Film Review - Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)

The third entry in the Mad Max series, this story sees Max (Mel Gibson) come across Bartertown where his possessions have been taken after they're stolen by Jebediah the Pilot (Bruce Spence) while there he runs into Aunty Entity (Tina Turner) and after he runs afowl of her finds himself banished where a group of children find him and see him as their saviour to take them to their Promised Land of the Tomorrowmorrow.

Having been a massive fan of the first two Mad Max films I was very keen to sit down and watch the third film again after a few years since my last showing, the first two for me are very much 5 out of 5 films if there ever were any and are the only two films I've seen that have come close to rivalling the Star Wars Trilogy as my favourite films, could this one have any real chance of measuring up?

Well it doesn't to be honest as this third film really meanders around the place in terms of telling its very thin storyline that doesn't really feel like a fully formed film but more of a collection of 3 short films that make up the whole somehow:

The first of these "Bartertown" is probably the best of the three but not by much as its main fight sequence whilst decent enough just felt very out of place in what I would call a Mad Max movie, I mean almost all of the action in the first two films was set in high speed pursuits out on the open road just as the Goose says in Mad Max 1 "See you on the Road like we saw the Nightrider" I mean that is what should have happened here and not this hand to hand fight that as I said is okay but feels very out of place in this series.

The second of these "The Tribe of Lost Children" is where the film virtually dies and it feels like Steven Spielberg took over the director's chair from George Miller in this part of the film though to be frank if he had directed the whole movie then I wouldn't have been in the least bit surprised by that as it feels a lot more like something he would do with Harrison Ford, hell you could've swapped Gibson for Ford in this movie and have it be "Indiana Jones and the Tribe of Lost Children" and again you would not notice the difference.

And finally the last segment which is the climactic chase sequence is frankly a fucking rip off to every Mad Max fan that watches this film as not only does it feel like an afterthought (you know something folks we'd better have a big chase scene for all the Mad Max fans out there because the truth is the other films had them) but it feels VERY VERY VERY anti climatic to the point where you begin to feel ripped off afterwards.

And as for Bruce Spence well he's barely in the damn thing, he shows up at the beginning of the film and then he's tossed aside until there's 10 minutes left in the full film and given the key role he played in the last film, again it feels like a rip off for the fans to do this and as for Turner well she's decent enough but almost completely forgettable and when compared to the Nightrider, the Toecutter and the Lord Humongous who were the chief villains in the first two films it feels gravely disappointing.

But then again this whole movie has that feeling permeating all through it, no doubt caused in a large part by the absence of producer Byron Kennedy who sadly passed away before this film was made and given how vital his role was to the success of the first two films, his absence is felt all throughout this movie as both Gibson and director George Miller don't seem to have their heart in this film at all and you can see it written on Mel's face at times especially during the final chase scene, it's very very sad that the series ended in this manner and hopefully the fourth film due next year will set things back on track.

So all in all, I cannot recommend Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome as much as I would like to with all of my being given how big a fan of the first two films I am but I cannot do that as it feels very thin story wise and film wise feels more like 3 separate films rather than 1 complete one and given how focused and fast paced the first two were this feels like a big step down, 1 out of 5.