mad max trilogy

Aussie exploitation began – and pretty much peaked – with the Mad Max (1979), director George Miller’s nasty revenge drama set in a dystopian semi-future where the roads are ruled by dilinquent motorheads barely kept in check by an undermanned police force, including their top interceptor: Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson). But the worldwide phenomenon of Max’s popularity didn’t kick in until the sequel – The Road Warrior – was released in 1981, starting an avalanche of copycat apocalyptic action movies that inevitably paled in comparison. The saga concluded (for the time being) with 1985’s Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, a far more family friendly blockbuster designed to capitalize on Gibson’s Hollywood star status. Although MGM was the original home video distributor for Mad Max, all three family are now gathered together on blu-ray in one steelbook case as the Mad Max Trilogy, with Thunderdome getting the hi-def treatment for the first time.

Having seen what the franchise has become, it’s interesting to look back on how small the first film began, not just from a budgetary perspective but in the scale of its storytelling. The first Mad Max is an origin story in the truest sense, introducing its hero with a sort of cinematic curtain raising; somewhere between the birth of a Greek god and Smokey and the Bandit. Certainly, no one had ever captured high speed vehicular destruction like this before. Miller’s camera doesn’t just put you in the driver’s seat, it leaves you scraped and bloody along the side of the road.

But after the stunning opening sequence, things settle down to a slow burn as Max tries to protect his young family from angry gang members out to avenge their fallen comrade. Even if you can see where it’s headed, the tragedy waiting just around the corner still holds quite an impact…expressed brilliantly by one child’s shoe on an empty expanse of road. Released in the US with dubbed dialogue track (apparently those Aussie accents were just much in ’79), the film didn’t get an accurate update until the DVD era.

Somewhere between the events of Mad Max and The Road Warrior, the world destroyed itself in a long promised nuclear war. Max is now a shell of a man, surviving in the wasteland from one tank of fuel to the next. But an accidental run-in with a group of besieged survivors forces him to reconnect with his humanity and fight for something larger than himself once again.

You won’t find many people who’d debate The Road Warrior’s status amongst the best action films ever made. Words can’t describe the experience. Perhaps that’s because director George Miller uses so few of them, preferring to construct his apocalyptic sequel with bravura action set-pieces, culminating in a relentless 20-minute chase sequence that will likely never be topped in the history of cinema. It’s a film that quite literally cuts to the chase, introducing its players in broad but colorful strokes and defining their character through action rather than words. Mel Gibson creates a surprisingly complex character with Max, a reluctant hero straight out of a John Ford Western, helping society make that violent transition from frontier savagery to domestic civilization. And just like Ethan Edwards in the final shot of The Searchers, there’s no place for a man like that in our brave new world. The movie ends where it began: with a long dolly back down the same stretch of lonely road.

It’s tempting to simply write off Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome as an exercise in Hollywood tinkering. The addition of Tina Turner to the film (and the soundtrack) seemed like stunt casting at its most egregious. While the Looney Tunes vibe and toned down violence was a drastic departure from the previous two films. It was obvious that Miller (who directed only the action sequences here) was going for broader appeal in order to allow pre-teens who enjoyed The Road Warrior on cable to hop aboard.

Yet the first 45-minutes, in which Max engages in mortal combat with a helmeted monstrosity nicknamed Blaster in a MMA-style arena called Thunderdome, have sunk deeply into the pop culture lexicon (“Two men enter…one man leaves!”). And the filthy, dusty, wretched design of Bartertown is an impressive addition to Max’s world-building mythology. It’s when he’s banished to the desert and stumbles upon a tribe of innocent native kids surviving in a lost oasis that the film goes off the rails.

Thunderdome sees Max turn from anti-hero to father figure in record time. What was merely hinted at in his relationship with the Feral Kid in Road Warrior is pushed front and center here. Mourning the loss of his own child, it might make dramatic sense, but it’s not the movie most fans wanted to see. When the action kicks back in, it’s just a tired retread of previous chase sequences with an emphasis on humor at the expense of innovation.

Warner should get some good karma for putting all three films together in one hi-def package. The first and second films look terrific, as they should with all those open road landscapes to work with. Thunderdome is more problematic with its frequent nighttime scenes. It looks like an old transfer plopped onto disc with little to no effort…and no extras either. Both of the previous films include a commentary track.