Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)
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Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome Movie Review
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome is a 1985 science fiction action film directed by George Miller and starring Mel Gibson. It’s a crazy flick.
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“Two men enter, one man leave!“
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Bartertown, a desert city with almost zero civilization, is where Max seeks shelter in a post-apocalyptic world. He must survive the desert, the barbarians and this ghost town and also rescue others. This is the oddest entry in this franchise by far, and clearly the weakest when you ask almost everyone.
The problem with this movie is that it’s way too campy in its first half and way too simple and tiresome in the second half. I did respect the Thunderdome sequences for how offbeat they were, and clearly the energy in those sequences is undeniable. However, this section was still too over-the-top, especially for today’s audiences.
And the second half with the boys is too reminiscent to the Lost Boys from Peter Pan, an assessment that I agree with most critics. It’s okay and sometimes endearing, but I do not want charming and endearing in a Mad Max movie.
A Mad Max movie should be violent and unrestrained, but this one is, yes, overly Americanized and simply never harkening back to its roots, which was unfortunate to witness. Again, I liked it to a degree as it’s a passable flick, but rarely anything truly engaging.
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Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome has terrific technical aspects per usual for the franchise. The cinematography is excellent, the VFX are undeniably strong and the same goes for the production design. Some of the sets here are quite inspired. Mel Gibson is strong as always, but the character is not as memorable as he had been before, and others are too campy all-around. It’s definitely the weakest entry in the franchise, though not a bad movie per say.
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome is undoubtedly the weakest entry in the Mad Max franchise. It looks great, it’s authentic in its many sets and it’s positively offbeat in the first half, but it’s also too campy in that section and way too tiresome in the second half. It’s too watered down and restrained for this particular series.
