Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
Short description
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome continues the story of Max Rockatansky in the wasteland left behind by nuclear war. Stripped of his possessions and his camel-drawn rig, Max follows the thief to Bartertown, a desert settlement that runs on trade and on methane drawn from pig waste in the tunnels beneath it. Aunty Entity, who rules the place with force, offers Max a deal: if he defeats the giant Blaster in a duel inside the Thunderdome arena, his property will be returned. The fight goes Max's way, but his refusal to kill his opponent turns Aunty against him, and she has him cast out into the desert. He is found by a group of children who have grown up apart from the world, and they look to him to lead them.
George Miller directed the film with George Ogilvie, working from a screenplay he wrote with Terry Hayes, and produced it himself. It was his fourth feature as director, arriving between Twilight Zone: The Movie and The Witches of Eastwick. Mel Gibson returns as Max, with Tina Turner as Aunty Entity, Helen Buday as Savannah Nix, Bruce Spence as Jedediah the Pilot, Angelo Rossitto as Master and Adam Cockburn as Jedediah Jr.
The film was made for about 10 million dollars and took roughly 36 million worldwide. On IMDb it holds 6.2 out of 10 from around 162,000 votes, and on TMDB 6.2 out of 10 from about 3,400 votes. A critics' rating of 6.5 out of 10 from 59 reviews places it close to those audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- The sandstorm at the end of the film was real, and to film some shots, a plane with a camera flew directly into the storm. The film crew was caught in the desert by the sandstorm and had to wait it out in cars and other similar shelters.
- The airplane shown at the beginning and end of the film is called the Transavia PL-12 Airtruk. It is a single-engine agricultural biplane designed and manufactured by Transavia Corporation in Australia. The aircraft is entirely made of metal, has a short fuselage with two tails, and a Continental O-520 engine. Its first flight took place on April 22, 1965, and it was certified on February 10, 1966.
- Tina Turner had to shave her head so that the wig made for her would fit properly. It is said she did so without a hint of embarrassment.
- The film featured 600 pigs. Purchasing such a large number of animals would have negatively impacted the market, so the pigs had to be rented.
- In 1985, Joan Vinge wrote the novelization "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome: Road Warrior II" based on the film's screenplay.
- The punishment that befalls Max after the battle in the Thunderdome is called the Gulag, which became a household name after Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s novel "The Gulag Archipelago."
- For two months before filming, children were trained to hunt and use primitive weapons.
- Dennis Williams, who had previously worked on George Miller's 1981 action film "Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior," was supposed to participate in the train stunt. Filming went wrong from the start. It was initially postponed due to scheduling conflicts with the trains, and during the execution of the stunt, a stuntman burned his hand and had to be evacuated by helicopter to the hospital.
- Tina Turner's chainmail costume weighed over 55 kg.
- George Miller once intended to create a television series about Max, based on the films of the franchise, and wanted John Blake, with whom he had previously worked on the 1986 action film "The Mountain Man," to play the main character. Unfortunately, Blake suffered a traumatic brain injury in a car accident, ending his acting career, and the television series was never made.
- Casting director Alison Barrett “scoured” all the kindergartens and schools in Australia in search of children to film. She needed to recruit 60 people aged 2 to 16.
- The script required the Entity to drive a car. All the cars used in the film had manual transmissions, which Tina Turner was not comfortable with, so a car with an automatic transmission had to be specially created for her.
- The film ends with a panorama of Sydney destroyed by nuclear war. This scene was filmed using a miniature model of the city.
- Initially, a third film in the "Mad Max" franchise was not planned; it was intended to be a post-apocalyptic film in the spirit of "Lord of the Flies" about a tribe of children stumbled upon by an adult. The suggestion to make that adult Max came from director, screenwriter, and producer George Miller.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
