This Controversial Mad Max Movie Is Way Better Than You Remember

The Mad Max saga is heralded as one of the best action franchises of all time, and rightfully so. George Miller is consistently among the industry’s most visually inventive filmmakers, seemingly raising the bar with each new film he makes. Yet, he’s always most in his zone whenever he makes a new Mad Max installment (with the director planning another sequel). The 1979 original remains a unique apocalyptic film, taking place in a relatively grounded setting with a doomsday unfolding on the cusps. The Road Warrior fully plunges into a world fueled by chaos and madness, with some of the greatest vehicular chase sequences of all time. And Fury Road is simply one of the greatest in its genre ever.

Yet the third installment, Beyond Thunderdome, remains contested. Some find it another example of Miller delivering visually dazzling and inventive set pieces; others believe it lightens the series’ tone too much and feels overly kid-friendly. However, while Beyond Thunderdome certainly has faults, they come side by side with a set of dizzying highs; while inconsistent, on the whole, it’s much better than you remember.

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome Continues the Franchise’s Imaginative Worldbuilding

Mad Max follows an anthology format, so any individual film can be enjoyed without having seen the others. The overriding pattern of the series is that Max Rockastansky, a perpetual wanderer, happens upon a community struggling to survive in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, and he saves them from disaster before moving on to his next adventure. Max, as a character, works best as an audience surrogate; the stories don’t revolve around him, but it’s through his eyes that we experience the stories of the different communities and cultures (like how Furiosa was the main character of Fury Road).

The same is true for Beyond Thunderdome, which sees Max travel to the trading outpost Bartertown, ruled by the evil Aunt Entity (Tina Turner, fantastic). When Max’s supplies are stolen, he fights to reclaim them in the Thunderdome, the outpost’s combat arena where warriors fight, gladiator-style, to resolve conflicts. But when he discovers dark secrets about the town’s refinery, Entity banishes Max into the desert, where he encounters the Lost Tribe, a gang of orphaned children waiting for a hero to reclaim their homeland.

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As is typical for the series, the strength in the storytelling comes from the worldbuilding. George Miller has always had an uncanny knack for visual storytelling, conveying details about his worlds without dialogue, and Beyond Thunderdome continues this trend. While the first Mad Max took place in a mostly grounded setting, The Road Warrior plunged straight into post-apocalyptic territory, which Beyond Thunderdome goes even further with.

Within the film’s opening half-hour, Miller clearly establishes the political conflict within Bartertown, where the dwarf Master Blaster is fighting Aunt Entity for control of the outpost through the methane conversion plant that gives the town its power. As is typical of the best worldbuilding, every minor character has a unique characterization, with enough detail that they could potentially lead an interesting standalone story on their own. An upper-level power struggle is unique for the franchise, which has largely emphasized smaller communities terrorized by warlords.

Why Is Beyond Thunderdome Controversial Among Fans?

All of this sounds like the recipe for a perfect Mad Max film. Yet Beyond Thunderdome is by far the franchise’s most polarizing installment among critics and fans alike. Some, like Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, named it the best of the original trilogy, but others consider it the worst of the series. But what makes it so divisive? For one, the action is noticeably less brutal than in other installments; it remains the only film in the franchise to get a PG-13 rating, and tonally, it feels more lighthearted than is expected from Mad Max.

However, the part of the film that seems to be make-or-break for people is the inclusion of the Lost Tribe. For hardcore fans of Mad Max, these characters epitomized the movie’s tonal departure from the rest of the films; even if the film’s first half in Bartertown wasn’t as brutal as The Road Warrior, it still mostly felt like what people were expecting. The second the children show up, the movie becomes noticeably more comedic and saccharine, with jokes that feel closer to Miller’s more family-friendly work on Babe: Pig in the City and Happy Feet. This is all before getting into how liberally the Lost Tribe borrows from the Lost Boys in Peter Pan and The Lord of the Flies.

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Admittedly, the film’s second half is noticeably weaker than the first, and the humor is hit-and-miss. That being said, considering Mad Max works best as an anthology series, exploring different settings and worlds, it’s not that much of a stretch that Miller wanted to use this template to explore different genres. All the other Mad Max films do this to an extent; the original was a mostly grounded apocalyptic thriller, The Road Warrior was a spaghetti western, and Fury Road was essentially a feature-length chase. While the execution isn’t perfect, Beyond Thunderdome’s lighter tone makes much more sense when seen through this lens, and regardless of its quality, one should commend Miller for wanting to shake things up.

Besides, most people go to Mad Max films for the action sequences, and Miller delivers on this front. The final chase is exhilarating and sees Miller working on a larger scale than before, incorporating a train chase and the climactic takeoff of a getaway plane. However, the clear standout is the titular Thunderdome sequence, where Max fights one-on-one against Master Blaster while both are attached to elastic harnesses. As they bounce across the walls and ceiling of the dome, they trade off various weapons, including cleavers, battle axes, and chainsaws. It’s maybe one of the best battles Miller has ever put on film.

Beyond Thunderdome Is Worthy of the Mad Max Name

Beyond Thunderdome still probably stands as one of the weaker installments of the Mad Max saga. While George Miller clearly wanted to shake up the template and explore the different tonal possibilities provided by the anthology format, its execution is imperfect. The story’s humor falls flat, and the plot shift at the halfway point is a bit abrupt.

However, the film is still hugely engaging, as it features some of the series’ most interesting worldbuilding, some of the best action sequences Miller has ever done, and a fantastic performance from Tina Turner. It’s no Fury Road, but it’s far better than fans make it out to be, and it’s certainly worthy of the Mad Max name. Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome is streaming on Max. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is heading to theaters on May 24.