Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
Rounding out E and I’s Mad Max universe watch was Beyond Thunderdome, and we finally came to understand the title. This movie was bizarre on a couple levels, but the biggest is that they basically merged two movies together into one. The first - the classic Mad Max wasteland and citadels, in this case Bartertown, and its gladiator arena Thunderdome, both of which Max survives, as our champion always does. We could call this first movie - Surviving Thunderdome. The second movie - an 80’s Mad Max Peter Pan, in which we never see Thunderdome again, and you could call that second movie…. Beyond Thunderdome. The first movie is what we came for, the second, is just kind of bizarre. And amazingly, the fact this movie was cleaned up all the way to PG, to make it even more Hollywood, further amplifies the Peter Pan-ness of the Beyond Thunderdome plot, and it does not benefit from the lack of violence and death which Mad Max had become known for in films 1 & 2, and obviously in the modern entries. It was fun, in its wacky 80’s way, and definitely glad we watched it after seeing all the other movies in this universe.
-Z
