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Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome | |
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 Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome movie poster |
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| Directed by | George Miller George Ogilvie |
| Produced by | Terry Hayes George Miller Doug Mitchell |
| Written by | Terry Hayes George Miller |
| Starring | Mel Gibson Tina Turner Bruce Spence |
| Music by | Tina Turner Maurice Jarre |
| Cinematography | Dean Semler |
| Editing by | Richard Francis-Bruce |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
| Release date(s) | July 10, 1985 |
| Running time | 107 min. |
| Country | Australia/United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | A$12,000,000 (estimated) |
| Preceded by | Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior |
| Followed by | Mad Max 4: Fury Road |
| IMDb profile | |
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome is a 1985 film, the third installment to the action movie Mad Max. The film was directed by George Miller and George Ogilvie, and starred Mel Gibson and Tina Turner.
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This movie provides additional back story to the original Mad Max and Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, showing a nuclear war followed the energy crisis referenced in the beginning of The Road Warrior.
Driving a camel-powered truck across the desert Max is attacked by an aircraft pilot, who manages to steal his vehicle and belongings. Max walks and stumbles upon the only nearby human outpost in the wasteland that remains — the seedy community of Bartertown, founded and nominally run by villainous Aunty Entity (Turner).
In Bartertown, electricity, vehicles, functioning technology — all almost unheard of in this post-apocalyptic world — are made possible by a crude methane refinery, fueled by pig feces, using a weathered semi tractor as the electricity generator. The refinery is located under Bartertown and is operated by the smart, diminutive Master, who is harnessed to his enormously strong, but dim-witted bodyguard known as Blaster. Together, "Master Blaster" hold an uneasy power-truce with Entity for control of Bartertown; however, Master is beginning to exploit his position with energy "embargoes," challenging Auntie's leadership. She is furious with him but cannot challenge him publicly, as Master is the only one with the technical know-how to operate the machinery that powers Bartertown. The controlled chaos of Bartertown is maintained by a set of inflexible laws, including one that states that no deal can be broken, for any reason. The punishment for breaking this law is equally inflexible and invoked with the simple phrase, "bust a deal, face the wheel."
Entity recognizes Max as a resourceful (if disposable) fighter, and strikes a deal with him to provoke a duel with and kill Blaster in the "Thunderdome," a gladiatorial-esque arena where conflicts are resolved, turning what is arguably a political assassination into a lawful act. The rules of the match, as chanted by onlookers crowding the arena, are simple and singular — "two men enter, one man leaves." After a stunningly long and difficult match, Max defeats Blaster, but refuses to kill him when he discovers that Blaster is a mentally retarded simpleton with the mind of a young child. An enraged Auntie has Blaster executed and invokes their single law since Max broke his deal with her. The wheel, which serves as a judge and jury, turns out to be a large, spinning metal disc (similar to Wheel of Fortune) with an arrow pointing to one of several consequences. Possible consequences include Death, Hard Labour, Acquittal, Gulag, Aunty's Choice, Spin Again, Forfeit Goods, Underworld, Amputation, and Life Imprisonment. When spun for Max, it lands on "Gulag." He is cast out of Bartertown and exiled to the desert wastes.
The story radically shifts gears at this point. Some time later, Max, near death due to exposure to the hostile conditions, is saved by a group of children. The children, hardened to the desert environment, are survivors (or the children of survivors) of a nearby plane crash, and have formed a sort of tribal community in the sheltered desert oasis in which they live. Clinging to their hopes of rescue, they keep their fading memories of the past civilization alive in the form of ritualistic spoken "tells" which hinge on the return of a messianic "Captain Walker" who will repair their shattered aircraft and return them to civilization. Max's appearance and physical resemblance to Walker make the children believe that he has indeed returned to take them to "Tomorrow-morrow Land," or back to civilization as it once was. After nursing him back to health, they are shocked to hear Max's account of the dystopic state of the world and become angry at his insistence that they all remain living in the relative safety of the oasis, knowing that the only "civilization" within reach is Bartertown.
Some of the children decide to leave anyway, determined to find "Tomorrow-morrow land," the mythic place they believe their parents left them to find. Max goes after them.
The third act begins as Max catches up with them at the outskirts of Bartertown. They sneak in, intent on finding Master. Without Blaster to protect him, the dwarfish Master is little more than Entity's slave. Max and the children free him, but alert the guards, and a frenetic chase ensues, ending at the hideout of the recurring "pilot" character (played by Bruce Spence, who was also the autogyro Captain from The Road Warrior). Max coerces him to help them escape in a Transavia PL-12 Airtruk, but there is not enough room for them all. Max stays behind, heroically clearing a path through the pursuing vehicles so the plane has enough runway to take off. Rather than killing Max, Aunty spares him, but leaves the desert to decide his fate.
The story shifts to many years later, when the much older children are seen in the ruins of a weathered Sydney, lit up by thousands of fires. Savannah, the leader of the children, recites a final "tell" of their journey.
The final shot of the movie is of a figure in the desert (obviously Max) walking toward the horizon and an uncertain future. The staff carried by Max appears to be representative/symbolic of him being a "shepherd" to the lost tribe.
Additional Scenes
Further scenes that would have fleshed out the character of Max much more than shown in the final movie were cut before international release for the sake of reducing the running time.
1. Max sleeps soundly for the first time in many years in Crack in Earth (the oasis) and wakes up after dreaming of his wife and son, murdered by bikers in the first movie and starts to cry, realizing that he is no better than the "human animals" that he used to hunt as a police officer.
2. Max takes Ghekko (the child from the tribe with the vinyl record tied to a stick) to the top of a sand dune at night, facing the lights of Bartertown and as the boy lies dying, tells him that they have reached Tomorrow-Morrow land and are home.
The first scene can be glimpsed in the video for the Tina Turner song "We Don't Need Another Hero" while the second is to be found in the novelization.
George Miller, director of the first two Mad Max movies, lost interest in the project after his friend and producer Byron Kennedy was tragically killed in a helicopter crash while location scouting. Miller finally relented, saying, "I'll direct the action sequences but that's it." George Ogilvie directed the rest of the film. There is a title card at the end that says, "For Byron."
Critical reaction to the film was generally positive, although reviewers were mixed regarding whether they considered the film the highest or lowest point of the Mad Max trilogy. Most of the criticism was focused on the children in the second half of the film, which many felt was a ripoff of the 'lost boys' from Peter Pan. [1] On the other hand, critics praised the Thunderdome scene in particular; critic Roger Ebert called the Thunderdome "the first really original movie idea about how to stage a fight since we got the first karate movies" and praised the fight between Max and Blaster as "one of the great creative action scenes in the movies." [2]
The film has since entered into the realm of popular culture, particularly treasured in fiction for the concepts of a vagrant, post-apocalyptic society and the Thunderdome itself. Although a caged arena is sometimes featured within full-fledged parodies of the film, the film is more often invoked through its most popular quotes ("Welcome to Thunderdome" and "Two men enter, one man leaves"), often in humorous or sarcastic reference to a lawless field of battle between two opponents.
- Mel Gibson as "Mad" Max Rockatansky
- Tina Turner as Aunty Entity
- Bruce Spence as Jedediah the Pilot
- Adam Cockburn as Jedediah Jr.
- Frank Thring as The Collector
- Angelo Rossitto as The Master
- Paul Larsson as The Blaster
- Angry Anderson as Ironbar
- Robert Grubb as Pig Killer
- Helen Buday as Savannah Nix
- George Spartels as Blackfinger
- Edwin Hodgeman as Dr. Dealgood
- Bob Hornery as Waterseller
- Andrew Oh as Ton Ton Tattoo
- Ollie Hall as Aunty's Guard 1
- Lee Rice as Aunty's Guard 2
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| Mad Max •Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior •Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome •Mad Max 4: Fury Road |
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