Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.

My Sunday Night Movie for the evening tonight was Mad Max: Beyond Thunder dome, a film I have never been that impressed with before, but after watching it again I've decided I'm a fan.
I love how each of these movies is totally different, the only real connection between the films is the character of Max, each one feels almost like a reboot instead of a sequel. Bruce Spence is in both films playing the same character but it's almost like he and Max have never met before.
Gibson has become such a cultural figure of sorts that it's easy to forget the guy is/was the real deal; a proper Movie Star with Movie Star Charisma. He owns this and every Mad Max film completely. It's going to be weird seeing the new flick with someone else essaying the role.
Thunder dome is obviously more flawed than the other two films, the first one of which I watched just last week, but it's also the most ambitious, I think. It's got a great aesthetic and a great brown and black colour palette, I think the brightest colour in the film is fire.
It's amazing how difficult it has been for some other Post-Apocalyptic films to get over the aesthetic presented in the second and 3rd Max films; fucking Waterworld is essentially just this swapping desert for water. Bartertown feels like a real handmade place- the production design for the whole film is pretty great and the use of landscape is pretty fantastic as well. The Thunderdome fight was the highlight of the film for me, it was terrific. I haven't seen the film since VCR days and I was really impressed with it; really inventive and different. Using the whistle to take Blaster out was a fantastic device.
The film does hit the pig poo a bit when the tribe of children enter into the picture. Some of the dialogue in the sequence where we first meet them is kinda crap and on the nose, but the idea of the remnants of society starting a new mythology only to have it shat on by Max is kinda cool and clearly shows off Miller's Atheist sensibilities that would later re-surface in Happy Feet.
I found Maurice Jarre's score to be a bit of a problem. It almost feels like the wrong bits are being used for the wrong scenes; the soft melodic flute tunes playing during the sink hole sequence in the desert kills the tension a bit.
Car chase at the end is terrific. Some great touches all the way through; the record that kids finally listen to, the Viewmaster, Rose Tattoo front man Angry Anderson getting wailed on through the whole film, that one brief sequence where Max carries the five year old on his shoulders in a strange mirroring of the Master/Blaster relationship, I think there is a lot of good stuff here.
Like that in all three films Max doesn't actually gain anything at the end. End of 2 and 3 he just helps out and does the right thing, doesn't really end up in a better place than what he was when the narrative started.
Tina Turner does a great job in this, I thought.
Also, and it's just simple patriotic bullshit, was happy to see the film was still clearly set in Australia. I think it's the only Mad Max film to be financed by American cash and I remember when I saw the film in the cinema back in the day as a kid getting a thrill that such a cool, big screen flick ended with everyone shacking up in Sydney.

You totally should. I think a lot of people, maybe, are being a bit lazy about this film in dismissing it because of the stuff with the kids. Yeah; they do kinda suck, the dialogue is forced and quite ugh, but it's not a crap film and has some great idea's and some terrific scenes. It doesn't quite hang together cohesively like the other films, but George Miller did bow out of directing the bulk of it when his friend and Producer died before filming and I think that has a lot to do with it.
As HunterTarantino said; the first 45 minutes or so is a cracking good film. It looses it's way a bit but not so badly that it should be written off as a lesser entry into the series.

That's a terrific review! I was watching the Master/Blaster vs Max fight in the Thunderdome thinking more or less the same thing, that this was as exciting and as creatively staged bit of fisticuffs we have seen pre-CGI.

I loved the way the new civilization hinted at at the end of the film is a mingling together of both the Feral, hippie style commune of the kids and the remnants of some of the Bartertown characters- Miller sort of suggesting that a proper society is kind of both things blended together harmoniously. That maybe just me reading to much of it into it, but Miller is a film maker who puts an enormous amount of thought, nuance and intelligence into his work so I'm cool with it.

I think it's a good film. The kids stink the joint up at first but after a bit, when Max opens up to them I think they really work. It's only the dialogue in the first ten minutes or so that shits me; when they leave their little village-haven and head into the desert I think they work just fine. It's about twenty minutes of Not-So-Great amidst what was, for me, a pretty fantastic film.

Oh, I wasn't inferring that he did. He is very pro-technology but a bit cautious about the manner in which people apply it, obviously.

I don't think it's entirely built on Innocence, though. Max put an end to their childish innocence by telling them what was really happening; how the world really worked. That, and some of the Bartertown characters do end up in the new society. I think it's more the suggestion that you need both halves of humanity for a society to function; the communal togetherness, slightly innocent half and the Technologically sound, organized society half, ultimately.

Apparently he directed the opening Bartertown stuff, the Thunderdome sequence and the final chase stuff and everything else was George Ogilvie.
Fury Road is my most anticipated film of the year, along with the Attack of the Clones review; Miller getting back to kinetic action with a serious budget and modern film making technology is a total cine-boner for me.

That's the one thing I didn't dig; the score. I like Jarre's stuff usually but I found it to be too distracting and slightly unconnected to the film. I'll watch this again in a few days and keep an open(er!) mind but I was really taken out of the mood of the film due to the tunes.