I was excited to watch Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, the third and final movie in the original Mad Max series, because I had heard good things about the franchise but had never watched any of the movies. The only context I had about the series prior to watching the movie last week was that it took place in a post-apocalyptic world. In all honesty, I hated the movie. The action scenes seemed way too over-the-top, the children from the oasis were annoying as hell (I must have heard at least a hundred squeals of “Captain Walker!” and each one was more irritating than the last), and in the end nothing seemed to be accomplished aside from that the children finally found “Tomorrow-morrow Land,” which was honestly just a city ruins wasteland.” Aunty was still in control of Bartertown, and on top of that, Mad Max had destroyed the methane refinery so the entire town had no power source. Perhaps Max had some kind of grudge on Aunty, but the entire town should suffer for it.

I suppose one thing that the film did correctly was the idea of Bartertown. I guess I never really thought about how a post-apocalyptic society might look like. Bartertown’s political structure is backwards–it has a near all-powerful leader and justice is administered with a wheel of fortune. Conflicts can be resolved by staging a gladiator-style fight to the death. I suppose in an environment where survival isn’t taken for granted, political fairness comes at a much lower priority. It makes sense that all goods are bartered for in a place where new currencies can’t be produced.

I also found the speech of the children kind of interesting. Not really knowing anything about the world that Mad Max takes place in, I’m assuming that they were born after the war that tore civilization apart, and a lot of what they know about English, they learned from each other. So as a result, some of the words and grammar is off. I suppose the scene where Max goes through Captain Walker’s old photographs is where South Park got the idea for “Member Berries” from.