skjam

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985) dir. George Miller

It has been a number of years since Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson) somehow evaded the remainder of Lord Humungus' raiders at the end of The Road Warrior. How many years? Uhh...look! He's got camels now! And a monkey! But not for long, as an aviator named Jedediah (Bruce Spence) hijacks his wagon and leaves Max for dead. This being the beginning of the movie, Max survives, and makes his way to the nearby desert settlement of Bartertown. At first, it seems like he will be barred from admission because he has nothing to trade, but his quick reflexes impress the Collector (Frank Thring). Perhaps they can do business?

The nominal leader of Bartertown, Aunty Entity (Tina Turner), is in a power struggle with Master Blaster (Angelo Rossitto & Paul Larsson), a brains & brawn duo that control the town's energy supply. The town needs Master's engineering know-how, but he's become arrogant, and without his powerful symbiotic ally, he'd be more...manageable. It can't be a straight up assassination, Max is going to have to get Blaster to fight him one on one in the Thunderdome.

Max infiltrates the Underworld, where pig droppings are turned into methane fuel. He meets affable prisoner Pig Killer (Robert Grubb), who was sentenced to serve the pigs after he slaughtered one of them to feed his family. He also discovers Blaster's secret weakness, while making an enemy of Master Blaster. Armed with this, it's easy to goad Master Blaster into asking for a duel in the Thunderdome, where all violent disputes are settled.

"Two men enter, one man leaves." Sounds simple, but the fight itself is much tougher than Max had thought, and when it comes right down to it, Max isn't able to murder a helpless opponent. Aunty Entity considers this a violation of their contract, and the Wheel of Justice sentences Max to exile into "Gulag" without supplies.

On the verge of death, Max is found by a tribe of orphaned children, who'd been stranded in a gully that has enough water and vegetation to support life for a small group when their passenger jet crashed nearby. Most of the surviving adults, led by pilot Captain Walker, went off to look for help, promising to return for the children. (Any adults left with the children swiftly died themselves.) The kids think that Max is the long-awaited Captain Walker, who will take them to Tomorrow-Orrow Land.

Max makes it clear that he's not, in fact, Captain Walker, there's no better place waiting for the children, and he'd be just as happy staying in this nice safe gulch, thank you.

Frustrated, a number of the children, led by late teens Anna Goanna (Justine Clark) head out into the wilderness anyway. Max is forced by the remnants of his conscience to go after them with a few more tribe members. By the time the rescue party catches up, it's too far to safely go back, so they will have to visit Bartertown. And that's when things get particularly sticky.

This third Mad Max film started its script life as more of a children's post-apocalyptic story about a man finding a lost tribe of orphans before director George Miller suggested Max as the lead and the more violent opening and closing parts were bolted on. This gives the movie an uneven tonal feel and the plot is even more vulnerable to falling apart if you think about it than the rest of the series.

That said, the Thunderdome fight is awesome, the vehicular combat portion is decent for the amount of time it has, and Tina Turner is excellent as Aunty Entity. She also contributes two nifty songs at the opening and closing credits.

The lost tribe of white children does again make me wonder if the aboriginal Australians are living comfortably somewhere off camera and avoiding getting caught up in all the plot nonsense.

I can understand why Miller and Gibson moved on from this series (though Miller returned some decades later), the ending of this third movie echoes the ending of the second just a little too closely, and it would have been hard to come up with a new story right away that would work. Plus Mel was beginning to want to be more in control of his movies.

Content note: Violence, often lethal, children in peril (at least one dies), the disability representation is iffy, pig shit.

Especially since Fury Road came along, this is the black sheep of the series, but if you can avoid thinking about the plot holes, it's a decent watch for fans of Mel Gibson, Tina Turner, or the post-apocalypse setting.

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) dir. George Miller

It's been some years since we last saw Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy). He's almost unrecognizable as the same person. By now, there are adults who were born after the fall of the previous civilization and have no memory of what once was. Max's mental state has deteriorated; he's hearing voices and hallucinating the various people he has failed to save over the decades. In many ways, he's just become a survival machine, haunted by the past and pursued by scavengers in the present.

Max is captured by War Boy soldiers from The Citadel, a fortress run by the cruel Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne). Immortan Joe has a monopoly on clean water in the area, and dominates his allies in the nearby Gastown and Bullet Farm. A military man before the end of the Water Wars, Joe treats his subjects as property, encouraging the War Boys to worship him in cult-like fashion, and forces himself on "wives" for breeding purposes. Many of the War Boys are dying as various diseases or just malnutrition, so they supplement their vigor with blood transfusions from healthier folk. Max turns out to be a universal donor, and is assigned as a "blood bag" to Nux (Nicholas Hoult).

When one of Immortan Joe's trusted Imperators, Furiosa (Charlize Theron), hijacks a trade mission to smuggle Joe's "Wives" away to "the Green Place" in a tanker War Rig, Nux insists on being part of the pursuit despite his debilitated state. He has Max attached to the front of his car like a figurehead, and joins the other War Boys in what he thinks is a rescue mission to keep the War Rig out of the hands of the rival Buzzards tribe.

Through various circumstances, Nux (unconscious at this point) and the still chained to him Max are the only pursuers who actually catch up to Furiosa and the Wives when they stop. Max and Furiosa clash at first, especially when Max tries to steal the rig, but they soon learn that they're going to need to work together to escape the pursuers, and Max eventually warms up to the idea of delivering the Wives to The Green Place.

Nux, still desperate for attention and approval from Immortan Joe, and to be "witnessed" "dying historic" joins the pursuit again, but fails miserably. He's in enough shock from this that when Capable {Riley Keough) shows him compassion, Nux is able to switch sides (and find that he's much more competent when he's on the right path.)

Now united in purpose, the fugitives head towards the Green Place. But will they find the paradise Furiosa remembers, or has the journey been in vain?

It had been thirty years since the previous movie in the series, Beyond Thunderdome, due to various developmental woes, and Mel Gibson wasn't interested in returning to the role after so long. Thus the recasting with an actor who doesn't look nearly as old as Max should be at this point, and some fudging as to which parts of the backstory are in continuity for this movie.

The movie's impressively shot, using practical effects and actual stunts as much as possible. Those are real vehicles getting smashed up, and actual Cirque du Soliel performers working on those flexible poles. Computer effects are used for things like giving Furiosa an artificial arm, and disguising Namibia as the Australian desert for some scenes, as hilariously it was raining too much in Australia, making the place look green!

While tough women always featured in Mad Max movies, Fury Road veers much more strongly towards female characters' stories, with Furiosa, the Wives, and late in the film the Mothers of the Vuvalini tribe. Max is essentially the special guest star in their history. He's important, but at the end Furiosa is the one the story's about.

There are some resonating themes here, especially how Immortan Joe and his allies are old white men who abuse their authority and make their communities worse. But it's not that deep, and you can enjoy it as an action film just fine.

Content note: Lots of violence, frequently lethal. Mild body horror. The War Boys are effectively hoping to die in battle so indulge in suicidal tactics. Immortan Joe practices slavery, including raping his "wives" in the backstory. Stillbirth. Nudity (but for a change in this series, no on screen sex.) An animal dies and is eaten still twitching. Late teens viewers with strong stomachs should be okay.

This makes a good capstone to the Mad Max series; while Max once again slips away at the end, he seems to have recovered his humanity and brought back a little more civilization to the postapocalyptic world. You could watch this one without seeing any of the previous ones, but I think at least The Road Warrior would be a good choice to see first.

The Road Warrior (1981) dir. George Miller (aka Mad Max 2)

The effects of nuclear war, climate change, civil unrest and overreliance on fossil fuels has resulted in the collapse of Australian civilization, making the cities unlivable. Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson) had already begun wandering the wastelands before the final crisis after the former highway patrolman suffered personal tragedy. Like other scavengers, he travels from place to place in search of increasingly scarce gasoline. When he's ambushed by a flyer known as the Gyro Captain (Bruce Spence), Max manages to turn the tables. In an effort to avoid getting killed, the Gyro Captain tells Max of a nearby pumping station that still has fuel.

The pumping station is fortified, and home to a small community of survivors, led by Papagallo (Michael Preston). They're being threatened by bandits led by the masked Lord Humungus (Kjell Nilsson) and screaming warrior Wez (Vernon Wells) who starts having a personal grudge against the community when his very close friend Golden Youth (Jerry O'Sullivan) is accidentally slain by the Feral Child (Emil Minty) (who was, in fairness, aiming for Wez at the time.)

The community has somehow learned that a site about 2000 miles north is still sustainably livable. But to get there, they'll need something to haul the tanker trailer that can hold enough gasoline to get all their vehicles that far. Lord Humungus kills some of their scouts horrifically, then offers to let the community "just walk away" if they leave behind the fuel, but even if he isn't lying, where is there to go in walking distance? The community also doesn't trust Max, who looks almost exactly like the other scavengers, but he's in possession of the location of a Mack truck, and will trade it for enough fuel to top up his own vehicle's tanks.

Even with the aid of the Gyro Captain, can the community succeed in escaping the maurauders, or will Max abandon them to the dubious mercy of the Humungus?

After the low budget independent film Mad Max did well in theaters, this more expensive and expanded sequel was greenlit. It completely eclipsed the previous movie in reputation and sales, catching the public imagination with its visuals of a post-apocalyptic future. Both protagonist and villains set iconic styles imitated in movies, comics and animation ever since.

The opening narration is perhaps a little soggy with stock footage, but gives us all the backstory we need or get. Max carries the pain of his past with him, but what's important is surviving in the present. It's also a good idea to keep Max's dialogue to a minimum as it allows Mel Gibson to convey his character with body language and facial movements (we know, however, that Max is more chatty offscreen since he filled the narrator in on details the narrator wasn't present for.)

The movie ends on a mostly hopeful note. The community will survive and even thrive, with the Feral Kid reaching old age. But Max is unable to bring himself to join them, preferring the solitude of the wasteland. The Great Northern Tribe will never hear of him again, but we will.

Topical: Max, an ex-cop, is a self-centered jerk who has no interest in helping the community unless he gets paid, and only really comes through when the raiders give him no way of getting out of the situation other than helping the community. But all the other ex-cops we see are actively working for the raiders, so there you go. Early versions of the script would have revealed that Humungus was actually Max's old highway patrol partner, but that was scrapped along with everyone else's backstory.

Content note: Lots of violence, sometimes gory, many deaths and a hand gets mutilated. Very little gun violence as one of the skill sets lost in the collapse was making ammunition. Rape, nudity, one instance of consensual sex as a gag. The dog and at least one snake die. Peril to children.

Overall: This movie has style; a latecomer might think it a bit cliche but this is where all the cliches came from. Definitely one to watch if you have an interest in film history, or just really like post-apocalyptic action movies.