Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)

Although Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, the third part of George Miller's post-apocalyptic Mad Max trilogy, is certainly the least of the bunch (Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior is the undisputed masterpiece, and maybe the best action movie ever made), it has still got a good share of imaginative industrial-wasteland-pastiche imagery. And casting Tina Turner as Aunty Entity, the queen of Bartertown, was a masterstroke. Mel Gibson's character Max is pitted in a battle to the death against the bizarre Master Blaster in the Thunderdome, flying around on rubbery straps inside a sort of gigantic overturned colander with bloodthirsty spectators clinging to the outside. Miller's producing partner, Byron Kennedy, was killed in a helicopter crash while scouting locations for this film. Miller was devastated, only agreeing to direct the action sequences--and, somehow, you feel his heart wasn't entirely in it. --Jim Emerson Amazon.com

silly movie but great for a school project

I used this movie as a project for my comparative government class (no kidding!) -- for eg., Bartertown can be examined and compared with other (real) governments for its political institutions, leadership, economy, etc. The kids love it. Otherwise, I thought the characters were shallow and simplistic, and the plot very predictable. But the movie does not pretend to be anything more, so you get what you probably expected. October 18, 2008

The Finale of a Great Triligy Falls Short

This time Max gets caught up in a power struggle between the two ruling parties of Bartertown, claimed by Tina Turner to be civilization rebuilt. On one hand we have MasterBlaster, a midget and creator of the methane gas power derived from pig feces and on the other we have Tina Turner, the figurehead of law and order. Master, considered to be vastly intelligent, speaks childlike English and rides on a big steel-helmeted man. Their relationship is, complicated, to say the least.

The first half of the movie revolves around Bartertown's Thunderdome and the nauseating repetition of the line, "Two men enter, one man leaves." Max must fight for his life in the Thunderdome to win his property back. The town is sometimes portrayed with a jazzy saxophone and trumpet score giving the leather clad dominatrix tribesmen a noir detective feel. This pairing of music and image is simply nonsensical.

The second half of the movie is a post-apocalyptic rendition of Peter Pan's lost boys. The children want to be swept away to (no joking) "Tomorrow Tomorrow Land" and they think Max is a Messiah come to take them there. Not only that but the climax is the only car chase of the film and it involves a fantastical train making a fanciful escape; the children, Mad Max and the reinvented Master, all aboard!

The movie's high points are Dean Semler's cinematography (his other work includes: "Waterworld" and "Dances with Wolves") and Tina Turner along with her great lines, "He's just a raggedy man!" Also, I was pleased with the diction and symbolism of the ending scene which did satisfyingly create a sense of finalizing the trilogy and the hero mystique of Mad Max. However, there is no great cinematic achievement here. As the film tries to 'modernize' by updating to the music and styles of the time (the 1980s) and substitutes violence, car chases and meaning for silliness and absurdity (perhaps to win a younger audience?), it loses the original quality of the previous two and unfortunately becomes a relic of its time instead of an enduring sci-fi classic. September 20, 2008

ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE

As someone who enjoyed the other MadMax movies this is one is just terrible. The others were raw, edgy. This is a bloated, pathetic movie. A bunch of screaming/annoying kids acting like warriors, Tina Turner should have stuck to music, and Gibson's character is watered down. You can't even begin to compare this movie to MadMax or the Road Warrior. It's just horrible. September 9, 2008

No future in feudalism and slavery

The motor vehicles are going to be there, even a plane. The desert is going to be there too. But the whole world has regressed for a reason we don't know - but do we care? - losing all its technology and its energy. But Mel Gibson takes the orientation that humanity will not regress in inventiveness nor even in intelligence, which means it will reinvent some kind of civilization by developing new sources of energy, this time the energy that can be produced by pig slime, the gas that comes out of it that can be used in plenty of machines and for might. Thus they reinvent a civilization based on pig slime (and that is a Pauline element that must not be neglected: it is neither Jewish, nor Moslem) as the source of energy of their society. That's the positive point. But there is another side that is less positive. The necessity to establish some protective body and some protection against the outside world and outsiders that may try to intrude, some captured power and established their absolute authority over the others in a society that cannot afford the luxury of democracy, just some kind of rules that are not really written but chanted at any crucial moment like a performative prayer. Hence they reinvent feudalism for most people and slavery for some. They reinvent circus games to entertain the masses and control human emotions and passions. Gladiators reappear as such public performances: two men go in and one leaves, provided he kills the other one before. If he does not then he breaks the deal and has to face the wheel that can give him any kind of violent end, death by what ever torture you may imagine, the best choice (at least you survive some time without any direct physical torture and maiming) being the Gulag: to be sent in the heart of the desert and die there, at best of thirst. But Mel Gibson is already taken by the divine devil of some religious vision more or less inspired by the Bible. So the whole story is told by the survivors a certain hero-messiah-savior has helped escape this hell in order to move back to the derelict and ruinous cities of the old days. And this salvation is in fact a union of him, Mad Max, with these outcasts in order to re-enter Bartertown, the city of the dominant society that lives on pig energy. There they are able to recapture some vehicles to escape this world, at first a "train" that runs on rails, and, at the end of the tracks, a plane that was waiting for some opportunity to serve, with its pilot and a kid enjoying their permanent idleness. A rainbow alliance of all against this tyrannical society of Bartertown. And they manage to escape except Mad Max who has to sacrifice his own life to enable the others to fly away. And he will be left there in the middle of the desert to die of thirst probably. But what can we say about this vision of the future after the final catastrophe that will bring humanity back to antiquity? First the tyrannical society is led by a woman, mind you black, and she is a more violent and exacting leader than any fascist leader you can have met in history textbooks. Women, and black women at that, are not representing a soft and comfortable future. But maybe only black women will be able to govern the people to survive these dire straits? That's an idea. Especially since the one who is telling the story of Mad Max the Savior is a woman too, though white. Maybe after all women have to become central because of their role in procreation, and surviving in difficult circumstances is not a question of sex, or sex does not make the slightest difference, and yet the gladiators are men (listen to the chant) and the savior is a man. Is there some sexism and a touch of racism in Mel Gibson's vision? What's important after all is to be able to impose the discipline necessary to survive as a group with some indispensable hierarchy. Humanity will not regress to any inferior level of intelligence, as H.G. Wells had thought for example in The Time Machine. What will regress is the social order, the mode of production. No more supermarkets for humanity but only bartering. No more democracy but feudalism. No more free labor market but slavery and serfdom for most. No more virtual games and entertainments but real gladiators games and fights to the death. And no escape from this hell on earth but thanks to a savior that will lead the outcasts of this society to a migration back to the old cities and skyscrapers of the past where they will have to reinvent what is indispensable for humanity to become better, a religion based on a human savior who is also divine since he was the savior and died in his self-imposed mission. We can smile at the naivety of the idea, but it is inescapable and true that there cannot be any real humane civilization without a spiritual ideology or attitude, and that is called a religion or a philosophy, and these civilizing factors are based on the personality of one person, a savior in the Christian tradition, a prophet in the Jewish or Moslem tradition, or a founder in the Buddhist tradition. And it does not matter whether it is a myth or whether the action of the man has been distorted to stick to some kind of rite. What is important is that such a figure is the inspirer of humanism and human life. Humanity cannot be human without a religion of some spiritual belief.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine & University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne
August 13, 2007

The End of Max?

The original concept for MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME didn't even include Mad Max. The original idea was about a group of orphaned children living out in the wild alone and a man who finds them. Then someone came up with the idea of Max being their "savior" and the film soon became a "Mad Max" project.

In MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME, Max is left alone to "die" in the desert. He makes his way through and comes to Bartertown, a city of last resort that has been able to maintain some of the technological capabilities of our former civilization. Bartertown might have been influenced by old Western bordertowns, but it reminded me of a poor-persons version of Mos Eisly from STAR WARS. Anyway, Max finds himself in the middle of a power struggle in the town and ends up fighting in a Coliseum like place called the Thunderdome, but people in Bartertown don't fight fair and after the fight Max is banished from the city into the desert. There he is found by a group of orphaned children who believe he is the pilot of their plane that crashed many years ago. Some of the children believe it is time to leave and return to their true home and they follow Max, but before they can return to their place of origin, they have to go through Bartertown.

MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME had the biggest budget of any Mad Max film. It re-united star Mel Gibson with director George Miller and a second director was hired so Miller could focus on the vehicle chases and action sequences. The film also has Tina Turner playing the villain, Aunty Entity. With all that going for it the film should have been something extraordinary.

Instead MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME ended up being the least thrilling of the Mad Max films. There's more action in the film than in the previous films in the series and Aunty Entity is a nemesis with more character than ones we've seen Max face before. And of course there's an awesome chase sequence at the end of the film.

The major problem with MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME is that there is too much going on in the film. ROAD WARRIOR had a very strict plot and even MAD MAX with all the back-story and character build-up had a fairly simple plot, but BEYOND THUNDERDOME is filled with all sorts of convolutions. The movie opens promising enough with a little bit of humor (the opening scene reminds me of an INDIANA JONES humorous moment), but when the action moves to Bartertown things get complicated. First there's the whole idea of how Bartertown is operated. Then there's the power struggle that we have to be acquainted with. There's also the concept of the Thunderdome and the purpose it serves and why it exists. Along the way we also discover that there's a entire class system to Bartertown: the lower classes and untouchables are forced to work in the sties of pig poop that power the city and they are on the verge of revolting. Had the action been confined to Bartertown, things wouldn't have been too bad. But just as one thinks the movie is ending and entire new element is added: the orphaned children living in the wild who think Max is Captain Walker come back from the land beyond to save them. Of course, after the kids are introduced you just know that they are going to end up fighting the evil overlords of Bartertown and they do. The lost kids really screwed with the movie big time. In MAD MAX the bad guys ran over children for pleasure. In BEYOND THUNDERDOME we sense that these baddies are bad, but not bad enough to actually kill the kids. They just want to enslave them or raise them up as heirs. So, instead of enriching the movie, the second act ends up twisting it; think of INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM and how all those stolen children screwed up that film. Of course, there's also the problem of Tina Turner. She's about as convincing as an evil powerful warlord as Paris Hilton is as a spokesperson for being celibate.

Still, MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME does have its moments. George Miller knows how to film chase scenes and the final chase that makes up the last act of the movie is an extraordinary bit of filmmaking involving a flying machine, a train, and lots and lots and lots of other cars and motorized vehicles. Of course, there's also Mel Gibson as Max. ROAD WARRIOR was a superior movie, but the Max in BEYOND THUNDERDOME is the most likeable; he has all the wisdom and experience from the first two films, but regains the compassion and joy he had during most of the first movie. Maybe Max isn't so mad anymore. September 24, 2006

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