, and on firmer ground than of the exploitative kind the likes of Aunty Entity sought to cultivate.
Recommended for: Fans of a high-octane (because nobody's ever used that to describe a Mad Max movie before) action movie that shoves coherent narrative off of a cliff in favor for loud and exciting set pieces instead. Beyond Thunderdome feels like the most "Hollywoodized" entry of the series, complete with a hammy end credits song for the movie by co-star Tina Turner. Compared with its predecessor, this movie feels a bit like a Saturday morning cartoon version of Mad Max, and feels just a little too comfortable with its superficiality to make such a story resonate like it should.