BEYOND THUNDERDOME: How Mad Max Nearly Ended

What's your ranking of the Mad Max movies?

It's pretty telling that both Road Warrior and Thunderdome are framed as someone else telling a story about Max. I've always maintained that each film is a specific generation using Max as the hero of a story. Mad Max is the generation closest to the fall, when survival is paramount, and so we get a ruthless story about getting them before they get you. Road Warrior comes a generation later, when "every man for himself" doesn't work anymore and people realize they need to start banding together to survive. Thunderdome comes as society is starting to rise from the ruins and is a cautionary tale about not repeating the mistakes of the past. And by the time we get to Fury Road, Max is a full on folk hero version of himself, so large a figure that he bleeds into other people's stories, like Hercules showing up in The Iliad.

I like Thunderdome. It's a different take on the formula. More fanciful and theatrical with circus-y and rock opera flavors. All very 80's and beautifully shot too. Great cast... I've got no problem with it!

Thunderdome’s reputation amongst Max fans - something akin Crystal Skull’s reputation amongst Indians Jones fans - is undeserved and unjust. It has some of the most inventive world-building in it, and some truly beautiful screenwriting. That whole sequence from the kids doing “the tell” to Max turning his back on them at the plane is amazing. And little moments like the discovery of what the “sonic” really is, ending with the line “I’m going home”. It’s action sequences might not rise to the level of adrenaline-soaked kineticism of MMII, but it includes some of the most genuinely moving cinema in the entire franchise, something that only Fury Road rivals. The problem, I think, is that Mad Max had become so intrinsically tied, in the minds of viewers, to the idea of cars and roads (especially in the US, where Mad Max II was even called “The Road Warrior”), that a movie that doesn’t have a single road in it, and in which Max never even gets behind the wheel of a motor vehicle until the last five minutes of the movie, and in which his two feet are his main means of locomotion, seemed like a disappointment to people expecting lots of high-octane driving sequences. It’s a different beast, that needs to be appreciated in its own terms, not based on what it isn’t. The idea people have that the second act is the “problem” is just bizarre to me. It’s easily the best and most memorable part of the film, IMO. And I’ve NEVER felt it as any kind of lag in the pacing. It becomes more meditative and intellectual at that point, sure. But I simply don’t understand how that’s a bad thing.

I remember watching this for the first time and being convinced I watched two separate movies. It has some fun moments but I don’t think I ever rewatched it.

This was my first Mad Max and it really started the fun for me. It was a great entry point as a kid for the time.

Oh boy. I think this one is the quotable and memorable of the Mad Max series because of how insane it can get at times, but still, it is an odd one in the development of the franchise. Still My mom loves this movie, and when she's enjoys something, I'm happy for her.

"Also, John Landis, straight to jail" no matter what else you say in this video I won't unlike it for saying this in the opening.

I just revisited it and Thunderdome isn't quite as bad as people make it out to be. The ending is actually quite emotional. But it's clear the movie's trying to blend two different storylines together and, once we get to the plane crash Lost Boys, it never reaches the Bartertown/Thunderdome highs again.

Lawrence of Arabia being a major influence on this film (and by extension even Fury Road) makes so much sense. George Miller truly channels his inner David Lean with the Mad Max films. Also, agree on Miller's segment on the Twilight Zone movie. His and Joe Dante's segments are the best parts. Very excited for Furiosa.

When you said you thought Beyond Thunderdome was a sequel of Thunderdome, it brought me back to my childhood when I thought Revenge of the Nerds had to be a sequel to a previous Nerds movie.

Another great video Matt! I LOVE THUNDERDOME. It's a beautifully shot, beautifully designed adventure that is classic 80s action cinema. "We Don't Need Another Hero" - PERFECTION. (*Mr. Draper... will you ever get round to doing a video on THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY?)

When I first saw it in the mid eighties. It was like if Disney had made a Mad Max movie. But over the years Ive come to appreciate it. It was ambitious for its time and you can see the David Lean influence as the Cinematography is breathtaking.

TNT had this movie on ALL THE TIME in the late 90's/early 00's and I remember spending a winter night watching this with my dad. It was a fun watch but boy did we groan any time we were flipping through the channels and saw it playing AGAIN.

I remember my father taking us out to the theaters to see this. While watching this my dad was like, "Where are the cars??"

I've always loved Thunderdome, it's my favorite of the original trilogy. It's really where the worldbuilding came into its own, more fully elaborating things only hinted at in Road Warrior. I love the intricacy and detail of the world-building: little touches like the way the kids refer to the apocalypse as the pox eclipse and have built this religion around discarded images and technology from a world that no longer exists. Same with the whole TV game-show setup of the Thunderdome itself. For all its famous over-the-topness, there has always been something very plausible and believable about it to me. I don't know that Thunder Road would've been made without the sheer ambition and scale first undertaken by Miller and crew with Thunderdome.

I LOVE every film in the MM saga, absolutely including Thunderdome. In fact, I watch BT every year or two. It's so different, so unique, and so influential.

What's sad is those kids left a paradise setting for basically Escape From New York.

Nothing beats the ending form the second one. That still gives me chills.

I was always under the belief that the kids were based on Peter Pan's Lost Boys.