The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2021: Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985), directed by George Miller and George Ogilvie

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune - "We Don't Need Another Hero" by Tina Turner

       We closed the chapter on Star Trek TOS and the original Planet of the Apes series last year, and this year I decided yet another. When Mad Max: Fury Road temporarily took the world by storm all those years ago I decided that I should get ahead of the horse so to speak and check out this odd little franchise when interest was still high. So I watched the first entry in the series, 1979’s Mad Max, and I didn’t like it. At all really, which really made my experience with Fury Road a year later much more pleasantly poignant. It took me five years after that to finally get around to watching the second film in the series, Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, and once again I was pleasantly surprised. All the things that had made Fury Road such a treat, the whole reason people would give a shit about a Mad Max movie in the first place originated with that film. Now, two years later, it’s time to see if they stick the landing. Witness me, and all that.

       Released in Australia in 1985, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome was written by Terry Hayes and co-written, directed (with George Ogilvie) and produced by George Miller through Kennedy Miller Productions. Mel Gibson returns for the last time as the titular Max, the one-time police officer and family man who now wanders alone across the barren wastes of what was once Australia. After getting wagon-jacked by a father and son team of aviators Max eventually ends up at Bartertown, a settlement and trading hub for all your physical and deviant needs, run by the vivacious Aunty Entity (Tuna Turner). The main reason Bartertown is successful though is because of the Underworld, an industrial complex and prison labor camp which processes methane gas into electricity for the rest of the town, and that place is maintained by the brains and brawn duo of MasterBlaster. Such a scenario ultimately leads to a power struggle , and when Max comes around looking for his stolen goods Aunty senses an opportunity and offers him a deal: get rid of the Blaster, without whom the Master is largely helpless and easy to control, and he gets his stuff back. Max agrees, seeing little choice in the matter, and goes about setting up his match against Blaster in the post-apocalypse’s number one place for legal arbitration and remuneration: the Thunderdome, where two men enter and one man leaves. Of course things which seem simple always end up becoming complicated, especially when Max is involved. He might even end up going past the Thunderdome entirely. Beyond it, even.

       The original Mad Max was a by-the-books type of grindhouse action flick, Road Warrior was a bit wilder but felt like a logical progression, and Beyond Thunderdome blows all of that out of the water to become purely fantasy. The visual aesthetic, the mangled reinterpretations of modern society, the way some character’s language skills have degenerated into a type of pidgin English, any sense of where the films take place (beyond some of the accents and landmarks being Australian) or when the apocalypse actually occurred have completely vanished. The Master looks to be in his 50s talks like Tarzan while Aunty Entity looks younger and speaks fluently, Max and Entity remember the world pre-apocalypse while others seem barely cognizant of it. The world of Mad Max is no longer compatible with our own in Beyond Thunderdome, it is running purely on its own lore, which might interest those who come in through Fury Road or the video game. 

       As the seemingly final entry in the series, Beyond Thunderdome was also the most expensive at the time, with a budget over double that of Mad Max 2. That might not be apparent at first as many locations in the film look like either a desert or a landfill, but when you get into it you realize that the film definitely feels bigger than Road Warrior. There’s more people, more locations, bigger explosions, better special effects, and so on and on. A big international release calls for big international visuals I suppose, which rings true as George Miller takes some of that time and money to essentially recreate the convoy from Road Warrior in Beyond Thunderdome, a courtesy for those in the audience who might not have seen a then 4 year old cult movie from Australia. A tactic that he would reuse when it came time for Fury Road, which is ninety percent convoy set piece, but it worked because that movie ran like cinematic cocaine. Not quite the same with Thunderdome, but I’ll get to that in a bit.

       In regards to the cast, not only do we have Mel Gibson taking his final bow as the stoic wanderer of the wastes Max but also the return of Bruce Spence as a technically different character from the one he played in Road Warrior who also happens to pilot a flying machine, which was a nice treat. Coming off of Labyrinth as I did I was a bit wary to see Tina Turner's name in the credits, but she actually puts in a respectable performance in spite of what that hairstyle would have you believe. It’s almost like the opposite of Labyrinth in a way, Turner only gets a couple songs on the soundtrack and not that much development but puts in a worthwhile performance, while Bowie is all over the soundtrack and the movie but isn’t all that impressive on screen. Really though I don’t have much to comment on the acting in Thunderdome, even the children, who tend to be the weak link in any film they’re in.

      Yes, the children...There does seem to be an emphasis on children this time around, multiple child characters in fact that dominate the screen time once they’re introduced. So much so that the film could neatly be split into two halves, the Thunderdome section and the children section. No matter the section though, the introduction of children at all in the narrative seems to have softened the tone of the entire film. There’s still fiery explosions and fistfights, but for the most part Mad Max has traded in his guns (quite literally at the beginning of the film) for slapstick comedy bits and children hitting people with frying pans. Very strong Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom vibes here, which had come out the year before, which is probably not the one you want to be compared to if you had the choice.

       The music doesn’t help to keep comparisons to The Goonies at bay, unfortunately enough. Looking at his body of work Maurince Jarre was clearly a prolific composer, having worked on such films as Lawrence of Arabia and A Passage to India, but it is precisely because of his status as an old hand of Hollywood filmmaking that there’s a problem. You play a scene of this with your eyes closed and you’d swear you were watching a Spielberg movie, which only solidifies that Indiana Jones comparison. It lacks the edge and the energy that the series promotes and embodies, and every time Jarre’s orchestra starts to swell and try to push this dramatic timbre, I find it hard to take it seriously. As if we’re just on some grand adventure and not in a desperate struggle for our lives in a sandy, rusty hellscape. 

       So what is the reason for this change in tone? George Miller isn’t a stranger to children’s films, Happy Feet being the most successful example, but it seems odd that he would go the child-friendly route in his film series that’s partly predicated on the death of children, and features child death in this very film. Without looking into the production history one’s eyes are naturally drawn to the film’s other director, George Ogilvie. Ogilvie’s debut film was Beyond Thunderdome and the few films he directed afterwards were all dramas, not quite the same as the sci-fi action of Mad Max. Considering that, the fact that this was an international release and that the budget was significantly higher than Road Warrior, one is lead to the conclusion that studio execs at Warner Bros. or at Kennedy Miller shoved Ogilvie into the position due to lack of trust in Miller to make the movie and these tonally inconsistent moves were the result of an inexperienced director and those wanting a softer more marketable film in the hope that they’ll make more money. As I said I haven’t looked into it, Miller would go on to direct Babe and Happy Feet so maybe he was looking to change things up, but I doubt it. Unless it’s the Coens or the Wachowskis generally speaking you don’t see two directors on a film unless the people fronting the money aren’t happy, especially when one of them lacks any clout in the industry and is thus easier. Beyond Thunderdome made over three times its budget back at the office and yet it took 3 decades for Miller to get the greenlight for another Mad Max film? Definitely some behind the camera troubles.

       Which isn’t to say that it’s not an entertaining movie. The whole Bartertown setting, Aunty Entity, MasterBlaster, is exactly the kind of thing that I expected and wanted when I first learned of this series. In that regard I would place it above the original Mad Max, but it also lacks the grit of Road Warrior and the balls-to-the-wall action of Fury Road that made those films so enjoyable. Awkward middle child status aside, Beyond Thunderdome gets the recommendation, which means that Mad Max in general gets the distinction of being one of the most consistently good franchises in Western pop culture, so if you’re looking for something to binge watch this Halloween this is definitely an option. Only slightly less phallic imagery than your average twitter feed.

Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981), directed by George Miller

The Trailer
and
The Appropriate Tune: "I Was A Kamikaze Pilot", by Hoodoo Gurus

       I don’t know if I’m just being sentimental or what, but I guess that ‘familiar faces’ label that I stuck on the last Marathon decided to stick around to see the new year as well. First it was the return of James Bond to the blogging arena, something that had been foreshadowed at the very dawn of this blog, and after a short detour to flip the bird to Billy Mitchell, we’re returning to another movie series that had seemingly fallen to the wayside: Mad Max. If I wanted to seem ominous I’d say I was tying up some loose ends, but in reality it was a spur of the moment thing. It was either going to be this or Monkeybone, to give you a sense if the high stakes gambling we were dealing with here. Sorry Brendan Fraser, you’re going to have to take a rain check.

Anyway, about five years ago (which is depressing just thinking about it) I covered the patriarch of the Mad Max series, 1979’s Mad Max, a film that I really, really did not like. For a movie that revolved around muscle cars and motorcycles the plot felt interminably slow, full of characters that I did not care about and the barest modicum of action slotted in at the very end. Then a year later I covered 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road, a film that I really, really did like. A total dark horse champion at the time that in all honesty should have redefined the way filmmakers approach action sequences in film, while also managing to tell a coherent, entertaining narrative. With such a huge disparity between the two films I was reluctant to bring a new film into the fold, one which would tip the scales and determine whether this series was ultimately good or bad. Was Fury Road the exception to a rule, or was Mad Max just a rocky start? Well it’s right about time that we find out.

The world is fucked. Mankind just couldn’t keep their hands out of the M.A.D. jar and civilization has collapsed, along with most of the ecosystem, although that might just be what Australia looks like. What last pockets of humanity remain either try to band together into communities, or join the vicious bands of marauders that roam the wasteland, but they’re all fighting and dying for one thing: Gasoline. As automobiles have become the backbone of this society, a vital tool of trade and war, petrol has become the lifeblood allowing it to function. To have gas is to have freedom and to own it is power, and in this hell both of those options are worth killing over. Especially when everyone around you is trying to kill you first.

Max is a man racing against the demons of his past, something that’s difficult to do when you’re living in hell. While scavenging for supplies he ends up in the middle of a conflict between the tribe of Gastown, so named because it was jury-rigged from an abandoned oil well, and a gang of leather-strapped S&M bandits led by the Ayatollah of Rock ‘N’ Rolla himself, The Humungus. Humungus wants that sweet sweet guzzolene, and he and his war dogs have been making some incredibly subtle requests for it; Holding day-long battle practice outside their main gate, killing and/or raping every person who tries to leave Gastown in search of trade, using hostages as living hood ornaments, that sort of thing. Sensing an opportunity for personal gain and having previously run afoul of one of Humungus’ men, Max decides to temporarily ally himself with the people of Gastown and pick them up a transport truck so they can hail their ass and their gas out of there. Things go about as well as you’d expect whenever you throw an army of heavily-armed gimps into the mix, and Max quickly finds himself way more involved than he ever wanted.

The Road Warrior approaches being a sequel in much the same way as Fury Road would do in the future, in that it’s not really a ‘sequel’ at all. There’s some clips of of the first film as I mentioned, but aside from the setting and the character of Max Mad Max 2 doesn’t really relate to Mad Max at all. A bit odd in these days of vast overarching narratives spanning dozens of films, but in the case of Mad Max 2 I actually prefer it that way. Not just because I didn’t like the original Mad Max, but because it allows for simple, adaptable storytelling. You didn’t need the entire backstory of Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, or half the film dedicated to how Clint Eastwood’s character in The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly learned to shoot a pistol, because the stories explain themselves. There’s a village plagued by a gang of thieves, a hero comes and vanquishes the thieves, and the villagers are happy. It’s a plot that could take place in the dystopian Australian outback or feudal Japan with no real issues, and I like that because it helps make that hero feel almost timeless. This is not Max, the rogue cop on the edge from the last film. This is The Road Warrior, a being more of myth than of man.

This belief is aided by the fact that George Miller had attained a far greater sense for action by his second ever feature film. The car combat that blew audiences away in Fury Road got its start here, a little less high-octane but just as technically impressive and dangerous looking as ever. It brings to mind images of privateers attacking supply ships or whaling expeditions, the target struggling for life as the pack slowly whittle it down, a slow burn kind of tension that is contrasted nicely by the general speed of the action. Getting to see some sick explosions and cars getting demolished is fun too, a couple folks getting set on fire, but it’s the vehicle battles that are the centerpiece of Mad Max 2.

As for cons, there’s not really much in the way of interesting characters. Memorable characters sure, I’d say The Humungus and his crew fit that bill, but characters that I grew attached to on an emotional level? Max is badass, yeah, but that’s primarily when he’s driving something. Everyone else feels just kind of there, you know? They throw in the Feral Child to try and soften up Max but I just really didn’t see any chemistry chemistry. The Gyro Captain, played by Bruce Spence, is pretty great though I must admit. At the very least he gives you something to focus on while looking at ol’ Mel the Bigot’s one expression through the first half of the film, and you have to credit for that.

I also wasn’t blown away by the score of the film, composed by Brian May. It’s an effective score, but I never really took notice at any point that I can remember. Which is arguably one of the major points of music in film, that it not take precedence over what’s on the screen, but I expected a bit more from a member of a rock band famous for extremely catchy, often operatic songs which sometimes involved cars. 

       Mad Max 2 is the film that made the series a household name, and it’s the film that first made you wonder why studios ended up sticking George Miller with Babe: Pig in the City rather than just dumping money on him so he could make more leather daddy apocalypse flicks. Too much of a good thing I suppose. While Fury Road is still number one in my heart, if you’re at all interested in understanding all this weirdness then this is the movie to check out. Maybe the only other movie to check out, because it’ll probably be another five years until I check out Beyond Thunderdome. Until then, make sure you stock up on guzzolene and canned dog food. For the future.