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Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985 Australia)

 
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Bogmeister
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PostPosted: Sat Dec 14, 2013 8:40 pm    Post subject: Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985 Australia) Reply with quote

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MEL GIBSON is MAD MAX again in



After the phenomenal Mad Max 2 / The Road Warrior(81), star Mel Gibson and Director George Miller decided to go for a 3rd stab at the modern mythology they had created.

Miller brought on board George Ogilvie as co-director to help with all the scenes involving the children.

Uh-oh, children, you're probably saying to yourself?

Yep. Max, after an initial adventure in the seedy Bartertown, accidentally finds himself in a lost oasis populated by all these kids, who all grew up there after some airplane crash years ago.



This continues the post-holocaust setting of The Road Warrior, where now it seems everything has settled down to a roughly pre-industrial new age. Singer Tina Turner rules Bartertown, including the main attraction, Thunderdome, the latest gladiatorial arena in which all problems are settled.

Some of this is mildly interesting, in terms of creating a new kind of civilization from scratch. It's entertaining, but like many of the low budget sci-fi films of the eighties, this higher-budgeted effort merely retreads much ground already covered in The Road Warrior, only at a slower pace.

Where in The Road Warrior the poetic yet violent images seemed natural, here they seem forced and overdone. This includes the scenes with the children where, though their new language & mannerisms are original, it becomes tedious to listen to after a few minutes.

All these drawbacks may explain why there wasn't a 4th Mad Max film 3 or 4 years after this one. Gibson was still excellent and commanding in the role that made his career, so he certainly wasn't the reason the film series petered out here. There were plans for a 4th film recently, like a couple of years ago, and filming actually began, I think, but things had to be canceled for various reasons, including problems with the locations. Then it got greenlit again . . . then . . . I dunno.


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Bongopete
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Joined: 17 Dec 2013
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 18, 2013 1:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I really enjoyed 'The Road Warrior' and to a much lesser extent, 'Mad Max'...but this one least of all.

It seemed like it suffered from that old Hollywood formula of taking a sequel and throw a lot of money at it. Didn't care for the kids (not Pepe, but still kids), didn't buy their Lord of the Flies existence.

I HATE this whole style of Mohawks and stylings that the last two road warrior movies seemed to start.

It had a nice opening song however.
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orzel-w
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Joined: 19 Sep 2014
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 28, 2016 3:02 am    Post subject: Re: Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985 Australia) Reply with quote

Bogmeister wrote:
There were plans for a 4th film recently, like a couple of years ago, and filming actually began, I think, but things had to be canceled for various reasons, including problems with the locations. Then it got greenlit again . . . then . . . I dunno.

Then last year we finally got Mad Max: Fury Road.

But, back to Thunderdome.

One touch I found entertaining was the character, Dr. Dealgood, who had a way with words in announcing the Thunderdome matches. ("Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls . . . Dyin' time's here," and so on.)

I was dismayed, however, by the condition of one of my favorite actors, Frank Thring. He had aged so poorly that I didn't even recognize him until I saw his name in the credits and went back to look for him specifically. He died at the age of 68, which is younger than my age now.

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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 28, 2016 1:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

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Great Caesar's ghost, I've got a download of Fury Road I'd forgotten to watch! Thanks for reminding me, Wayne. I'll get 'round to doing that in the next few days. Very Happy

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The Spike
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Joined: 23 Sep 2014
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Location: Birmingham. Great Britain.

PostPosted: Mon Apr 13, 2020 8:16 pm    Post subject: I hate it, lazy cash in. Reply with quote

Even allowing for my unabashed love of the first two films in the franchise, and sweeping away any sort of biased leanings I might of had for the character of Max, I just can't bring myself to rate at average this cartoonery waste of space that so nearly soils what had gone before it.

Gone is the rugged nasty streak that brought feeling to the character Mad Max Rockatansky, gone is the impacting feeling of desolation in an apocalyptic world, and more crucially, gone is director George Miller's passion for the franchise. The dreadful score matches the cartoon heart of the film, it seems that the makers didn't really know what to do with the amount of cash given to make this third instalment. Sure the stunts are spot on (to be expected by now), and of course Miller manages to paint a barren desert landscape by purely lifting from what he has done before. Yet he clearly struggled for fresh ideas with the action since "The Road Warrior's" crowning glory of the Petrol Tanker pursuit is replicated here, only he uses a train instead!!.

It's just a very poor show that may have seemed like an ambitious turn of events back in the mid 1980s, but when viewing the three films together now, Thunderdome just comes across as a director losing his edgy approach whilst sadly getting caught between the mix of comedy and fantasy action. And the truth is that neither of those genre slants would have worked singularly, in the context of this series, anyway. I give the film 3/10 purely for one real good Thunderdome fight sequence, while the stunt men here deserve some credit at the very least. But this is the third time I have tried to like this film, and as glutton for punishment as I undoubtedly am, I wont be trying again, ever.

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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 13, 2020 11:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I enjoyed this film very much! I lioved the previous movies, but the inclusion of Tina Turner was a plus!

The fact that I once dated a girl who was the spitting image of Tina both in flesh and spirit was a real plus!!

I felt that I REALLY understood what the ordeal could be like!!!

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