One
kid was fine, but this is a little kid-heavy for me. Everyone's
favourite anti-Semite is back in the third Max movie in the trilogy,
which starts fairly strong, fumbles in the second act, but finishes
on form.
Other
than the kid thing, my main problem with this one is that he doesn't
have his car. Instead of those camels he could have had his car, and
had his car stolen by plane dude (played by Spence again, though this is
apparently a totally different character), then stolen it back for
the final chase scene at the end. Whatever though, it's fine. We see
a little post-apocalyptic town here, which is run by Tina Turner, so
that's good. But then we spend the entire second act watching Max
shout at kids, and I get bored enough to start making lasagne while
I'm watching.
The
lasagne is put on hold as Max and the kids (I heard that their story
was originally going to be a 'Lord of the Flies' film, which needed
more padding) sneak back into Turnerland to steal a car, or steal
food, or steal the little smart guy, or something. Oh yeah at this
point Max has been banished, and Tina has little smart guy imprisoned
to run the pig shit factory that runs the place, so as they escape on
an old train she gives chase with a horde of your classic spiky cars.
This is another great chase scene, with plenty of jumping about
between vehicles and explosions and whatnot. Then Max ends up
sacrificing himself so that the kids can escape with Bruce Spence,
but Tina spares his life out of... newfound respect? She's a cool
chick, maybe she's just seen the other 'Mad Max' movies.
The
first and third act are let down by the second, which slows to a
crawl and feels like an entirely different film. The presence of so
many kids also cutesy ups the rest of the film very slightly. It's
kind of like having Han Solo and Chewie running about fighting storm
troopers, but then there are also all these bear things running about
too, and none of them are dying for some reason...
Still
pretty great, but I think this is the weakest Max film I've
seen. The usual gritty elements are still there though, and they're great.
Oh! I never even mentiond what Thunderdome is! Yeah, it's just this big dome where people kill each other, it's not a huge deal and just serves as the finale for the first act. I'm not sure why the film was titled this (yes I do, it's to distract from all the kids), a more accurate one would be 'Mad Max: The Lost Children'. Also, those shots of post-apocalyptic Sydney right at the end are beautifully haunting.
Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome: 60.5