While it did well theatrically, the spark was over and Miller hung up the hat until 2015 when he came back with a “fury” (yes, pun intended) with his critically acclaimed Fury Road. I guess I can’t blame him, as he took a huge risk changing up the formula, but in the end the formula never really caught on, and the “cliché” of adding in the chase at the end just felt more ham fisted than it should have.įinal Score: Beyond Thunderdome was the film that nearly tanked Mad Max forever. The whole movie had survived on not a single chase scene, but he throws it in at the last moment to pull in old fans and give them what they wanted, even if it really felt out of place and didn’t jive with the rest of the film. Miller has long since been criticized for his ending of Beyond Thunderdome with a chase scene, as it felt like pandering to the fans. However, to create that peace and quiet with the children Max comes back full circle to Aunty, where he has to put down her cruelty and oppression once and for all. A way for the wanderer to come home and find purpose besides just being a roving “mad man”. There Max finds a sort of peace and quiet that he didn’t think was possible. There Max finds another portion of humanity trying to survive, this time in the form of a band of children who are making their way in the world without the crushing weight of parents our outsiders. Aunty herself hires Max to get rid of Blaster in the infamous thunder dome, which leads up to a DRASTIC change of pace for the film at the second half. However, Aunty is not invulnerable, as she is threatened by Master who has his own army of malcontents who is lorded over by a Blaster (Pal Larsson) who obeys Master’s every command. Aunty rules as an extortionist, controlling everyone and everything she can with her financial control, and where basic policing and peacekeeping is handled in a giant “pit” (dome) where 2 men enter, 1 man leaves (as the catch phrase goes). The first is “Bartertown”, which is an obvious parody of capitalism gone wrong, ruled over by “Aunty” (Tina Turner) who is covered in chain mail armor that was so heavy she could barely move by all accounts of those involved in the film. As he wanders the desert Max comes across multiple examples of modern life.

While The Road Warriors was about pirates scavenging the wastelands of humanity, Beyond Thunderdome is about rebuilding life, albeit in a much different way than the people of old. Instead he’s driving a vehicle hauled by camels and knocked out by a wanderer (also played by Bruce Spence, who played “The Captain” in The Road Warrior a few years earlier). Max (Gibson) is introduced with flowing locks and is no longer the fuel powered speed demon of old.

Yup, it was nuclear war (not shocking that we WERE in the height of the cold war) and the world had been destroyed forever. No one knows what caused the socio-economic collapse that created the dystopian future, but here they blatantly spell it out for you. The first two films were sort of vague about what happened. The movie DID turn a profit in 1985, but it has forever been named as a cult “bomb” in the series by fans and one of the few films that they only watch just to complete the trilogy (now quadrilogy). No one knows for sure, but in the commentary from the DVD I remember Miller and Terry Hayes stating that they figured they couldn’t do the same thing 3 times in a row, so they decided to mix things up and take a gamble with a completely different direction.

Some people blame the change of pace to studio involvement, overs on Gibson’s head himself, and even more just figure George Miller wanted to go go mainstream and lose his “Osploitation” vibe that he had build in the previous two films. And of course Mel Gibson losing his Aussie accent nearly completely in his shift over to Hollywood central in the mid 80s, and Tina Turner hamming it up to level 11. Beyond Thunderdome decided to deviate from the car chase theme of the original 2 films, instead going for a more cloistered form of combat, immortalizing the horrible catch phrase “Two men enter, one man leaves!” for all time. Effectively killing the franchise until an aging Miller decided to revitalize the series with Fury Road. If Mad Max was the El Mariachi of the series, and The Road Warrior was The Empire Strikes Back, then Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome was the Godfather Part III of the series, going full Hollywood and diving straight off a cliff.

Mad max beyond thunderdome blu ray