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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. <
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>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. <
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>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. <
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>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. <
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>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. <
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>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.

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Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
so far so good . Have not watched it yet. Ocean7739

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Lush continuation of 'The Road Warrior'. Buy It.
`Mad Max, Beyond Thunderdome', directed by Kennedy - Miller, and starring Mel Gibson and Tina Turner, is an obvious and explicit sequel to the iconic sleeper, `The Road Warrior'. In many ways, `...Beyond Thunderdome' is a better movie, but when all is said and done, `...Beyond Thunderdome' does just a bit too much copying of its precursor to stand on it's own two feet, like `Aliens', as an independent movie. <
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>Some of the many things which are better are the acting, the believability of the heavies and their back story, the sound track, including two terrific performances by Tina Turner, and the subplot involving the gang of `lost boys' in the second half of the movie. <
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>And yet, the story seems just a little contrived. Both the master-blaster character pair and the `lost boys' story seem just a bit too contrived. On the other side of the coin, the development of what may be called `The Lord of the Flies' premise, where children are left to their own devices, is masterfully done, enhanced so well by morphing the language from modern Australian slang to something bordering on a new dialect makes one want to check that the script wasn't written by Anthony Burgess (see his `Clockwork Orange', as realized by Stanley Kubrick). <
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>My primary objective in writing this review is to celebrate my adoration for this movie, which affected me almost as much as `2001' and `Lord of the Rings', even though these are far superior movies overall. A fairer comparison is to `Silent Running', the ecodisaster story featuring Bruce Dern and a soundtrack of Joan Baez songs. Both movies simply struck a chord with their very effective warnings about how mankind may shoot itself in the food. <
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>Unfortunately, both movies are also not strong enough to sustain an effective suspension of disbelief to last beyond the walk to the theatre doors after seeing them for the third or fourth time. Where `Alien' and `Blade Runner' work, these work just a bit less well. <
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>But they are still important films. <
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