Beyond Thunderdome (1985) Review- By Michael J. Carlisle

Title: Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
Year: 1985
Director: George Miller
Country: Australia
Language: US

While Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome was Australian director George Miller's third entry in the Mad Max series, it would be his first Hollywood production. After his successes with Mad Max (1979) and The Road Warrior (1981) Warner Bros. were fairly confident that they could make money with Miller, so they financed and distributed the picture. Co-directing alongside George Ogilvie, Miller manages to make a rather divisive movie among fans of the series.

After being exiled from the most advanced town in post apocalyptic Australia, a drifter (Mel Gibson) travels with a group of abandoned children to rebel against the town's queen (Tina Turner) 

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome arrived in the summer of 1985, just a week after the box-office giant Back to the Future. It earned many times its hefty $12 million dollar budget, but was overshadowed by almost every other film to come out at that time. Some would champion Miller's vision, but others saw it as a letdown from the other films in the series. I personally was absolutely enthralled by this entry. "Two man enter. One man leave."

In Beyond Thunderdome Gibson's character is further cemented alongside cinematic anti-heroes such as Clint Eastwood's "The Man with No Name". He's just a man trying to survive in a cruel and unforgiving environment, well captured by the film's cinematographer. Stealing the entire film is the cage match fight sequence between Max and Blaster, wherein the two men are bungeed inside a metal dome pen, on the outside of which spectators cling and cheer. Tina Turner gives a memorable performance, her screen presence is unrivaled. 

Granted, despite its many qualities Beyond Thunderdome feels a bit disjointed. It has many ideas and gives Gibson a bit too much to do. Sometimes we're watching an epic to-the-death cage fight and other times we're watching a Hook knockoff. I find myself entertained and sometimes left in awe by this picture, but I wish they worked with a tighter script.