So it’s hardly a slight against Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome that it fails at the task of being as good or better than Mad Max 2/ The Road Warrior. Surprising that the most brutal, comic-book and nonsensical post-apoc flicks should also approach the sublime most nearly.Making a sequel that significantly improves on a strong original is a feat that few enough filmmakers have ever achieved asking those filmmakers to try their luck by doing the same thing twice in a row is clearly beyond reason. The post-apocalyptic poetic is a major thing in literary sci-fi, but rarely gets a look-in at the movies.
In the first film it’s a really cool grace note at the end of a silly, nasty romp. So the third film is the least satisfying and most naff, but also has a lot of the best bits of the series, with the epic, mythic ending of film 2 extrapolated out so as to occupy considerable screen time. The Riddley Walker devolved dialect of the kids is inspired, and it’s only when you start picking at it that you realize the whole thing makes no sense at all - how long have these kids been here? Once we get to the “Jesus in leather” part, the high concept that made the film worth making to Miller, with Max as messiah leading a tribe of semi-feral children from the wilderness, things pick up. Everything at Thunderdome is a bit confused, with baddies who aren’t bad enough, fighting other baddies, and Max stuck in between without a clear role. The third film is probably the most dated, since its budget now allowed Miller and his co-George to really indulge themselves, so we get more sex-sax, Tina Turner, some dubious hair for Max, and a bit of a Frankie Goes To Hollywood vibe. Once more, though, the film is far more in love with its bad guys, and can’t quite bring itself to give the hero much to do or say - only at the climax is there a clear imperative to get his arse in gear. He has just enough gravitas by the time of the second. Isn’t he YOUNG? Mel Gibson is actually too boyish in the first film, struggling to appear bad-ass enough or convincingly tormented until his descent into nemesis mode at the end. Emil Minty as the Feral Kid is good though.
#Cast of mad max beyond thunderdome movie
Miller’s skill with actors seems to have actually regressed, with this movie brimming with lousy supporting players cast for their appearance.
#Cast of mad max beyond thunderdome series
The weird lack of continuity between films - no series save THE PINK PANTHER has survived so much surreal garbling - already creeps in, but is less overt. The ending is particularly fine in this respect, unearned by the preceding action - the Gyro Captain’s going to make a terrible tribal leader, obviously. The second film is an exponential leap in budgetary terms, and also in bringing in the self-consciously mythic aspect of the series. Or I suppressed the memory and Miller should start paying my therapist bills. Either it was censored from our UK print or it went by so fast I convinced myself it never happened. I don’t remember the cartoonish eyeball-bulge moment, played twice in the film.
Max and his sex-sax-playing wife actually play at Tarzan-and-Jane, and like that previous screen couple, they have an unimaginative way with baby names: their’s is called Sprog. Director/doctor George Miller takes a bully’s gloating delight in their depravity and laughs along with their jokes, which I think is what I disliked about the film first time. Throughout the action the movie contrasts Max’s heteronormative family values with the rampaging psychopathic polyamorous biker gang led by Toecutter (Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall Keays-Byrne) who are equal-opportunities rapists. Maybe he likes Charlize Theron in the latest film because she reminds him of his wife’s missing arm? Max’s wife isn’t killed, just horribly wounded, and then allowed to completely disappear from the movie, and the series. The movie menaces a child in the first reel and kills one to motivate the last-act carnage. The action is hairy and scary and impressive and the ruthlessness is total. MAD MAX - first seen at my school film society - has all the strengths and weaknesses in position already. But in the interests of clarity, I’ll take them in order here. Oddly enough, my teenage self hadn’t been all that taken with the first film, so we left it to last.
FURY ROAD got us all pumped up and fuel-injected and we thought it was time to catch up. Fiona hadn’t seen any, and I had seen MAD MAX II: THE ROAD WARRIOR on VHS and the first film at my school film society when I was 17. So, we finally watched all the MAD MAX films, in the wrong order. Now I’m thoroughly sick of staring at it in my Drafts section, I’ll finally punt it out there. Wrote this last year after enjoying MAD MAX: FURY ROAD - we watched all the previous MAXES, I wrote this, and then forgot to publish it.
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