Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome takes place several years after The
Road Warrior, when the collapse of human civilization is pretty much complete.
A sure sign of this is the fact that the asphalt roads that once stretched
across the wastelands are now gone, having
crumbled into oblivion without any road crews around to repair them. Max (Mel
Gibson) is riding across the deserted wasteland on his 4X4, yet a team of camels
is drawing it because gasoline has become even more precious than gold. When
Max's 4X4 is stolen by a father and son team of air pirates flying a
goofy-looking airplane (the father is played by Bruce Spence in his second Mad
Max film appearance), Max traces his stolen goods to Bartertown, a sleazy outpost in
the middle of nowhere that is ruled by Aunty Entity (well-played by singer Tina Turner).
Max's ruthless skills as a warrior quickly come to Aunty's attention, and she
has an assassination assignment for him. If he completes the assignment, Max
will get re-supplied with everything that had been taken from him, plus gasoline.
Max's target is one half of an oddball team known as MasterBlaster. MasterBlaster
is the unique partnership involving a little person (Master) who rides on the
shoulders of a large brute (Blaster) whose face is always hidden by a cage-like
mask. Together they exert a great deal of power within Bartertown thanks to
their control of the methane-refining facility deep below the ground, which
supplies all of the power to the city. With Blaster out of the way, the
diminutive Master will be easier for Aunty to control. But Max must pick a fight
with Blaster within the laws of Bartertown as set down by Aunty. To do that,
their fight must take place in Thunderdome, which is basically a giant cage
stocked with assorted weapons where the opponents fight each other on bungee
cords. Think of it as a really lethal cage match from Wrestlemania where, as the
enthused Thunderdome crowd chant over and over: "two men enter, one man leaves!"
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome is a change of pace from the frenzied, R-rated
violence of The Road Warrior. It's a more imaginative, and slightly funnier,
take on Max's world that earned the film a more mild PG-13 rating. The violence
is there, but it's more in tune with the cartoonish big budget Hollywood action
films, rather than the raw intensity of The Road Warrior. And the second half of the film has Max meeting a tribe of lost children
that could have been very sappy, but in the capable hands of co-directors George
Miller and George Ogilvie it's a section of the film that actually resonates with pure wonder. It looked as
if the filmmakers decided not to try and top the ferocious action of The Road
Warrior by going in a completely different direction, and they succeeded. Sadly,
like the Road Warrior DVD, Thunderdome also suffers from a lack of special
features or any kind, save for the lame "production notes" and a theatrical
trailer. The "For Byron...." memorial at the very end of the film is in
reference to Director George Miller's producing partner, Byron Kennedy, who was killed
in a helicopter crash during the production of this film.
--SF
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