Cinematography:
Dean SemlerComposer:
Maurice JarreCast:
Mel Gibson, Tina Turner, Bruce Spence, Frank Thring, Angelo Rossitto, Justine Clarke, Tushka Bergen, Sandie Lillingston, Helen Buday, Bob Hornery, Mark Spain (more)VOD (4)
Plots(1)
Two men enter. One man leaves. That’s the law in Bartertown’s Thunderdome arena. In his third go-round as the title hero Gibson takes on the barbarians of the post-nuclear future - and this time becomes the saviour of a tribe of lost children. Music superstar Tine Turner steals what’s left of the screen as Aunty Entity, a power-mad dominatrix determined to use Max to tighten her stranglehold on Bartertown. (Warner Bros. Home Entertainment)
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Reviews (8)
This is certainly the weakest episode in the Mad Max series. It lacks the amazing car chases and the story is rather fragmentary. But still, the beginning when Max arrives in Bartertown is pretty well done and the final action sequence with the train is also quite impressive. And at the end, we get to take a look at Sydney. Slightly above mediocre.
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As much as I was impressed by the second installment, the third one was underwhelming, and it wasn’t Tina Turner's fault. Too many kids and shamefully little action and suspense. The Road Warrior certainly deserved a much better follow-up.
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The film probably needs to be taken as an exploration of myth, where we encounter various characters. We witness Max's attempt to become a gladiator, there's a city that could truly function as an apocalyptic version of a terrifying paradise - or a gentle hell - and ultimately, there's an effort to evoke certain emotions. The confrontation of civilization with human wildness is incredibly strong here, but the story sometimes gets lost in its emphasis on spectacle. Mel with long hair is definitely still great, though.
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The worst for last, but fortunately it's not all that bad. When we arrive in Bartertown and the great fight in the titular Cathedral, everything is still fine, but as the kids arrive, the film starts to turn into a kind of adventure spectacle for the whole family, which is bad, bad, bad. Well, these are the tastes of American viewers. At least we get to enjoy the action scene with the "locomotive" at the end, although it's spoiled a bit by the kids again, and the great looking vehicles (especially Auntie's turbine-powered one and the one covered in cowhide). Maurice Jarre's music is also more than good. So three and a half crazy stars.
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The tremendous worldwide success of the second Mad Max unleashed a flood of mostly second-rate copies that ruled video rental shops in the 1980s. Director and screenwriter George Miller responded with an unexpected move. Instead of appealing directly to viewers craving a repeat of the previous film, he conceived the third instalment in the series as an absolutely different variation on the post-apocalyptic myth. The still largely unappreciated but all the more fascinating Beyond Thunderdome stands out in the context of the whole saga due to its distinctive and inspiring eccentricity, which combines a post-apocalyptic setting with both extinct (western, noir) and popular genres of the time (children’s adventure stories in the style of Amblin). As in the second film, this time Max is a legendary figure in the myths of post-apocalyptic society. As such, he rather becomes a guide to this bizarre new world, where two women stand against each other, carrying on their shoulders the seeds of two new but fundamentally different civilisations. (Annotation for the series marathon at Kino Aero, 2019)
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Gallery (128)
Photo © Warner Bros. Pictures
![Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome - Photos](http://image.pmgstatic.com/cache/resized/w663/files/images/film/photos/161/133/161133859_9eb8de.jpg)
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