Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome

Buy This Item Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome by Warner Home Video  Available from Amazon  $9.99  on 11-25-2008     Although <i>Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome</i>, the third part of George Miller's post-apocalyptic <i>Mad Max</i> trilogy, is certainly the least of the bunch (<i>Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior</i> is the undisputed masterpiece, and maybe the best action movie ever made), it has still got a good share of imaginative industrial-wasteland-pastiche imagery. And casting Tina Turner as Aunty Entity, the queen of Bartertown, was a masterstroke. Mel Gibson's character Max is pitted in a battle to the death against the bizarre Master Blaster in the Thunderdome, flying around on rubbery straps inside a sort of gigantic overturned colander with bloodthirsty spectators clinging to the outside. Miller's producing partner, Byron Kennedy, was killed in a helicopter crash while scouting locations for this film. Miller was devastated, only agreeing to direct the action sequences--and, somehow, you feel his heart wasn't entirely in it. <i>--Jim Emerson</i> Reader Reviews The motor vehicles are going to be there, even a plane. The desert is going to be there too. But the whole world has regressed for a reason we don't know - but do we care? - losing all its technology and its energy. But Mel Gibson takes the orientation that humanity will not regress in inventiveness nor even in intelligence, which means it will reinvent some kind of civilization by developing new sources of energy, this time the energy that can be produced by pig slime, the gas that comes out of it that can be used in plenty of machines and for might. Thus they reinvent a civilization based on pig slime (and that is a Pauline element that must not be neglected: it is neither Jewish, nor Moslem) as the source of energy of their society. That's the positive point. But there is another side that is less positive. The necessity to establish some protective body and some protection against the outside world and outsiders that may try to intrude, some captured power and established their absolute authority over the others in a society that cannot afford the luxury of democracy, just some kind of rules that are not really written but chanted at any crucial moment like a performative prayer. Hence they reinvent feudalism for most people and slavery for some. They reinvent circus games to entertain the masses and control human emotions and passions. Gladiators reappear as such public performances: two men go in and one leaves, provided he kills the other one before. If he does not then he breaks the deal and has to face the wheel that can give him any kind of violent end, death by what ever torture you may imagine, the best choice (at least you survive some time without any direct physical torture and maiming) being the Gulag: to be sent in the heart of the desert and die there, at best of thirst. But Mel Gibson is already taken by the divine devil of some religious vision more or less inspired by the Bible. So the whole story is told by the survivors a certain hero-messiah-savior has helped escape this hell in order to move back to the derelict and ruinous cities of the old days. And this salvation is in fact a union of him, Mad Max, with these outcasts in order to re-enter Bartertown, the city of the dominant society that lives on pig energy. There they are able to recapture some vehicles to escape this world, at first a "train" that runs on rails, and, at the end of the tracks, a plane that was waiting for some opportunity to serve, with its pilot and a kid enjoying their permanent idleness. A rainbow alliance of all against this tyrannical society of Bartertown. And they manage to escape except Mad Max who has to sacrifice his own life to enable the others to fly away. And he will be left there in the middle of the desert to die of thirst probably. But what can we say about this vision of the future after the final catastrophe that will bring humanity back to antiquity? First the tyrannical society is led by a woman, mind you black, and she is a more violent and exacting leader than any fascist leader you can have met in history textbooks. Women, and black women at that, are not representing a soft and comfortable future. But maybe only black women will be able to govern the people to survive these dire straits? That's an idea. Especially since the one who is telling the story of Mad Max the Savior is a woman too, though white. Maybe after all women have to become central because of their role in procreation, and surviving in difficult circumstances is not a question of sex, or sex does not make the slightest difference, and yet the gladiators are men (listen to the chant) and the savior is a man. Is there some sexism and a touch of racism in Mel Gibson's vision? What's important after all is to be able to impose the discipline necessary to survive as a group with some indispensable hierarchy. Humanity will not regress to any inferior level of intelligence, as H.G. Wells had thought for example in The Time Machine. What will regress is the social order, the mode of production. No more supermarkets for humanity but only bartering. No more democracy but feudalism. No more free labor market but slavery and serfdom for most. No more virtual games and entertainments but real gladiators games and fights to the death. And no escape from this hell on earth but thanks to a savior that will lead the outcasts of this society to a migration back to the old cities and skyscrapers of the past where they will have to reinvent what is indispensable for humanity to become better, a religion based on a human savior who is also divine since he was the savior and died in his self-imposed mission. We can smile at the naivety of the idea, but it is inescapable and true that there cannot be any real humane civilization without a spiritual ideology or attitude, and that is called a religion or a philosophy, and these civilizing factors are based on the personality of one person, a savior in the Christian tradition, a prophet in the Jewish or Moslem tradition, or a founder in the Buddhist tradition. And it does not matter whether it is a myth or whether the action of the man has been distorted to stick to some kind of rite. What is important is that such a figure is the inspirer of humanism and human life. Humanity cannot be human without a religion of some spiritual belief. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine & University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome Available from Amazon Price: $9.99 Updated on 11-25-2008.

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