Mad Max: How Beyond Thunderdome Foreshadowed Furiosa’s Story
Mad Max mastermind George Miller left a lot of fans angry when he claimed Furiosa may well end up a dictatorial despot like Immortan Joe before her, but the director already proved this in Beyond Thunderdome. Beginning in 1979 with the intense and gritty revenge thriller Mad Max, the Mad Max franchise has since seen director/creator George Miller take a left turn into more over-the-top, post-apocalyptic sci-fi territory with the trio of critically acclaimed sequels The Road Warrior, Beyond Thunderdome, and Fury Road.
Although the original Mad Max was praised upon release for its effectively sparse production, The Road Warrior broadened the scope of the series and introduced more impactful action sequences. The fourth film in the series, the Furiosa introducing Fury Road, was also critically adored, leaving only the third outing, Beyond Thunderdome, to receive a muted response from franchise fans. However, this underrated Mad Max outing touched on themes that Miller’s comments on Fury Road’s Furiosa have since reinforced.
Miller caused controversy when he said that there was a 50/50 chance that Furiosa would end up being a despotic ruler in the vein of her violently misogynistic predecessor, corrupt former general Immortan Joe. However, the director’s point — that power corrupts, regardless of the person wielding it — is one he already touched on in the Mad Max franchise’s underrated third movie. Before Furiosa (soon to get a prequel spin-off film) ever graced cinema screens, the surprisingly complex villain of Beyond Thunderdome already proved that George Miller has a point about the balanced breakdown of power required by any sustainable society.
Much like The Road Warrior is far campier and less brutally bleak than Mad Max, Beyond Thunderdome is a lighter movie than both of its predecessors. It’s the only Mad Max movie to eschew killing the villain, who in this case is legendary singer Tina Turner’s Aunt Entity. Aunt Entity is the unquestioned ruler of Beyond Thunderdome’s setting Bartertown, and she soon proves to be the only Mad Max antagonist who is offered a sympathetic portrayal in the series. Where Toecutter, Immortan Joe, and Lord Humungus are murderous, unhinged gang leaders of varying strength, Aunt Entity seems sincere in her stated intention of restoring order to the wasteland of Mad Max.
Immortan Joe also rules with an iron fist, but his society is cartoonishly cruel and unfair to its citizens. The Road Warrior's less powerful Lord Humungus doesn’t pretend to be a fair ruler and operates more like a mob boss demanding protection money, where the pre-apocalypse villain Toecutter is more of a standard low-life taking advantage of societal breakdown to exploit the lack of order. Only Aunt Entity is given a chance to explain how her ideal society would work, and while her methods are violent and exclusionary, Beyond Thunderdome doesn’t paint the franchise’s lone female villain as an irredeemable monster.
Like Furiosa, Aunt Entity is established as a character who wants to restore law and order to a ruthless, cruel world. Like Furiosa, who many critics noted was a refreshingly hard-edged and tough action heroine, Aunt Entity has been shaped the wasteland’s uncaring brutality. Although she seemingly wants the best for her citizens, she also almost tricks Max into murdering a mentally disabled man for her benefit, thus proving that she’s not morally unassailable. Like Furiosa, whose brutal backstory is unseen in Fury Road, Aunt Entity's time spent in a brutal world has made her hard and morally murky (and that’s being extremely generous), and her demanding Blaster's murder leaves the character in a hard place between Furiosa’s broadly good, if cynical, nature, and every other Mad Max villain's uncaring attitude to violence. She is as totalitarian as Immortan Joe, but her treatment of citizens is nowhere near as cruel and violent.
Meanwhile, the same pragmatic approach to combat that made Mad Max's Furiosa an effective fighter has gradually worn away Aunt Entity’s sense of right and wrong, leaving only a desperate desire to win at all costs. Although she doesn’t come out on top in Beyond Thunderdome, she does get the drop on the title character during the movie’s climax, and Aunt Entity’s decision not to kill Mad Max when she has the chance proves that Miller’s message about the corrupting influence of power cutting both ways. Given the opportunity to kill Max or redeem herself, Aunt Entity chooses non-violence over further death and destruction, despite her years spent turning to torture and murder to survive and thrive after the apocalypse.
Like Aunt Entity wanting Blaster dead despite his condition, Furiosa doesn’t have much sympathy for the brainwashed War Boys who she kills during Fury Road. However, unlike Aunt Entity, Furiosa is in a kill-or-be-killed fight with the War Boys and Fury Road's cult is attempting not only to murder her but also to keep the Citadel’s women oppressed. It’s impossible to know how violent and unsparing Furiosa would be without a threat on her life and a dictator to overthrow, which is exactly the point Miller made in the form of Beyond Thunderdome’s surprisingly level-headed, understandable villain. Ultimately, the only way to know whether Furiosa will become a despot is to follow her character's journey past Fury Road’s triumphant coda, something the Mad Max franchise has never done in its multi-decade history.
Although the original Mad Max and The Road Warrior were originally intended to be connected, the connective tissue between these two Mad Max movies was excised during production and now any links between the movies are strictly thematic rather than story-related. As such, there’s no knowing whether or not Furiosa would be a fair and just leader after defeating Immortan Joe, or if power would go to her head. In the world of Mad Max, no one from Aunt Entity to Furiosa to Max himself has hands clean of blood, and Miller’s series has consistently proven that seemingly evil characters such as Blaster can prove themselves innocent and seemingly virtuous characters can become corrupted by the unsparing universe of the franchise.
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