Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site topaz.ARPA Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!columbia!topaz!reiher From: reiher@UCLA-LOCUS.ARPA Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers Subject: Re: "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" Message-ID: <2823@topaz.ARPA> Date: Sat, 20-Jul-85 05:19:01 EDT Article-I.D.: topaz.2823 Posted: Sat Jul 20 05:19:01 1985 Date-Received: Sun, 21-Jul-85 02:08:26 EDT Sender: daemon@topaz.ARPA Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 69 From: Peter Reiher Steve Rabin writes: >I disagree with Peter Reiher's review of Beyond The Thunderdome. Your prerogative. I certainly won't try to convince you that you didn't like it. >Beyond The Thunderdome, on the other hand, is a satirical >pastiche of the last 5 years of film. I recognized episodes almost >from Dune, Escape From New York, Star Wars, ET, the earlier Mad Max >films, Lawrence of Arabia, Of Mice and Men.... While undeniably a lot of quotes from other films occured, I don't think that this was the main point of the film, unless George Miller is a liar. Since all accounts I have heard say that he is an extremely nice man, I'll take him at his word that, primarily, he was trying to work with myth. For me, "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" largely failed on the level of myth, while "The Road Warrior" succeeded on the same level. Not precisely on this point, Miller did comment (on similarities between the chase scenes in "The Road Warrior" and "Beyond Thunderdome") that "...once you've established emotional and visual language for a film, there *is* only one way to approach a given moment." Don't count on all of those quotes being intentional. Film scholars can, and do, make a profession out of looking foolish when they ask filmmakers about their borrowings from their predecessors. I've done it myself, in public, and did I ever feel like an idiot. >The plot is not intended to be believable, or >to stand on its own, and to judge it on these grounds is to miss the >point. Judge it for its dramatic and emotional effect, and for the >new ideas and questions with which you leave the theatre. I think that the plot was meant to be believable on the same level as the Trojan Horse or Beowulf. Judging it as anything but a myth seems to me to miss the point. Max is an archetypical hero, performing an archetypical task. (Miller invariably mentions, in his interviews on this film, that a group of aborigines, on hearing the part of the story about the children waiting to be taken off into the sky, excitedly said that they had a legend just like that.) Miller was trying, as his major task, to produce a universal myth. I think he failed. I can't say I came out of "Beyond Thunderdome" with any new ideas, unless you count a nagging doubt that maybe George Miller isn't as good a director as I thought he was. (I'm working on crushing that doubt.) I left with lots of questions, mostly of the form, "Well, since it obviously would have been better to do this that way, why didn't Miller and Ogilvie do it that way?" Note that I am not saying that "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" is a bad film, nor even that it is not a good film, only that it isn't nearly as good a film as "The Road Warrior". >I guess what I am trying to say is that maybe there aren't many fast >cars but I liked it a lot anyhow. That's nice. Fast cars in and of themselves don't appeal to me. (I have no particular fondness for either part of "The Cannonball Run"). Well constructed movies do. Basically, though, with few exceptions, I like people to like movies, even the ones I have my doubts about, since that means that they will see more movies, the studios will make more money, causing them to make more movies, giving me more movies to see, and, assuming fixed ratio of good movies to bad, more good movies a year. Therefore, take your loved ones, multiple times, even, to see a movie I trashed. You have my blessing. After all, it's your money, not mine. Peter Reiher reiher@LOCUS.UCLA.EDU {...ihnp4,ucbvax,sdcrdcf}!ucla-cs!reiher