Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome

That was not a good movie. Do I do a huge deconstruction? I mean, it was bad, but not horrifically so. I tend to save the longer reviews for movies I either outright love or hate. Underwhelming films tend to get a "Meh," by me. Still, I feel like I have things to say this time out.

The PG-13 world feels paradoxically toned down and worse than ever. Mad Max has always been a bit politically incorrect, but this is much more problematic than the first two movies, PG-13 or not. For one thing the Dwarf known as Master is exploited as a punchline. And they were aiming to push the audience's buttons but making the giant Blaster turn out to have Down Syndrome, but that is the incorrect button to press in that scenario. It's raising a controversy, but it's controversial for all the wrong reasons.

I guess my problem with that was I didn't see anything particularly wrong with a badass guy with Down Syndrome. Max refusing to kill him, and the movie infantilizing him, buys back every single badass thing he did before the reveal. That's not good. The film thinks it's being sensitive by doing that. It's saying the character is weak for a bullshit reason instead. I would have loved a badass Down Syndrome warrior. The movie sucks because it believes the fact that the guy has Down Syndrome means he is not allowed to be treated as an adult with his own agency.

As for Thunderdome, it's shocking how little of the movie is about it. The aerial acrobatics inside it are ill-advised. It's a harsh concept, and the American Gladiators-style bungee jump automatically give a death match a strangely goofy feel. "Two men enter, one man leaves," should be bone-chilling. It's silly instead.

Speaking of which, the "kid power" ending is annoying, I guess, because I see where it's coming from. It tells me George Miller was a big fan of the Ewoks in Star Wars. I'll go against the grain of Star Wars fans and say I like the Ewoks too. But even if I were able to go out on a limb and say they SORT of worked in Jedi (and I am a rare believer in that) they sure as hell don't work in Mad Max. I get the logic of trying for a kid-friendly crowd-pleasing ending. But this is not that franchise.

Another very problematic thing is something I immediately noticed. The pigs in the film are certainly mistreated. On-screen for an extended period of time. There was clearly no Humane Society involvement in the film and out of all the myriad problematic elements, it's probably the most unforgivable, and the one that can't be brushed away as merely being a sign of times. It sucks.

There were a couple of things I liked. I like that Auntie Entity isn't killed off. I especially like that she spares Max at the end for no other reason than he's impressed her, and it's entirely her call, so fuck you, and that's why. I found it refreshing that Auntie didn't get this huge comeuppance. It's especially refreshing because Tina Turner is a woman of color, and that is how they tended to be treated in genre pictures of this era. I like that Turner's very real star power had the producers decide to give her a different ending.

The other thing I loved was a brief gag, but I loved it because it was NOT an 80's movie gag. It's something a better, and more recent film would have done. Making the rare record that these superstitious kids hear play for the first time an utterly boring verbal French lesson is not the kind of joke movies of the era tended to indulge in. It's not exactly subtle. But a different movie would have had the record blaze Van Halen and the kids head-banging along seconds later. Them repeating that they were going home as if reciting a religious instruction instead was subversive for the right reasons.

Most of this movie's subversions are wrong though. A very problematic film, even for the 1980's. 1 1/2 stars.