Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome - 4K Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome



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Movie
If Mad Max was the El Mariachi of the series, and The Road Warrior was The Empire Strikes Back, then Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome was the Godfather Part III of the series, going full Hollywood and diving straight off a cliff. Effectively killing the franchise until an aging Miller decided to revitalize the series with Fury Road. Beyond Thunderdome decided to deviate from the car chase theme of the original 2 films, instead going for a more cloistered form of combat, immortalizing the horrible catch phrase “Two men enter, one man leaves!” for all time. And of course Mel Gibson losing his Aussie accent nearly completely in his shift over to Hollywood central in the mid 80s, and Tina Turner hamming it up to level 11.

Some people blame the change of pace to studio involvement, overs on Gibson’s head himself, and even more just figure George Miller wanted to go go mainstream and lose his “Osploitation” vibe that he had build in the previous two films. No one knows for sure, but in the commentary from the DVD I remember Miller and Terry Hayes stating that they figured they couldn’t do the same thing 3 times in a row, so they decided to mix things up and take a gamble with a completely different direction. The movie DID turn a profit in 1985, but it has forever been named as a cult “bomb” in the series by fans and one of the few films that they only watch just to complete the trilogy (now quadrilogy).

The first two films were sort of vague about what happened. No one knows what caused the socio-economic collapse that created the dystopian future, but here they blatantly spell it out for you. Yup, it was nuclear war (not shocking that we WERE in the height of the cold war) and the world had been destroyed forever. Max (Gibson) is introduced with flowing locks and is no longer the fuel powered speed demon of old. Instead he’s driving a vehicle hauled by camels and knocked out by a wanderer (also played by Bruce Spence, who played “The Captain” in The Road Warrior a few years earlier).

While The Road Warriors was about pirates scavenging the wastelands of humanity, Beyond Thunderdome is about rebuilding life, albeit in a much different way than the people of old. As he wanders the desert Max comes across multiple examples of modern life. The first is “Bartertown”, which is an obvious parody of capitalism gone wrong, ruled over by “Aunty” (Tina Turner) who is covered in chain mail armor that was so heavy she could barely move by all accounts of those involved in the film. Aunty rules as an extortionist, controlling everyone and everything she can with her financial control, and where basic policing and peacekeeping is handled in a giant “pit” (dome) where 2 men enter, 1 man leaves (as the catch phrase goes).

However, Aunty is not invulnerable, as she is threatened by Master who has his own army of malcontents who is lorded over by a Blaster (Pal Larsson) who obeys Master’s every command. Aunty herself hires Max to get rid of Blaster in the infamous thunder dome, which leads up to a DRASTIC change of pace for the film at the second half. There Max finds another portion of humanity trying to survive, this time in the form of a band of children who are making their way in the world without the crushing weight of parents our outsiders. There Max finds a sort of peace and quiet that he didn’t think was possible. A way for the wanderer to come home and find purpose besides just being a roving “mad man”. However, to create that peace and quiet with the children Max comes back full circle to Aunty, where he has to put down her cruelty and oppression once and for all.

Miller has long since been criticized for his ending of Beyond Thunderdome with a chase scene, as it felt like pandering to the fans. The whole movie had survived on not a single chase scene, but he throws it in at the last moment to pull in old fans and give them what they wanted, even if it really felt out of place and didn’t jive with the rest of the film. I guess I can’t blame him, as he took a huge risk changing up the formula, but in the end the formula never really caught on, and the “cliché” of adding in the chase at the end just felt more ham fisted than it should have.




Rated PG-13 by the MPAA




4K Video: Video:

Like The Road Warrior, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome is a substantial image leap over the old Blu-ray from Warner Brothers, but not something that will shock you. George Miller still uses a heavily stylized look to the film, with dingy browns, light sandy hues, and darkness that just bathes the entire picture and mutes the colors. Splashes of primary colors pop through here and there, but this is generally monochromatic film with lots of rusty browns and light sandy hues to dominate the visual landscape. The HDR application to this 4K remaster is quite solid, showing some very much improved black levels and distinctly textured backgrounds. I did still notice a few instances of banding in the dome itself, and the blacks can be a bit murky and soft, otherwise this is a solid looking 4K UHD.








Audio:

Also like The Road Warrior, Beyond Thunderdome gets a newly remastered Atmos track as well as the original mixes for the film as well. The Atmos track is very similar to its predecessor, offering an expended 5.1 mix with a few tweaks and changes rather some revolutionary audio mix. It was always a bit front heavy and never massively bassy, but the new Atmos track makes better use of the surround channels and makes for some really nifty directional shifts in some of the battles (especially the one with Blaster). Bass is punchy and clear, but never overly powerful, and the dialog is well placed up front. A solid mix and a slightly enhanced version of what we’ve had for years, so kudos to Warner for that.







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Beyond Thunderdome was the film that nearly tanked Mad Max forever. While it did well theatrically, the spark was over and Miller hung up the hat until 2015 when he came back with a “fury” (yes, pun intended) with his critically acclaimed Fury Road. The 4K UHD is a nice upgrade over the Blu-ray for sure, but as with all but The Road Warrior, the film is devoid of extras and makes the set rather barren if not for the Blu-ray included.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Mel Gibson, Tina Turner, Bruce Spence, Frank Thring, Adam Cockburn
Directed by: George Miller
Written by: George Miller, Byron Kennedy, Terry Hayes
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1 AVC
Audio: English: Dolby Atmos (Dolby TrueHD 7.1 Core), English DD 5.1, English DD 2.0, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Polish, DD 2.0, Japanese DD 5.1, Japanese, Hungarian, Czech, Spanish DD Mono
Subtitles: English SDH, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Hungarian, Korean, Mandarin (Simplified), Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Swedish
Studio: Warner Brothers
Rated: PG-13
Runtime: 107 minutes
Blu-Ray Release November 16th, 2021

Recommendation: Nostalgic Watch