Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome



Here are the salient points of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985):

- It takes place a decade or two after The Road Warrior (1981), though I don’t think the movie specified how long after.

- For most of the movie Mel Gibson is wearing the worst wig this side of Marv Albert. The grey temples are probably supposed to signify the passage of time since the last time we saw him, but really it just enhances the perception that he’s wearing a dead raccoon on his head.

- Tina Turner is in this movie. She’s no Angela Basset.

- The first part of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome takes place in Bartertown, which is intimated to be the only surviving outpost of civilization left in Australia after the apocalypse.

- The power in Bartertown is generated entirely from methane obtained from pig feces.

- The following groups of people also survived the apocalypse and exist in Bartertown: Mimes, stilt walkers, Cirque de Soleil announcers, TV game show formats, fanatically-inclined actors who insist on making movies in dead languages.

- The living envy the dead. Or maybe I’m projecting.

- If they have food to feed the pigs why don’t they just use that for power? For example, if they’re feeding the pigs grain (and it looks like they are), they could ferment the grain and make alcohol-based fuel that would be far more efficient than raising pigs just to collect their poop.



- Tina Turner's character asks Mel Gibson's character, "You can shovel shit?" Lady, Mel Gibson made Lethel Weapon 3 (1992). He can shovel shit.

- Walking in the desert scenes are nearly as boring as scuba diving scenes.

- Monkeys are experts in desert survival.

- As annoying as Bartertown is, it’s Xanadu compared to the community of pidgin-speaking, airplane-worshipping kids Max ends up with in the second half of the movie.

- The kids are so annoying, they were apparently abandoned by their own parents.



- The kids have a ritual where they gather around a half-buried 747 and wait for it to take them to a city. Sure, it sounds silly, but it’s more likely to work than booking a flight on Delta.

- There is a vehicle chase at the end of the movie, but it’s way too little, way too late.

- The ending theme song is “We Don’t Need Another Hero,” but it turns out what we really didn’t need was another Mad Max movie.

Posted: Thu - November 17, 2005 at      

©