nickrobertparadies The Mad Max franchise is one of the rare film franchises where each film truly feels like its own animal. The original Mad Max is a classic revenge film with pseudo-Western elements, The Road Warrior is a gritty, low-budget action flick (think The Raid but with cars), and Fury Road is a stunt-driven blockbuster spectacle. Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, the third film in the series, is definitely the most different of the films, but that isn't to say its bad. It isn't.In this entry, Max's camel wagon (made out of his crashed V8 Interceptor) is stolen and hocked in Bartertown. Max travels there and meets with Aunty Entity, the leader of town, who promises to resupply him if he helps her take down her enemy, Master Blaster, in a Thunderdome duel (post-apocalyptic WWE with no rules). Max defeats Master Blaster but refuses to kill him, and is exiled, where he meets a tribe of oasis-dwelling children who survived a plane crash. The kids believe Max to be the long-lost pilot returning to take them back to civilization, and he eventually agrees to help them get to the mythical "Tomorrow-morrow Land".It's a given that Mel Gibson is great as Max. Tina Turner's Aunty Entity is the butt of a lot of jokes, but she really isn't that bad. Most of the other performances are pretty good, barring a few child actors that aren't great. Other givens with the Mad Max franchise include the set design and production design being great, and they are here. Bartertown, the Canyon Oasis, and the Thunderdome itself are all creative and fun to look at. The costume design is also excellent, especially for the Bartertown residents. A Bugs Bunny toy that makes an appearance is a nice Easter egg to subtly remind us of the post-apocalyptic world the films take place in.An added bonus is how quotable this film is. None of the Mad Max films feature a lot of dialogue, but much like Fury Road, there are plenty of memorable lines to be found among the general silence. "Raggedy man", "no matter where you go, there you are", "two men enter, one man leaves" "bust a deal, face the wheel"... all lines sure to illicit recognition from even casual fans of the series.The biggest issue with the movie is that it feels like two films in one. George Miller, the director, suffered some personal tragedies partway through and left the project, leaving his friend George Ogilvie to finish it. For the most part, you don't notice that directors changed halfway through, which is a testament to editing, but you can still occasionally see indications of it. Additionally, the story is very disjointed; despite Miller's best efforts to connect them at the end, the first half of the film Bartertown has very little to do with the second half, which is basically Lord of the Flies in Australia. Because both the stories are so engaging and great on their own, it doesn't take away from the film that much, but it is a bit jarring, and ideally this film would be two separate shorter films.All in all, a well-made but slightly disjointed film that is a lot of fun to watch, but is definitely the weakest of the franchise and doesn't measure up to the excellence of Road Warrior and Fury Road. But again, not to say it's bad. It's like saying winning a million dollars isn't as good as winning a million and a half dollars. I would still recommend this film to anyone who loves action movies.

Ian (Flash Review)Everyone has had a paper cut before. That really small sliver glowing red. That small little slice is the thickness of this film's story. Loner fighter man wins a duel inside a metal sphere with the town looking on. He doesn't follow all the rules and is cast away to die. He ends up at a village with lots of native kids. Stuff happens. The original mean town learns he is alive. They chase after him with one of those iconic mammoth car chase battles. Sprinkle on dirt and sweat and grim and there's your picture. The End. It felt like a darker version of Goonies at times.

Leofwine_draca Now I do enjoy the MAD MAX films. They're the epitome of Australian cult filmmaking on a budget: filled with uniquely Aussie humour, outlandish characters and plenty of action. In fact, MAD MAX 2 is one of my favourite films ever, finishing with that massive, sprawling chase sequence that's still inspiring filmmakers today (Neil Marshall's DOOMSDAY, anyone?). For some reason, I'd never got around to watching this, the third in the series, although I had seen snippets of it on TV. I wasn't impressed by the scenes I saw: it seemed cheesier and sillier than what had come before, more child friendly. And the presence of Tina Turner seemed a definite distraction.When I saw MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME was showing on TV again, I decided to bite the bullet and sit down and watch it, fearing the worst. I didn't get that, but this is definitely the weakest MAD MAX film of the series. The heart and soul of the story is missing from this one. It seems like a tired repeat of the last movie, with an unwelcome American presence in the likes of Tina Turner and more Hollywood ideals. Much of the blame must lie on the troubled production: the producer died causing George Miller to back out and only direct the action sequences while another hand took over the character and dialogue moments. The result is a mixed production. The action scenes, of which there are only really two – the 'gladiator combat' scene in the Thunderdome, and the final chase – are exquisite, as good as that which has come before, and very entertaining. Not original, but still entertaining.The non-action scenes drag like heck. The colony of feral children are mostly irritating, with too many attempts to make them 'cute'. They actually reminded me of the Ewoks in RETURN OF THE JEDI. Gibson's character is underwritten in this one, so that he barely speaks and seems like a void at the centre of the film. There's no sense of his desperation or his primal nature here, he's just a stock hero character. I found Tina Turner to be pretty insipid as the would-be villainess, although I was happy to see Bruce Spence returning as the helicopter pilot, albeit he plays a different character this time around. I was also delighted by the casting of veteran dwarf actor Angelo Rossitto who bags something of a swan song performance late on in his career. So, the final result: a hit and miss effort, soon forgotten. The final chase scene, though, is worth watching, even if it is a case of revisiting past glories.

chaos-rampant This will be silly and disjointed for those who found the second mean and rampaging. Spielberg had intervened, there's a kid friendly dash of Indiana Jones, some Lone Ranger. But from Mad Max I come away with two things, the edges of world we discover and the chase. I don't take to the Bartertown portion of the film, it may be closer to Road Warrior in spirit but all I see here is rushed spectacle for a boorish audience, contraptions. We do see a bit more of the Max world in this place but not in any way I care for. It feels like this part was bolted on when they decided to turn a separate script into a Max movie.No, I'm oddly captivated by the Lord of the Flies portion. I see glimmers of magic in the way the narrative of something that crashed from the skies one day has been preserved in the minds of kids, the way it's revealed through a screen that frames remnants of half- remembered story, the chorus of awestruck kids for whom all of this has profound meaning.It does open up a window to a whole swathe of Max world but this time with deep feeling, as myth the kids have vowed to keep in memory and bide their time for. Sure, we are in Goonies territory and again in the end with the city, but there's hushed yearning here, an almost Biblical kind.The rest is in the chase, a train this time, briefer than usual and over before it really exhilarates, as if more by obligation than keenness for it. They would eventually build a whole other film around it, extending it to an entire circus around the rig, but that would have to wait for 30 years.