Mad Max 3: Beyond Thunderdome

Out of the ruins
Out from the wreckage
Can’t make the same mistake this time
We are the children
The last generation
We are the ones they left behind
And I wonder when we are ever gonna change it
Living under the fear till nothing else remains
We don’t need another hero
We don’t need to know the way home
All we want is life beyond the thunderdome

Beyond Thunderdome: Ambitious, Ambiguous Movie

This film is a weird collection of settings and tones, with jarring transitions.

We first meet Max roaming the Australian desert. He chances upon the Wild West Frontier-like settlement called Bartertown, that has grown up around a trading post. It is ruled by strong-woman Auntie Entity, played by the wonderful Tina Turner, and is powered by a methane plant that makes power from pigshit. The power is controlled by a dual-person known as Master-Blaster, Master being a tiny midget and Blaster being the gigantic stupid hulk that carries him around.

Auntie manipulates Max into having to accept a challenge to fight Blaster in the Thunderdome, where 'two men enter... one man leaves'. Max defeats Blaster but refuses to kill him, which is a violation of the Bartertown laws, so he is tied to a donkey and sent into exile. This part of the movie is standard post-apocalyptic fare.

The Lost Children

The next part of the movie becomes part anthropological-study, part Lord of the Flies, as Mad Max is discovered and rescued by a band of forgotten children. They are the survivors of a plane crash, which they have ritualized into their remembrance. The spooky re-telling of their 'origin myth', lit by flickering firelight and re-enacted by rote by children who no longer understand what they are saying is a masterpiece. The children have decided that Max is the mythological 'Captain Walker', the pilot of the plane who left their sanctuary years ago in search of help.

The children, disillusioned when he proves not to be Captain Walker, decide to leave the life they have created, in spite of Max' insistence that the life they have is as good as any they will find outside their sheltered valley, and better than most.

Cultures Collide

Of course the children run afoul of Auntie Entity, and Max must help them escape her clutches. He recruits the helicopter pilot of the Road Warrior to assist him, and the pilot carries them all, except Max, to safety. Mad Max is left behind to prevent the forces of Bartertown from interfering with the plane's takeoff.

The children, in search of the lost past, settle in the ruins of Sydney, lighting fires in the windows of skyscrapers, because, as their new ritual runs, "we lights the city not just for him but for all of 'em that are still out there, cause we knows there'll come a night when they sees the distant light and they'll be comin' home."

Odd Time

One peculiarity of the Mad Max movies is the speed with which high-tech civilization falls and other forms of societies spring up to supplant it. Beyond Thunderdome is supposed to be just a few years after the first, and the third a decade or so after the second, but it appears that generations have passed, by the state of society and the general decay. Call it literary license, I suppose.