Aah, Beyond Thunderdome. Truly the misfit of the Mad Max franchise. The only one to put basically zero focus on cars, but shitloads of focus on actual shit. Also the only one with a tie-in single (it was 1985, after all). Beyond Thunderdome is a wild ride, but not in a good way. We’d better get started.
Picking up an undisclosed amount of time after The Road Warrior left off, Max (Mel Gibson) has continued his nomadic life across the wastes of Australia. He may have ended the previous film without a vehicle (and even sadder, without a dog), but that hasn’t stopped him. This time he’s got a beaten-up old vehicle pulled by camels untiiiil … yep, it’s been taken from him. He must be getting pretty sick of this.
In order to recover his stolen vehicle, Max travels to Bartertown, a lawless hive of scum and villainy in the middle of the desert where anyone can screw anyone else over for a potential profit. Bartertown is run by Aunty Entity (Tina Turner), who cuts a deal with Max (because that’s the way his life always seems to go now) – deal with Master Blaster and she will not only return his vehicle, she will return it with fuel. Entity is honestly the highlight of this film. Turner plays her with all of the energy she can muster, and that is a lot. She’s swathed in what appears to be a chainmail dress, and she orders everyone around with charismatic authority. She is the one who built Bartertown from the ground up, and she is not going to let it fall into the hands of anyone else, that’s for sure. Master Blaster, beware.
However, it turns out Master Blaster is really Master (Angelo Rossitto), a Little Person who is a former engineer and in charge of the fuel production of Bartertown, and Blaster (Paul Larsson), Master’s incredibly strong bodyguard. Master is a problem for Entity because he is constantly challenging her leadership, feeling confident under the protection of Master as nobody wants to challenge him. Max ends up having to deal with Blaster in the titular Thunderdome, in a fight scene that honestly defies description, but I’ll give it a go anyway. The Thunderdome is an enclosed arena that looks kind of like a climbing dome from a playground, only larger. The combatants are both strapped to bungie-cable harnesses attached to the ceiling and then they just… fly around. And fight. I’m making it sound incredibly stupid, but it is a cool sequence. Unfortunately it’s one of the only cool sequences.
The plot of Beyond Thunderdome is a real mixed bag. Its opening relies on elements that have already been explored better in the previous film (Max losing his vehicle and having to complete some sort of task for a settlement to get it back), and the second half of the film is just confused and boring. As soon as Max rocks up in the valley full of children any excitement gathered thus far (of which there is exceedingly little, apart from Aunty Entity and the Thunderdome sequence) evaporates like water in the desert Max has stumbled out of. The inhabitants of “Planet Erf”, as they call it, range from mildly annoying to downright insufferable, and their society is basically just a copy-paste of the Lost Boys from Peter Pan. They believe Max to be the mythical Captain Walker, pilot of the crashed plane that their first members of their society originated from. They want Max to lead them to the fated “Tomorrow-morrow” land, something which he ends up helping them with, but only begrudgingly.
Even the finale, which does finally involve something to do with petrol-fuelled vehicles, is just like the ending of The Road Warrior, but done boringly. A large vehicle (in this case a train, not an oil tanker), is being pursued by a group of ne’er-do-wells (in this case Entity’s forces, not the Marauders). If I wanted to see the events of The Road Warrior again, I’d just watch The Road Warrior again.
Look, overall I commend the fact that the directors are trying something new, but at the same time this film feels like Mad Max in name only. The film is missing the franchise’s biggest draw, which is the car stunts, and it’s even missing a lot of that bombastic energy that made The Road Warrior so enjoyable. I still recommend that you watch it, but only if you have seen the previous entries. If this is your first time watching a Mad Max feature, you should start with any of the others. The Mad Max series took a break for a long time after this, but thankfully Fury Road is a mighty return to form. More about that next week.
BEST BITS:
- The Thunderdome fight sequence is certainly memorable.
- Tina Turner is simply the best. Better than all the rest, in fact. I’d even go so far as to say she is better than anyone, anyone I’ve ever met.
WORST BITS:
- Too much time spent with the children of Planet Erf.
- Too little time spent doing anything interesting.
FINAL RATING: 5.5/10
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