History Film / MadMaxBeyondThunderdome

* DropTheHammer: A giant hammer is one of the weapons provided in Thunderdome. Max uses it to knock Blaster's helmet off.

* LighterAndSofter: Especially when you consider that the first film was a bleak dystopian revenge thriller, and its sequel about bandits trying to kill people over an oil refinery. ''Thunderdome'' starts off dark but gets lighter in tone as soon as Max is rescued by the children, and stays that way for the remaining runtime.

* ElectiveBrokenLanguage: Heavily implied with Master; he speaks some kind of broken English until Blaster gets killed, at which point he reverts to a perfect English.

* BigBad: ZigZagged with Aunty Entity, the ruthess ruler of Bartertown. On one hand, she's an ambitious, power-hungry leader of her boom town. On the other, she's doing her very best to maintain order and rule of law while restoring as much of civilisation as she can - [[UtopiaJustifiesMeans by all means possible]]. Compared with villains from other Mad Max movies, she's barely even qualified to be called evil, but Max still ends up having to face her anger.

* ShroudedInMyth: Captain G. L. Walker was a real guy. He might have heroically landed his jet airliner in a complete wasteland and even led the survivors for some time... but by the time Max ends up in the oasis, Walker a sacred figure of the homegrown messianic cult, with the teens and children living there treating both the original Walker and Max as god-like figures.

* BigBad: Aunty Entity, ruler of Bartertown

* ChekhovsGun: Blaster is rendered helpless by Max's Bosun's Call, since he has a WeaksauceWeakness against high-pitched noises.

* CollapsingLair: The destruction of the methane-factory beneath Bartertown causes various explosions to happen.

* DefiantToTheEnd: [[spoiler:Ironbar's]] contempt for Max and co. carries to his end.
* DeliberateValuesDissonance: At least one of the girls (one among those who left the oasis) is indicated to be pregnant, and a number of the children at the oasis look a little bit too young to have been among the original survivors. Not much later, near the end, we see their still-teenaged or very-early-twenties leader holding a little baby in her lap and several other children holding babies as well. There's pretty much only [[TeenPregnancy one way]] their population could have increased this way. You can see several slightly older fellows in the crowd during the Tell at the oasis who are mature enough to become fathers, besides Slake. Of course, since their parents are gone (and probably dead) and it's basically up to them to repopulate the world, there's no social stigma associated with these youngsters having kids at their age. In fact, it's likely to be very respected.

* DespairEventHorizon: Bartertown's destruction to the Collector for a couple of seconds, then Auntie lifts everyone's spirits up.
* DiceRollDeath: Residents of Bartertown must "face the wheel" if they "bust a deal", i.e. break a vow. Said wheel is divided into ten unequal sections (Death, Hard Labour, Acquittal, Gulag, Aunty's Choice, Spin Again, Forfeit Goods, Underworld, Amputation, Life Imprisonment) and is spun to determine the person's fate. Max faces the wheel after he refuses to kill his opponent in the titular Thunderdome, receiving Gulag, a fatal sentence. Subverted, however, since Max survives.

* EvilPlan: Auntie Entity seeks to take out Master Blaster and maintain her power over Bartertown.

* ExtendedDisarming: Entering Bartertown, a guard tells Max: "Leave your weapons here, it's the law". A twenty-five second disarming sequence follows. The weapons check man is duly impressed. [[spoiler:He keeps his fly-swatter though, which turns out to have a knife hidden in the handle.]]

* FutureSlang: The children talk like this.

* GodGuise: Subverted. Though the kids treat him like their messiah, Max keeps telling them that they got the wrong guy. He still [[IneffectualLoner ends up helping some of them]].

* HandcarPursuit: Max and the tribe of desert children are racing away from Bartertown on a stolen train. One of them looks back to see a horde of DesertPunk vehicles led by Aunty Entity chasing them as well as her chief of guards Ironbar frantically working a handcar and keeping up with everyone. Having been knocked into a pool of pig shit last time we saw him, he's so pissed he clearly doesn't need a methane-powered vehicle.
* HeroicSacrifice: [[spoiler:Max buys time for the kids in the plane by hopping into a car and driving right into their pursuers, causing a huge crash.]]
** [[spoiler:Subverted; Max jumps clear and survives the crash, but is left behind to face Auntie's wrath. However, she lets him live.]]

* IGaveMyWord: Subverted: Aunty hires Max to kill Blaster, but Max refuses to FinishHim when a DramaticUnmask shows the GiantMook to be a simpleton. Because a contract is SeriousBusiness in Bartertown, Aunty is able to use the law to [[YouHaveFailedMe punish Max for his failure to follow through]].

* LargeHam: Tina Turner as Auntie Entity and Edward Hodgeman as Dr. Dealgood, [[LargeHamAnnouncer the MC]] of the Thunderdome.
** Jedediah's son could be considered a little LargeHam.

* MotivationOnAStick: Max is sent into "exile" hooded and tied up on a donkey with a small jar of water hanging in front of its head.

* PostApunkalypticArmor: Worn by Aunty's {{Mooks}}.

* PsychopathicManchild: Blaster.
* QuicksandSucks: The Wasteland is filled with this. It eats Max's dead horse, [[spoiler:and later one of the kids]].
* ReactorBoss: As soon as Max makes a getaway in the locomotive that fed methane into Bartertown, [[CollapsingLair the whole place starts exploding]].

* ShouldersOfDoom: Worn by Dr. Dealgood.

* SolidGoldPoop: Bartertown is fueled by methane, a byproduct of fecal decomposition. This choice of fuels was clearly made just for the arguments that could result.

* TakeMyHand: A [[ChainOfPeople chain of children]] are trying to save one of their own from being swallowed up by the same quicksand that earlier claimed Max's dead horse. The human chain is about to break when Max arrives, and he saves them all [[spoiler: except for the handicapped teen the others were trying to rescue]].

* VetinariJobSecurity : Master has this. Justified in that he is likely one of only a handful of remaining people on Earth with a working knowledge of civil engineering, industrial machinery, large-scale power generation, and chemistry. Bartertown likely explodes in part because he wasn't there to stop it; and may have rigged it to do so as they left.

* VillainousValor: Ironbar, especially hanging off the side of the train.
* WalkingArmory: Max is ordered to disarm upon entering a secure area and it [[ExtendedDisarming takes a full minute for him to drop all his weapons]]. Given that he only appears to have ammunition for the shotgun, it's likely he has to carry them because he has to scavenge for ammo like he had to scavenge for fuel in the previous movie, and can't be sure what's available.

* WeaponForIntimidation:
** Max's shotgun. The only time it's ever used is to fire off a warning shot.
** Well demonstrated during his ExtendedDisarming. Max spends a solid twenty seconds putting all manner of small arms on the table...and then drops about half a dozen shotgun shells with them. It's unlikely that most of them, including the one he points at The Collector, have a round among the lot.

* OneBookAuthor: Despite being one of the biggest pop singers of the 20th century, this was Tina Turner's only major starring role in a movie (unless one also counts her appearance as part of the ensemble cast in ''Film/{{Tommy}}'' as the Acid Queen). Though generally considered a good performance, it has yet to earn her more roles.

* MadeOfIron: [[MeaningfulName Iron]]bar manages to survive falling off a bridge, an explosion, ''and'' a head on collision that completely obliterates his buggy.

* ChainOfPeople: The children trying to rescue one of their own from quicksand. [[spoiler: It doesn't work. In fact, had Max not come to the rescue, they'd have ''all'' been killed.]]

* CollapsingLair: The destruction of methane-factory beneath Bartertown causes various explosions to happen.

* WireFu: The combatants in Thunderdome are attached to elastic ropes. At one point Max gains a temporary advantage by cutting Blaster's ropes with his BladeOnAStick.

Many years after the first two films, Max becomes involved in a power struggle over control of the fledgling new society of [[WretchedHive Bartertown]], between its founder Aunty Entity and the duo "[=MasterBlaster=]" who control its energy supply. Making a deal with Aunty Entity to recover his stolen vehicle, Max must fight Blaster in TheThunderdome where "[[DuelToTheDeath two men enter, one man leaves]]". This eventually leads to Max running into a society of wild children in a hidden valley, who were survivors of a plane crash and believe him to be the pilot they have been waiting for to take them home.

The film is basically an adaptation of ''Literature/RiddleyWalker'', but with Max Rockatansky as the protagonist.

* TheBait: The Gyro Captain leaves his gyrocopter seemingly abandoned by the side of the road, with footprints leading away from it. The pilot is actually buried under the sand waiting to ambush Max.
* BatmanGambit: After the Gyro Captain works out that Max has a hidden weapon next to the fuel tank booby trap, Max walks to the car door without being told. Thinking he's going for another weapon, the Gyro Captain shoos him away from the door opens it himself, whereupon the dog leaps out at him.

* RhymesOnADime: Auntie's laws ("Bust a deal, face the wheel"), but there's a FridgeBrilliance to it: they're easy to remember in a post-apocalyptic society.
* RingRingCrunch: A kid smashes a ringing clock he found with a hammer, because everyone is living in AfterTheEnd, and he has no idea what the ringing sound means.
* RousingSpeech: A rather rare villanous example in Auntie who pulls it off twice:

* WalkingArmory: Max is ordered to disarm upon entering a secure area and it [[ExtendedDisarming takes a full minute for him to drop all his weapons]]. It turns out the one thing he brought in with him, a flyswatter, was itself a concealed weapon (an iron rod inside the handle).

* WeaponForIntimidation: Max's shotgun. The only time it's ever used is to fire off a warning shot.
** Well demonstrated during his ExtendedDisarmingSequence. Max spends a solid twenty seconds putting all manner of small arms on the table...and then drops about half a dozen shotgun shells with them. It's unlikely that most of them, including the one he points at The Collector, have a round among the lot.

* WheelOfDecisions: "Bust a deal, face the wheel." One that is filled with all sorts of punishments - and one chance at complete acquittal.
* WhyDontYouJustShootHim: Max asks Auntie Entity why she doesn't just have one of her guards kill Masterblaster. But having reestablished the Rule of Law, Auntie can't afford to break it herself, otherwise it just becomes ScrewTheRulesIMakeThem. In addition, she states that Masterblaster is "family".

* TheChosenOne: Max as "Walker", of course, but Savannah was chosen to give "The Tell" to Walker, rather than Slake, the leader of the tribe, who usually does it.
** Savannah was chosen because she finded Walker. Slake says as much in his introduction to her Tell.

-->'''Master:''' Not pigshit--energy! Me, King Arab.

** Subverted during the Thunderdome scene. Max manages to grab a chainsaw from the WallOfWeapons and proceeds to use it against Blaster. Unfortunately, it runs out of fuel pretty quickly, given that they live in a fuel-starved society and all.

* InfoDump: The first 10 or 15 minutes of Max's encounter with the tribe of kids is basically one solid block of exposition, with the kids explaining the backstory of their tribe.

* GroinAttack: The Collector tries to attack Max with {{an axe|ToGrind}} during his "audition" to Aunty. It gets stuck in the floor when he misses and Max kicks under the axe-handle, forcing the end upwards to his groin.

* DepravedBisexual: A lot of the bad guys are wearing BDSM-style clothing, and when Max claims to the manager at the trading post (who's just concluded a deal with a trapper for a night in the sack with a real woman in exchange for an animal pelt) that he's got skills to trade, the manager replies "[[IsThatWhatTheyreCallingItNow The brothels are full.]]"

** To be fair, she was probably punishing him for not finishing the job, rather than hoping he wouldn't.

* IsThatWhatTheyreCallingItNow: When Aunty Entity's majordomo tells Max he's got nothing to trade, Max insists that he's got skills they can use. To this, he rather dryly replies "The brothels are full."

* CaptainErsatz: Bruce Spence's character Jedediah is not the same Gyro Captain who appeared in ''Film/TheRoadWarrior,'' but caused confusion to fans of the second film. However, it's just an example of George Miller hiring many of the same actors.

* ThoseTwoBadGuys: [=MasterBlaster=], the duo who run Underworld ("They are [[TheDividual a unit; they even share the same name]]"). Master is a mental giant with a body like a small child's; for Blaster, the reverse is true.

* AmbiguousEnding: in the final scene we see [[spoiler: Max traipsing over the dunes carrying a bundle of spears. His fate is left unresolved, he may continuing wandering, go in search of the escapees in the airplane or return to the feral kids at the oasis. Notably when he makes his speech to the community of abandoned children earlier in the film he tells them "We're all going to stay right here, we're all going to live a long time and we're all going to be grateful", specifically referring to "We".]]

* CargoCult: The film features an isolated tribe AfterTheEnd who worships a jet airliner as their personal Mecca and its pilot, Captain Walker, as a God who will guide them to "Tomorrow-morrow Land"—that is, the world of skyscrapers and urban life that no longer exists. They treat a children's Viewmaster stereoscopic slide viewer and its reels as holy relics that reinforce their lore, in addition to a salvaged pilot captain's hat that they intend the returning Captain Walker to wear.