Reseñas de la crítica

In its no-holds-barred imaginative freedom, it is to the Mad Max franchise what the feverishly extravagant Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is to the Indiana Jones series—but instead of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas's sadism, Miller and Ogilvie instill a child-like measure of hope and the possibility of redemption to a dystopian environment previously bereft of it.

The first 40 minutes—set almost exclusively in ruthless, proto-capitalist Bartertown—constitute Miller's best filmmaking outside of BABE: PIG IN THE CITY: amoral, dynamically styled and chock full of rich visual detail. Aussie TV veteran George Oglivie is credited as co-director, but don't be fooled— this is Miller's show through and through.

This most complex and intellectually ambitious entry in the Max saga ends up being the least substantial, tossing off ideas in a way designed to explain things without making you think about them—exactly the opposite approach from that of the first two films, which left most of the back-story unexplained and, despite the emphasis on raw, physical action, made you think a great deal. This Max, by contrast, is all in fun. But, to be fair, the film has an enthralling look and feel to it.

Yeah, yeah, there's the whole Thunderdome factor, but dammit, I like the final Mad Max. And Tina Turner needs to appear in more movies... You've gotta love that Tina Turner rules an evil town, plus Max becomes a gladiator and hangs with orphans.

As coherently baroque in its aesthetic as the film may be, it is also (in the manner of much popular culture) a bit "schizo" as well, if we take this term, in the current context, as a metaphor for cultural dissociation rather than a clinical descriptor of a mental condition – a spectacle which straightfacedly decries (in its Thunderdome set-piece) the barbarity of spectacle! That's fine pop double-think for you.

The film is about a form of primitivism that Miller believes humankind must go beyond, a primitivism conveniently exemplified by Pale Rider and Silverado. In Beyond Thunderdome, primitivism is symbolized by the eponymous Thunderdome, the major form of entertainment in Bartertown, the single outpost of civilization in Max's world.

In this new context, [Miller's] baroque style serves less as an entertaining end in itself than as a way of inflating some rather simple, sentimental ideas, which themselves are not followed through with much real conviction or consistency. The punky energy of the earlier films has given way to a self-conscious striving for significance, obscuring Miller's considerable kinetic talents in favor of a lumpy didacticism.