reiher@ucla-cs.UUCP (07/12/85)
"Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" is the occasion for a very rare type of disappointment for me: the inevitable realization that not every film made by a great director is going to be a master- piece. "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" is a good enough film, but it is not nearly as good as "The Road Warrior" or George Miller's segment of "The Twilight Zone". It's just a solid action film, not really anything special, and that disappoints me more than a full-blown artistic failure. The latter can be seen as overambi- tion or merely a valiant effort that failed. A perfectly average film, though, suggests that maybe the director doesn't have a lot of juice in him, maybe he's shown us everything he has already. (For a good example of this contrast, compare "1941" and "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom". "1941" is definitely a failure, but it's a failure because Spielberg tried something different that just didn't work. "IJTOD" failed because Spielberg lazily tried to copy precisely what he had done before rather than do the real work of coming up with something new.) "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome", co-directed by Miller and George Ogilvie, is set in the same world as "Mad Max" and "The Road Warrior", but several years after the latter film. Mel Gib- son, as Max, runs afoul of Auntie Entity, a powerful leader in Bartertown, a fairly vile trading village she has built up from nothing. Bartertown runs on energy controlled by Master-Blaster, a dwarf genius (Master) who rides a huge, brawny hulk of a fellow known as Blaster. Auntie Entity wants complete control of Bar- tertown, and she intends to use Max to get it. After a variety of plot twists, Max finds himself out in the desert where he meets a tribe of lost children who are expecting a messiah. Max involuntarily takes the role, leading to yet further complications. If the above description sounds a bit diffuse, there you have the major problem of "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome". Unlike "The Road Warrior", it doesn't have a clean plot line. Instead, it has incidents strungs together rather uncomfortably. The ear- ly part of the film is best. While not up to the previous films, it is crisply directed and has a sense of purpose. The latter half of the film is muddled and uncertain. We are given no sense at all that Max has any plan worth speaking of when he returns to Bartertown. We don't know what he wants to do, and he doesn't seem to, either. Even the final chase scene, which has its mo- ments, doesn't have the clarity of the chase in "The Road Warri- or". In that film, the chase was so perfectly constructed that every incident in it seemed both inevitably correct and crystal clear. The chase in this film doesn't hang together, nor is there the terrible sense of desperation present in "The Road War- rior". Hence, it just isn't as exciting. Mel Gibson also isn't as strong a presence as he was in ei- ther of the first two films. In those films, he really was the center of the story, the one who made things go. In this film, he seems more acted upon than acting. Neither is there the iron core previously present in the character. Part of this may be due to the fact that he doesn't have as clear a villain to work against. Tina Turner is quite good as Auntie Entity, but she isn't the pure force of evil and destructiveness the earlier villains were. Miller, who co-wrote the screenplay with Terry Hayes, doesn't make it clear why Max should oppose her. Master-Blaster certainly seems more unpleasant and dangerous. Max's opposition could be made to work, but Miller, Hayes, and Ogilvie don't succeed. The supporting roles are very well played, though the casting of Bruce Spence, the Gyro Captain in "The Road Warrior", in a completely unrelated yet similar part is more than a bit confusing. I don't want to get too down on "Mad Max Beyond Thunder- dome". It has some fine sequences, there is a point behind the entire plot, and all involved deserve praise for attempting more than a mere retread of "The Road Warrior". Particular praise goes to Grace Walker, the production designer. The only reason I can think of to see "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" again is to com- pare the many subtle differences between the sets and costumes of it and "The Road Warrior". Obviously, much thought has gone into deciding just how artifacts and communities are going to degen- erate as things run out and wear down, and the results are some- times more interesting than the plot. Co-direction is extremely uncommon in America and most of Europe, but apparently happens a lot in Australia. Contrary to rumor, George Miller and George Ogilvie both worked on the entire picture, side by side throughout. Ogilvie's theatrical back- ground shows up in some of the ensemble work with the children and the citizens of Bartertown, but otherwise he seems to contri- bute little. Either he watered down Miller or that gentleman is running out of steam, for his incredible ability to sustain the tension of an extended action sequence is notably missing from this film. One cannot blame the failures of "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" on Ogilvie, however, as Miller, who also served as producer, could easily have made the film by himself, if he wished. "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" is a good adventure film which I enjoyed, but it just isn't a classic. If I hadn't seen "The Road Warrior", I'd probably be perfectly satisfied with this film. Unfortunately, I have seen "The Road Warrior", four times. I consider it the best film of the eighties, so far, and have every intention of seeing it again. On the other hand, I cannot picture myself sitting through "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" again. Much as I like the character and the setting, I think Miller should retire him and try to find some entirely different. -- Peter Reiher reiher@LOCUS.UCLA.EDU {...ihnp4,ucbvax,sdcrdcf}!ucla-cs!reiher
terryl@tekcrl.UUCP (07/14/85)
Gee, I thought I was the only one who was disappointed with the new "Mad Max". I really have to agree heavily that the lack of a clear plot line was the big disappointment for me. "Road Warrior", and to a lesser degree, the original "Mad Max" had very recognizable plot lines, even if they were very simplistic. Also, another point is that the first two movies told their respective stories with actions and people, whereas the new movie did it mostly with fantastic sets. Now don't get me wrong, I liked the sets and the photography, but it seems to me that they put too much emphasis on the sets and not on the people or the story. Also, the ending is directly stolen from the ending of "Road Warrior", but it just didn't have the same sense of urgency or importance that the ending of "Road Warrior" had. I'd also have to agree that Mel Gibson didn't have much of an opportunity to do some acting here, as he did in the first two. Granted, he didn't have much speaking parts in the first two, but I'd blame the director/screenwriter for his lackadaisical performance here instead of blaming Mel himself. I think Mel has proven that he can do some real good acting, judging by his performance in the first two movies and his really first-rate performance in "The Year of Living Dangerously". All in all, if you're a "Mad Max" fan or a Mel Gibson fan, by all means go see "Mad Max-Beyond Thunderdome", but don't expect too much. Terry Laskodi of Tektronix
joel@peora.UUCP (Joel Upchurch) (07/15/85)
While I didn't like 'Beyond Thunderdome' as much as 'The Road Warrior' that is apparently not a universal reaction. I was watching Siskel and Ebert last night and they were very high on the picture. They actually liked it better than 'The Road Warrior'. They liked they way Miller brought some new ideas to the picture instead of making a straight sequel. That last chase sequence struck me as being too much like the one in 'The Road Warrior'. I was bothered by a couple of things in the picture: 1. Didn't the earlier pictures say that civilization collapsed because of an energy shortage, with perhaps some help by fighting over the remaining energy resources? This movie says that it was because of Nuclear Warfare. I don't remember any point being made of latent radioactivity in the earlier pictures. The only thing I can think of is that there were some isolated bombing during the spasms of civilization's collapse and that Max has wandered into an area near one of them. 2. The children that find Max in the desert are too young. I would think that the collapse of civilization happened at least 10 and maybe 20 years ago, but some of the children Can't be older than 5 or 6. And unless I missed something, all of them were born before the collapse. The Feral Kid of the Road Warrior was older than them and I'm pretty sure he was born not long the collapse.
reiher@UCLA-LOCUS.ARPA (07/20/85)
From: Peter Reiher <reiher@UCLA-LOCUS.ARPA> Steve Rabin writes: >I disagree with Peter Reiher's review of Beyond The Thunderdome. Your prerogative. I certainly won't try to convince you that you didn't like it. >Beyond The Thunderdome, on the other hand, is a satirical >pastiche of the last 5 years of film. I recognized episodes almost >from Dune, Escape From New York, Star Wars, ET, the earlier Mad Max >films, Lawrence of Arabia, Of Mice and Men.... While undeniably a lot of quotes from other films occured, I don't think that this was the main point of the film, unless George Miller is a liar. Since all accounts I have heard say that he is an extremely nice man, I'll take him at his word that, primarily, he was trying to work with myth. For me, "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" largely failed on the level of myth, while "The Road Warrior" succeeded on the same level. Not precisely on this point, Miller did comment (on similarities between the chase scenes in "The Road Warrior" and "Beyond Thunderdome") that "...once you've established emotional and visual language for a film, there *is* only one way to approach a given moment." Don't count on all of those quotes being intentional. Film scholars can, and do, make a profession out of looking foolish when they ask filmmakers about their borrowings from their predecessors. I've done it myself, in public, and did I ever feel like an idiot. >The plot is not intended to be believable, or >to stand on its own, and to judge it on these grounds is to miss the >point. Judge it for its dramatic and emotional effect, and for the >new ideas and questions with which you leave the theatre. I think that the plot was meant to be believable on the same level as the Trojan Horse or Beowulf. Judging it as anything but a myth seems to me to miss the point. Max is an archetypical hero, performing an archetypical task. (Miller invariably mentions, in his interviews on this film, that a group of aborigines, on hearing the part of the story about the children waiting to be taken off into the sky, excitedly said that they had a legend just like that.) Miller was trying, as his major task, to produce a universal myth. I think he failed. I can't say I came out of "Beyond Thunderdome" with any new ideas, unless you count a nagging doubt that maybe George Miller isn't as good a director as I thought he was. (I'm working on crushing that doubt.) I left with lots of questions, mostly of the form, "Well, since it obviously would have been better to do this that way, why didn't Miller and Ogilvie do it that way?" Note that I am not saying that "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" is a bad film, nor even that it is not a good film, only that it isn't nearly as good a film as "The Road Warrior". >I guess what I am trying to say is that maybe there aren't many fast >cars but I liked it a lot anyhow. That's nice. Fast cars in and of themselves don't appeal to me. (I have no particular fondness for either part of "The Cannonball Run"). Well constructed movies do. Basically, though, with few exceptions, I like people to like movies, even the ones I have my doubts about, since that means that they will see more movies, the studios will make more money, causing them to make more movies, giving me more movies to see, and, assuming fixed ratio of good movies to bad, more good movies a year. Therefore, take your loved ones, multiple times, even, to see a movie I trashed. You have my blessing. After all, it's your money, not mine. Peter Reiher reiher@LOCUS.UCLA.EDU {...ihnp4,ucbvax,sdcrdcf}!ucla-cs!reiher
mte@busch.UUCP (Moshe Eliovson) (07/23/85)
In article <2823@topaz.ARPA>, reiher@UCLA-LOCUS.ARPA writes: > From: Peter Reiher <reiher@UCLA-LOCUS.ARPA> > > Steve Rabin writes: > > >The plot is not intended to be believable, or > >to stand on its own, and to judge it on these grounds is to miss the > >point. Judge it for its dramatic and emotional effect, and for the > >new ideas and questions with which you leave the theatre. > > I think that the plot was meant to be believable on the same level as > the Trojan Horse or Beowulf. Judging it as anything but a myth > seems to me to miss the point. Max is an archetypical hero, performing > an archetypical task. (Miller invariably mentions, in his interviews on > this film, that a group of aborigines, on hearing the part of the story > about the children waiting to be taken off into the sky, excitedly said > that they had a legend just like that.) Miller was trying, as his major > task, to produce a universal myth. I think he failed. > I agree with Steve- nobody should expect this to be as coherent and semi-logical as it's predecessors. Peter is right too, Miller sure goofed this one up compared to Mad Max & The Road Warrior. But, I don't think this is anywhere near the level to be judged next to the Trojan Horse or Beowulf. For their respective time periods these were excellent "works". You really can't complain about feasability though, after all it is sf, but on the other hand, sf people are sometimes very demanding for sound reasoning. I just cannot buy the monkey though...! Moshe Eliovson {allegra, ihnp4}!we53!busch!mte