Two Men Enter; One Man Leaves

On Friday, we watched Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome and since this is the first time I have watched any of the Mad Max films, I did not have much to work with in terms of expectations. While much of the plot was a bit confusing to me in the beginning, a quote that stood out to me was during the fight between Mad Max and Blaster, the giant that was being controlled by a man named Master. The fight was in a dome/nest like enclosure with the rules being “Two men enter, one man leaves.”. In the context of the fight, I didn’t think that this quote meant much. In fact, it was to be taken literally since it would be an all-out fight where one man would kill the other.

However, I did feel that this quote played back to the end of the movie when Mad Max sacrifices himself to let all the children and Master leave on the plane. It seems that Mad Max “entered” the mission to save the children since the children were seeking to return to a civilized world. And in order for them to leave, Mad Max had to be the one who was left behind in order for the others to survive.

What I did not get, however, was why Mad Max would even risk his life for the others. Once he comes upon the children that have been hiding and waiting for a captain to bring them to salvation, Mad Max immediately denies that he’s their savior. Instead, he claims that he is just a regular man that happened to pass by. But his actions say otherwise. This led to me to think that Mad Max was the indirect meaning of his quote. When he sees that the children are in danger, he puts himself out there to save them and in doing so risks his own life.

All in all, I think that the movie was okay. I was not particularly interested in the plot itself since it was a bit confusing for me to jump straight into the third movie of the series. However, I am certainly interesting in checked out the previous installments to see what they hold.

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