- Sep 27, 2014
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- 28,859
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The third of the four Mad Max movies.
The opening credits are good. Tina Turner music is pumping and it reminds you of good 80s action movies. Sadly it is downhill from this point on.
I now completely understand why it took three decades for the next movie.
Awful movie. 2 stars. Only watch it if you want to be able to say you've seen every Mad Max movie.
BigFooty, what do you think of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome?
The opening credits are good. Tina Turner music is pumping and it reminds you of good 80s action movies. Sadly it is downhill from this point on.
Max/Mel Gibson rocks up in a pigshithole called Bartertown. Tina Turner is the mayor/authortarian leader and they make a deal that he'll kill off what I'll call a factional rival of hers for car repairs and new supplies. Angry Anderson is one of Tina Turner's tough guys. Max and Team Tina goad the guy to fight him in a death match in the titular THUNDERDOME. The guy's name is Blaster, and he works in tandem with a dwarf called Master (who reminded me of a 70-year-old Warrick Davis).
This is when it started reminding me of a s**t episode of Star Trek. You know, one where someone gets sent down to a newly discovered planet to do covert research and/or get trashed and flirt with aliens. But what we get is just the cheap soundstage look and simple, stupid locals. So Max and the guy fight off while each is attached to gymnastics/bungee ropes. The kind of thing Cirque du Soleil performers jump around with, but with less range and bounce. Apparently this makes the fights better because you can swing up and grab the weapons at the top of the dome. But it looks bad like 90s Star Trek. Max is about to finish the guy but decides not to because empathy.
For being a reneging dick Tina Turner exiles him from the town on horseback with his hands tied and wearing a paper mache mask that I think is from a 1980s American fast food chain I'm unfamiliar with. Max passes out dying in the desert.
Incredibly, the movie gets worse. Max is rescued by a less attractive version of whatshername from Orphan Black. She takes him back to this forested cave area where she lives with a bunch of kids who I think are descendents of a Qantas flight that crashed back in the day and they mistake him for the long absent captain. (I'm not making that up.) Like a bad(der) episode of Falling Skies, without Moon Bloodgold being pretty. Now this movie came out 2 years after Return of the Jedi and I suspect a big Hollywood studio executive said "This has to be something 13-year-olds think is cool". That's the only acceptable explanation.
Eventually Max and the kids decide to go * up the town because I don't know. It reminded me of Ewoks fighting, complete with pissy music and smiles. We get our first car chase scene only 85 minutes into the movie. This isn't actually too bad but I want everyone to die by now. They win overall and, sans Max, travel to Sydney which looks bad and orange and the harbour bridge is mostly gone.
This is when it started reminding me of a s**t episode of Star Trek. You know, one where someone gets sent down to a newly discovered planet to do covert research and/or get trashed and flirt with aliens. But what we get is just the cheap soundstage look and simple, stupid locals. So Max and the guy fight off while each is attached to gymnastics/bungee ropes. The kind of thing Cirque du Soleil performers jump around with, but with less range and bounce. Apparently this makes the fights better because you can swing up and grab the weapons at the top of the dome. But it looks bad like 90s Star Trek. Max is about to finish the guy but decides not to because empathy.
For being a reneging dick Tina Turner exiles him from the town on horseback with his hands tied and wearing a paper mache mask that I think is from a 1980s American fast food chain I'm unfamiliar with. Max passes out dying in the desert.
Incredibly, the movie gets worse. Max is rescued by a less attractive version of whatshername from Orphan Black. She takes him back to this forested cave area where she lives with a bunch of kids who I think are descendents of a Qantas flight that crashed back in the day and they mistake him for the long absent captain. (I'm not making that up.) Like a bad(der) episode of Falling Skies, without Moon Bloodgold being pretty. Now this movie came out 2 years after Return of the Jedi and I suspect a big Hollywood studio executive said "This has to be something 13-year-olds think is cool". That's the only acceptable explanation.
Eventually Max and the kids decide to go * up the town because I don't know. It reminded me of Ewoks fighting, complete with pissy music and smiles. We get our first car chase scene only 85 minutes into the movie. This isn't actually too bad but I want everyone to die by now. They win overall and, sans Max, travel to Sydney which looks bad and orange and the harbour bridge is mostly gone.
Awful movie. 2 stars. Only watch it if you want to be able to say you've seen every Mad Max movie.
BigFooty, what do you think of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome?
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