This is third of the Mad Max film, Gibson returns to the post apocalypse waste land for a film that many feel is not worthy of the name Mad Max, dunno why really, i still like it. Any way find out why i like it after the jump...
“Thunderdome's simple. Get to the weapons, use them any way you can. I know you won't break the rules, because there aren't any”
Unfortunately I flipped my V8 Barracuda while swerving to avoid a kangaroo holding a baseball bat with nails hammered into it and totalled the vehicle, causing me to wander the wasteland on foot. When I got home I decided to throw on Mad Max 3: Beyond ThunderDome after getting pumped up reviewing The Road Warrior.
Now ive seen MM3 countless times and this is the first time ive decided to review it, this is dificult because the film doesn't really follow in the footsteps of the first two Mad Max films. By that I mean that this installment, while still containing the crazy vehicular stunts, looses the brutality of the first two infavor of a more family friendly style. This time around the film is more hollywood, has a bigger budget and an additional director in the form of theater director George Ogilvie. This gives me the impression that George Miller wanted to aim the film at the same audience as the first two but when it was decided that the film would be a PG-13 (although still classified as a 15 in the U.K), to me Miller just said fuck it, they want it PG-13 then im only directing the action segments, someone else can do the story stuff. This is an odd one but it does kind of work, ThunderDome does however drop the relentless speed and style of the second and this is one of the film's major flaws. Another of the film's flaws is the inclusion of the tribe of children, Austrailia's version of the fucking ewoks, but this problem can be solved as this film never originally started out as a mad max film, and it shows, this one completely contradicts the previous two when it comes to the reason for the 'apocalypse', you see, in MM1 and MM2 we're told through narration that the world came to an end due to the economic downfall and the collapse of society, but the third one tells us that there was a nuclear war which destroyed the cities and is the reason for the apocalypse. Gone is the idea of gasoline being the most sought after commodote and this one seems more about rebuilding society, but not like it was in the long long ago. This idea of rebuilding comes from the despotic Tina Turner, playing her character Aunty Entity like Stalin in a chainmail dress, she's great but not the formidable nemisis max had previously encountered in the second film (Wez/the Humungus).
It's obvious in the screenplay and in the execution that Max was never intended to be in the film but as he is there, they have to include a little bit of continuity such as his sawn of double barrelled shotgun, him telling Tina Turner he used to be a cop, his uniform and a problem he has with his left eye after the crash in number 2, these are only small inclinations that this is a sequel, oh and the fact that Mel Gibson is in it.
There are some good ideas in the script such as making fuel with the use of methane gas courtesy of Aunty Entity's underground pig farm. It's used to light her city of debauchery and trade that she presides over from a raised house and the idea of the city being run by a proto dictator is also quite an interesting idea. Her way of looking at things is with the whole idea of before the war she was a nobody and now she's a somebody, which is cool and was copied by Kevin Costner in The Postman with Bethlehem's speech about being a sales man before and being a leader now. Entity has also come up with a new form of justice, The Thunderdome, a metal dome where people fight to the death on bungie ropes. The law of the thunderdome is that two men enter and one man leaves. This is a genius idea and obviously gave the film it's subtitle: Beyond ThunderDome.
Aunty Entity is surrounded by various apocapunks (I created a word), there are a lot of mowhawks and as in the second film, everyone seems to have found a unlimited stash of American football shoulder pads. Her right hand man is named IronBar and he looks like a tatted up Matt Lucas who has this weird-ass kabuki mask on a stick strapped to his back, he is closer in tone to the psychotic Wes from the second film.
Max gets his camels and his car stolen by a pilot, played confusingly by Bruce Spence, who isn't playing the Gyro Captain from MM2. Max enters 'Barter Town' to get his shit back and he's refused entry because he has nothing to trade. After blowing some feathers off the helmet of an apocapunk (if this was like the second film, he would have blown the head off of him instead), he is offered a job and taken to see Tina Turner. She asks him to kill the comedy duo MasterBlaster, a muscle bound helmet wearing transport machine for Master, a midget with a speech impediment. Together they run the pig farm and Tina thinks they've gotten too big for their boots. Max agrees as long as he gets his camels, cart and desert findings back. He enters the pig farm undercover to get upclose and personal with the behemouth and the leprechaun. Max challenges Master to a fight in the Thunderdome and after an exciting, well choreographed battle, max becomes the victor. He looks down and see's that Master is infact inflicted with down-Syndrome and refuses to kill him. Enity makes a big song and dance about the law and tells max that if you break a deal you face the wheel, it's kind of like a punishment wheel of fortune. Fortunately for Max, the wheel stops on Gulag, which confusingly isn't the punishment the name actually means, Gulag is russian for work camp, Max is instead strapped to a horse backwards with a big cartoon head placed over his own head and exiled to the desert.
He is saved by a girl with great legs and she takes him to a group of 'lost children' all dressed like they'd just come from auditions for a remake of the Blue Lagoon, they live in this sort of utopian crack in the earth, surrounded by water. This is where the PG-13 idea comes in. The film suddenly changes from desert mad max flick to Lord of The Flies with guest character Max Rockatansky, and the film kind of slows down for about 40 minutes as they tell the tell about how they came to be and where they want to go, Tomorrow-morrow land (nuked out Sydney) and that they'd been waiting on Captain Walker to come and rescue them and who is supposed to take the home. They believe Max is Cap'n Walker and even have a chalk drawing on a cave wall that does look suspiciously like Max. Max informs them that they have the wrong guy and a group of them including the girl with the great legs leave to head to barter town. Max and a few of the kids who stayed behind go after them.
They head into Barter Town and for reasons that escape my mind right now, need to find Master. They're helped by the pig killer, a man sentenced to mining pig shit for killing a pig played by one of the dudes from Flying Doctors. They escape on a train(?) and head off while being chased by Tina and her gang of apocapunks. This is where George Miller takes over as the finale is almost on par with the tanker chase from the end of The Road Warrior, even the camera movement is identical, but this chase come across more like a western where the bandits are trying to board the train to rob it. It's incredibly well made and one stunt is crazy mental. It shows the character of Ironbar jumping between three cars all traveling at exess speeds of upto 80mph. This is the sort of thing I expect from a Mad Max film.
The Train stops at the end of the line and they're met by the son of the pilot from the beginning. The kid see's Tina and gang in the distance and runs off. Max and the rest follow him down a tunnel into an underground house where we see the pilot from the beging and like I said, played confusingly by Bruce Spence. Max makes him fly them out and they realise that they don't have enough road to get up to 88 so Max jumps into a car and heads straight for the oncoming traffic jumping out before an almighty crash giving the captain enough room to take off. Tina gets out of her car and looks at Max as he tries to get up and instead of putting an arrow through his face basically gives him the wink and the gun and fucks off back to bartertown leaving max alive and able to continue wandering the wasteland.
We cut to the pilot as he flies over a runied, nuked out sydney and we see the girl with the nice legs talking the talk to a bunch of other people about the mysterious wanderer and how he was never heard from again. The End...
There is definitely a plot there, the narrative structure is tight but some of the timeline doesn't match up. I don't want to put the film down because it is a great action film and it's incredibly entertaining, but it's not exactly a film that can be bundled in with Mad Max and The Road Warrior. It's more intone to a film like Steel Dawn and The Postman and even WaterWorld in a way, infact thinking back on it, the plot of WaterWorld, minus the fish man is almost identicle to ThunderDome. But hey it's how Hollywood works.
The Film looks great, not as desolate and harsh as The Road Warrior, but again in the hands of DOP Dean Semler, this is still a cut above most action films of the period. You can aslo tell which parts were shot by Ogilvie and which parts were shot by Miller.
The action is superb but the dialogue/character scenes are drawn out and a little over long. There are a lot of stylistic ideas stolen from other films such as the scene with the sumo saxaphonist that could easily have been pulled straight out of Blade Runner, there's the obvious Lord of The Flies reference too.
There is also a change to the musical score of the film, unfortunately this time around we don't have the music of Brian May (again not the one from Queen) but we have the music of Maurice Jarre, who is a very talented man, but the music doesn't seem to sit well and being made mid 80s unfortunately he used one of my most hated instruments, the saxaphone, when ever I hear the Sax in a film I instantly get the thought of dodgy channel 5 erotic dramas but then that might just be me. The score is ok, but not on the level of May's fantastic score for MM2. On the plus side though, there are two bloody great tracks from Tina Turner herself, We don't Need Another Hero and One Of The Living and they do add something to the film, maybe not on par with Hearts On Fire or No Easy Way Out, both from Rocky 4, but they're still fist pumping music tracks.
So Pete what is your final verdict on Mad Max 3: Beyond Thunderdome ?
It's a great action film with a strong narrative plot that just so happens to have Mad Max in it, it's not the best of the three but its entertaining. There's more dialogue, less action and more characterization than the previous but as a Mad Max film it doesn't quite hit the spot.
I don't think Miller would have ever or will ever be able to top MM2, but this is still fine action cinema and here's hoping he stays well away from that god awful CGI and 3d crap when he eventually (fingers crossed) films Mad Max 4: Fury Road, bring back the Car-nage and bring on the insane stunts. But as this 'new film' won't feature Mr. Gibson, will it sit right with the rest of them?
Beyond Thunderdome is quality entertainment, not a patch on the previous films but I am glad that it exists.
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