Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome

A big shift towards the mainstream compared to the previous parts, also thanks to the participation of Tina Turner. Still, a properly wacky affair, during which I had quite a good time. Some scenes, like the fight in the arena with the chainsaws, were good, others less so (there was too much shit for my taste), overall a very decent sequel. (05/11/2003)

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. (07/03/2006)

Not much action, bad actors, no plot, and on top of it all, some kind of wannabe philosophical musings about a new world. It really doesn't work together. Surprisingly, considering the increased budget, the film doesn't live up to expectations. The several beautiful shots of the desert horizon have little to do with the finances, and the production design is not particularly impressive. Everything feels very cheap and it doesn't have anything to do with the attempt to evoke a sense of authenticity of desert dwellings. Tina Turner is quite a monstrous acting mistake and I don't quite understand her presence here, and the whole skeletal structure of the plot is tragic, literally about nothing. The Thunderdome is essentially present only in the opening fight, and the rest is Mel Gibson wandering, dying, searching for himself, leading a group, etc... The worst part. (01/19/2007)

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. (05/29/2015)

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) (03/14/2021)