Review of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985) by Apostolos M — 11 Jan 2013

A very respectable conclusion to the Mad Max series that certainly deserves a better rating than it already has in RT (3.1/5 as of January 2013). I liked a lot this third (and last) film of the Mad Max trilogy. It still has the tense moments of the Mad Max I and II although this time to a lesser degree. This time Max visits a city run by the clever and also ruthless Aunty Entity (Tina Turner is great in this role). Nonetheless the present film gives us an account of what really happened to earth that brought about the end of civilization, something that the first two movies did not deal with, at least directly.

Max is still the lone wanderer with the amoral (not immoral) values burying deep in him the loss of his family and resolving to carry on without emotional attachments to the outside world. This movie provides the opportunities for him to test his physical reflexes and strength. The course of the events leads him accidentally to a community of lost kids in the desert. This time Max needs to become a mentor and help the community with his accumulated wisdom and caring. It is a big change for the man that we saw in Mad Max II, something that quite possibly made a number of viewers to distance themselves from this last film of the trilogy. That's too bad because I really think this film is in the same league with the previous films of the trilogy.

The Australian director George Miller continues to be in good form and takes a further step by making his anti-hero Max to stop for a while, reflect and move on towards the future with a hope that the future will be better for the generations to come without the errors of the past. A certainly more mainstream movie than the two others but still the quality is there.