“You can shovel shit, can’t you?!”
While not the best or necessarily my favourite, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, or “Beyond the Thunderdome”, as I erroneously used to refer to it as a kid, is still the Mad Max film I grew up with and have incredibly nostalgic feelings towards. It is also, to this series, unfortunately what Return of the Jedi is to Star Wars.
And every third action adventure film ever made.
Basically, by the time the third film of a successful franchise goes into production, all the original filmmakers are filthy rich and lacking true inspiration for another instalment. Such films are usually just a collection of fun scenes, strung together by a weaker-than-green-tea plot and diminishing returns. It is just the way of the world, I’m afraid.
Right, so what’s made me want to sit down and talk about Beyond Thunderdome today, you ask? Well, of late, I just keep going over the film in my head and wondering why it doesn’t quite work. I don’t need to do this, of course, but all proper nerds will inevitably find themselves plagued by fear and doubt over a piece of pop culture that, in reality, can’t actually hurt them. So, here I sit, finally ready to indulge in some geek self-help.
I’m so, so sorry.
NOTE: Solid facts have no place beyond this point, so please beware.
Oh, what a beautiful mess this film is! But, as with a bloated, decadent, cocaine-fuelled rock album that borders on insufferable, at least the suffering is very sweet indeed.
The foundations of sand (pun intended) on which Beyond Thunderdome seems to have been so precariously built, I would say, is similar to that of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy. MGM allegedly held the rights to the latter hostage, until its original director, Guillermo del Toro, was replaced by the more lucrative Jackson. This meant, sadly, that Jackson’s version of the series had a rushed preproduction, which one might say reflects in the finished product’s underwhelming critical reception.
Beyond Thunderdome was not meant to be a Mad Max film, but, at the very last minute, the producers decided to cast Mel Gibson as the lead and slap “Mad Max” on the title. Within the world of the movie, and not the credits, Gibson plays a wasteland wanderer eventually nicknamed: “The Raggedy Man”. There is never any mention of some dude called “Max Rockatansky”. The wonderful Bruce Spence also returns as “The Gyro Captain”, but the producers clearly didn’t have the rights to any of the first two films’ characters, so they deny that Spence is back as his Mad Max 2 character to this very day.
Utter. Bollocks.
It’s the same actor. The character behaves the same way. He flies a light aircraft. He has the same uneasy relationship with Max Rockatansky/The Raggedy Man. I don’t care what George Miller insists, it’s the same bloody character.
I mean, why on Earth wouldn’t it be?! The writers were not that clueless.
I believe there has been a similar issue with the Friday the 13th film series, in that the studio eventually retained the rights to the title “Friday the 13th”, whereas the producers held the rights to the character of “Jason Voorhees”. Good grief. Isn’t the human race petty and stupid?! I mean, just look at that whole Berlin wall thing. What a stupid thing to do. What a stupid, stupid fucking thing to do.
Sigh.
Moving on…
So we’re sort of watching a Mad Max movie with Beyond Thunderdome. But really it’s not. But it is. Or something. Regardless, a character who is conveniently never properly named wanders into a shantytown to recreate A Fistful of Dollars. As with that classic “spaghetti western”, our protagonist plays multiple factions against each other for his own benefit. His motivation? To reclaim his meagre possessions.
Erm… okay.
Yes, that’s problem number one. The audience needs a stronger plot than that, which is why we don’t give a flying flip about anything that now occurs. I naively watched this film as a kid thinking Aunty Entity was the villain. But she’s not. Her character is simply trying her best to run a town in the worst of times. And there are no worse times than the post-apocalypse, surely. As a grown-up, I find “The Master” to be the clear villain. Whether he feels undervalued or not, the character is cruel and selfish and uncharitable, tormenting this community of desperate human beings for his own pleasure. That he ends up on the side of our heroes at the end is very jarring.
Unlike its joyfully-brutal predecessors, there are no murders in Beyond Thunderdome. There is one public execution and one tragedy. That’s all, folks! It’s a toothless experience, which only adds to the weight of indifference that the audience will be feeling. There are also many “time to go make a cup of coffee and urinate” moments in the film, where you feel safe leaving the room for a few minutes without pressing pause.
Not a good sign for an “exciting” action-adventure movie.
One other thing I’ve noticed as, I dunno, a more experienced movie watcher, is that The Raggedy Man is not a prisoner in Bartertown. He can leave whenever he wants. That’s another thing I got wrong as a kid. In my tiny mind, I assumed the underworld he finds himself in is a prison. But it’s not. If there was some valuable possession, perhaps a map to civilisation, that he’s trying to reclaim, then I would understand all this fuss. But, no, The Raggedy Man just wants his frigging junk back.
This goes on for 1 hour 47 minutes.
For the purposes of writing this article, I really listened to the film’s dialogue this time, which was a curious experience. One might say “confusing”. I can’t quite work out whether the film is riddled with plot holes, or we are simply not privy to important information that we need. The latter may very well form the basis of most plot holes, I’m not sure, but I shall now address three of them.
At the end of the woefully-underwhelming thunderdome fight, once “The Blaster” is revealed to have severe learning difficulties, the following exchange takes place:
The Raggedy Man: “This wasn’t part of the deal!”
Aunty Entity: “You must have tasted it. It was in your hands. You had it all!”
Had all of what, exactly? His dusty old pile of crap and some camels?! It sounds like Aunty Entity is referring to something much greater, almost as if there’s a bunch of scenes we’ve missed. The film is now officially having it’s cake and eating it.
As our protagonist and a bunch of “The Waiting Ones” AKA Annoying Kids, head towards civilisation, the former declares:
The Raggedy Man: “Bartertown! It’s our only chance!”
Huh?! Chance of what? Why don’t you just go back to The Valley of Forgotten Children. You’re clearly all savvy at navigating the desert, so what chance could the hazardous Bartertown possibly provide you with?! Go literally anywhere else, kids. Again, a little exposition to explain things better, or at all, would have been much appreciated.
Finally, as our band of grimy heroes ride a miraculously-clear-of-sand desert railroad, the following exchange takes place:
The Raggedy Man: “So what’s the plan?”
Pig Killer: “Plan?! There ain’t no plan!”
Okay, can somebody please tell me why our protagonist is asking someone else what the plan is. We need things explaining to us at this point. Desperately. But the wrong characters are saying the right lines. It should be Pig Killer asking Mel what the plan is. It doesn’t matter anyway, as there apparently isn’t any plan. The fact that they eventually run into The Gyro Captain and his adorably precocious son is purely coincidental.
You could even count this as yet another miracle in the film’s series of aimless events.
Never mind, as we are now treated to, what this dimwit believes at least, to be one of the greatest action scenes in cinema history. Everything before it is now forgiven, including the boring Mad Max 2. I know everyone loves that film, but to me it’s just about a bunch of arseholes under siege by another bunch of arseholes, eventually escaping with the help of an even bigger arsehole. Woo! Exciting! Sorry, but I’m a 1 and 3 kinda grrrl.
Basically, to boil my ramblings down to something more succinct, Beyond Thunderdome lacks a strong plot, clear villain, coherent motivations, and smooth structure. The Raggedy Man really should have found The Valley of Forgotten Children before initially getting to Bartertown. After being thrown off his wagon, he should have wandered the desert for a bit and come across the kids being eaten by the sinkhole. He eventually rescues them and is taken to their safe haven. Then he goes to Bartertown to fuck around for an hour, ultimately returning to the desert urchins with something of great value to aid their survival.
Instead, in the actual film, he ruins their lives and sends them off to a desolate city, where they will surely perish.
Oh well, such is life.
I’m sure, as with the Star Wars prequels, someone has cut together a fan edit of this film to rescue it, but I still love it to bits as it is. You can easily stick it on in the background as you potter about your home doing chores. Then you can return for the final epic chase scene. There’s tons of humour to enjoy, both verbal and visual, which just goes to show how much of a genius George Miller is. It’s a shame he was stricken with depression at the time, hence another director shooting the quieter moments, but what Miller was in charge of looks just fantastic. It’s full of dizzying crane and dolly shots, all of which seem to defy gravity and physics.
This is what cinema is all about, to me.
Beyond Thunderdome is a harmless little fairytale. As with all fairytales, the usual laws of time and space and breeding statistics do not apply. Not that that’s an excuse for lazy writing, but it’s an approach that works when used to entertain.
And I am always entertained by Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. As well as slightly confused.
Oh and, yes, the late Tina Turner is just fabulous in her role as Aunty Entity, a performance at which all the awards known to mankind should have been thrown.
Do stay in touch, wasteland wanderers.
Toodles!
