Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome holds a strange place in my heart as it was until recently the only entry in the Mad Max series that I hadn't seen, and that was despite me having owned it on VHS for a good fifteen years or so. All I knew about it was that it was the entry that no one really spoke about, other to mention that the famous singer Tina Turner plays a character in the movie. Going in, I had built up my own idea on what the film was about, it didn't live up to my expectation, and initially I hated it, but with the distance of days I did come to appreciate aspects of the movie.
Beyond Thunderdome takes place around fifteen years after the end of Mad Max 2, with road warrior Max (Mel Gibson - Braveheart, Lethal Weapon series) still roving the wasteland of a post apocalyptic Australia. Fuel, which had become an increasingly rare commodity, is now near non-existent, with Max now travelling in the skeleton of his iconic muscle car which is pulled along the dunes by a team of camels. After his car, camels, and possessions are stolen by an opportune thief (Bruce Spence - Mad Max 2), Max tracks the man to a nearby town, the chaotic Barter Town. It is here that he impresses the town's ruler, Aunty Entity (Turner), and in return for helping him get his possessions back she wants him to head to the underworld and kill a rival of hers. It is the underworld where Barter Town gets its power, from methane gas produced there by thousands of pigs. The underworld is ruled by a little person, The Master (Angelo Rossitto), who is carried around on the back of hulking behemoth The Blaster (Paul Larsson), and it is the later that Aunty wants killed, so that she can cement her hold on Barter Town.
First impressions were mixed, this was extremely eighties in feel and sound, both not bad things. The initial arrival at Barter Town was full of wild background characters, the idea that it is the only semblance of civilisation is well established. I loved the opening showing Max in his current mode of transport, it really made it feel like this was much further into post apocalypse. My problems with this started almost immediately due to Spence playing a near identical character to the one he played in Mad Max 2. There he was an ally of Max, and so to have him as a low level antagonist was really confusing and I kept wondering why the two didn't recognise each other. I do like Spence as an actor, but to have him play a completely different character, yet remain identical in appearance did start things off on a confusing foot.
Tina Turner was fine, not as terrible as I imagined, but she certainly wasn't a highlight of the movie. Her soldiers were also fine, but showing the film's PG-13 rating there is not much violence shown on screen, most keenly displayed with one of her key underlings getting numerous comedic 'death' scenes only to show up again unharmed in the next scene.
Over the years I had built up the titular Thunderdome to be a vast arena where vehicular combat was required to succeed. The Mad Max films had always been heavily in bed with vehicles afterall, so I figured that would be the direction this went in. I was pretty disappointed then to discover Thunderdome was a tiny fighting arena, even if it did feature the very best fight sequence of the movie. Max and his adversary both in bizarre human sized elastic band harnesses, that allow them to spring around. This was almost the highlight of the film for me, as things later on took a turn for the different.
Beyond Thunderdome is essentially two different films clumsily bolted together. The first half was very Mad Max, all the way to the conclusion of the initial storyline. The second half has Max finding himself in a desert oasis where he discovers a tribe of children who speak in caveman like broken English (originally this film wasn't even going to be a Mad Max one, instead it was intended to be Lord of the Flies but in the post apocalypse). Their backstory was cool at least, when the nuclear war occurred an aeroplane crashed, with the survivors finding themselves at the oasis. These passengers have long since died, but their children became the tribe, whose distorted knowledge of the old world has been passed down in legends. This was very post-post apocalyptic, gave me a Horizon Zero Dawn feel. On a separate level I did wonder how there were so many children, made me feel there must have been at least a bit of inbreeding among them! The children changed the vibe of the film, with this increasingly beginning to feel like a kids adventure film in the style of The Goonies or something, due to the way they effortlessly keep defeating the evil adults in such silly ways (such as the repeated use of a frying pan in one sequence). It was this childish feel that made me begin to dislike Beyond Thunderdome more. Looking at it objectively, this is to Mad Max one and two what Army of Darkness was to The Evil Dead and Evil Dead II, a more mainstream sequel that dumbed down the somewhat more serious aspects. It all culminates with an entertaining final act in which vehicles finally get a chance to shine, it was fun but did feel a little bit like a rehash of the chase sequence from the second film.
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome is easily the worst of the films in the franchise, but I wouldn't say it was a bad film. This fever dream of a movie has lots of interesting elements to it, and its depiction of a far flung post apocalyptic world had some great parts to it. The slide into a zany kids movie was a tonal shift I hadn't expected, and was by far the worst decision here. It's telling that by the end, my father (who I was watching this with), had completely lost interest and was on his laptop. I had lots of issues with this, but it did something different and unexpected and so I'm glad I finally got around to watching it.
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