40 Years Ago: Explorers (1985)

Two movies wage a war for supremacy in Joe Dante’s Explorers (1985). 

One movie is a quasi-Spielberg film that lionizes childhood and pays tribute to the 1950s science fiction (and even no-science fiction) productions familiar to and beloved by baby boomers

The second film feels much more indicative of Dante’s creative approach and is an irreverent, subversive, film that depicts alien first contact by way of a Looney Tunes-like universe.

The problem with Explorers is that these two films and tones don’t fit together in the slightest.  

And since the film starts firmly in Spielberg mode, it is that mode which -- whatever its sentimental pitfalls -- should have carried the day.

However, the wonder, innocence and majesty of Explorers’ first half finds no purchase, no outlet and no resolution in the film’s disappointing third act. 

Even the film’s star, young Ethan Hawke, looks befuddled and dispirited by the alien stand-up comedy and rock-and-roll performance he must endure during the film’s movie-killing climax. 

The unspoken question roiling beneath Hawke’s expressive young face is one that all viewers of the 1985 film will share.  

We traveled all this way and fell in love with these characters…just for this?

For cut-rate, cartoon aliens doing bad imitations of Humphrey Bogart, Groucho Marx, Bob Hope and Desi Arnaz?

I first saw Explorers at the Royal Theater in Bloomfield, New Jersey, in 1985, when I was fifteen years old.  Even then, I understood a simple fact about the film’s drama and structure. The film’s trio of young protagonists -- so open, enterprising, imaginative, and full of hope -- deserved a journey that honored their good character.  They deserved an odyssey like the one Exeter teased in This Island Earth (1951) and which is excerpted explicitly in Explorers. 

They deserved an opportunity to interface with a “vast universe…filled with wonders.” 

Instead, this triumvirate reached the stars only to find that even in space, it is impossible to escape TV reruns and baby-boomer nostalgia.

“I’m afraid my wounds can never be healed.”

Bullied at school, young Ben Crandall (Hawke) dreams of flying at night.  

One night, he dreams of flying over a landscape that transforms into a high-tech circuit board.  When Ben shares his notes about this dream with his friend, Wolfgang (River Phoenix) and they are put into a computer, Ben realizes that another intelligence is communicating with him.

Along with another boy, Darren (Jason Presson), who comes from “the wrong side of the tracks Ben and Wolfgang experiment with the alien technology, creating a force bubble that can mitigate forces of acceleration, gravity and inertia.

In other words, the bubble is a force-field of sorts, protecting any object or person that happens to be inside it.  Ben and the other boys resolve to build a spaceship, and visit the local junkyard to create a small craft, which they christen The Thunder Road. It is built from a Tilt-a-whirl.

After a second dream, which provides information about life-support inside their ship, Ben and the others take to the stars to visit their benefactors.  

They leave Earth, and a nosy police man (Dick Miller) behind, and travel to space to reckon with some very strange alien beings…

“It could be something we can’t even imagine.”

One brand of Spielberg’s aesthetic, as represented by E.T. (1982), and to a lesser extent, Jaws (1975), Close Encounters (1978), Poltergeist (1982), Gremlins (1984), Invaders from Mars (1986) and Super 8 (2011), is clearly on view in Explorers’ first two acts.  

Like some of those films, this one involves precocious but disillusioned youngsters who, through a surprising connection with the supernatural/paranormal, re-discover magic and wonder in their often-disappointing lives.  

As we have seen in some Spielberg films (and the films of his contemporaries), “this boy’s life” in Explorers is one in which the traditional middle-class family has failed the enterprising child. Darren’s mother is dead, and his father’s attentions are elsewhere, even though he lives in suburbia (also the setting of E.T. and others).  Ben, meanwhile, seems to live in a world where parents are absent.  At school, he is the victim of a bully named Jackson. These views of childhood can be compared with instances of parental death or divorce in Super 8 and E.T., respectively.

A key location in all these films is the central boy’s bedroom, a sanctuary which he decorates with products/items that reflect his imaginative nature. In this case, we see that Ben has a poster of It Came from Outer Space (1953) on his bedroom wall, and that his disk is littered with Marvel Comics.  And playing on the TV while he sleeps is George Pal’s War of the Worlds. 

Thus we can extrapolate that Ben has escaped an unhappy (or at least unsatisfying) family life by escaping into his bedroom…and the fantasy worlds offered in popular entertainment.

Because Spielberg, Tobe Hooper, and Joe Dante are all boomers, they tend to imbue their adolescent characters with a love for older science fiction films, even though it is not, necessarily, a realistic quality. I was a kid at the same time as Elliott or Ben, or Billy (the 1970s-1980s), and I was into Star Wars, Space:1999, Planet of the Apes and Star Trek, not of the productions which get call-backs here: The Thing (1951), The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), War of the Worlds (1953), and Forbidden Planet (1956).  I made it my mission to see all those films, of course, and I admire them all tremendously, but they were not bedroom poster-worthy to my generation, if that makes sense.

Therefore, it is not too difficult to understand that these tributes to older films -- in E.T., Explorers and the like -- represent the filmmakers’ reckoning with their own childhoods. They are re-imagining their own youth in these 1980s films, and that sometimes adds a self-indulgent quality to the art. It would be like me making a film about kids today, and decorating their bedrooms with Space:1999 (1975 – 1977) or Battlestar Galactica (1978 – 1979) posters. Fun as an allusion? Sure.  Realistic? Not particularly.

Ironically, in terms of science fiction movies, the 1980s works of Spielberg and his contemporaries -- all of whom I admire very much -- actually represent a paradigm shift away from 1950s and 1960s genre works. 

In older films, like Forbidden Planet or even Kubrick’s 2001, explorers in space and time voyage to the edge of reality, to the frontier, and are challenged to recognize new ideas there. By contrast, in some 1980s films brandishing the Spielberg aesthetic, explorers in space and time encounter the paranormal and find worlds and beings not that challenge their concept of the universe or their belief system, but that bring them emotional comfort; that reinforce their imaginative/fantastic belief systems. 

Elliott needs a friend, and E.T. teaches him how to connect to others. The kids in Explorers visit the stars, and meet there alien children who steal their father’s car/spaceship, and quake in fear from menacing parental figures. 

The message?  Kids and parents are alike all over.

The aliens’ reason for not visiting Earth in Explorers is even dramatized in terms of baby boomer cinema. The aliens show the human children a montage of humans treating aliens badly, including imagery from 20,000 Million Miles to Earth (1967), The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951), and so on. The sub-textual message is that aliens can’t visit Earth because our parents ruined everything, just as they ruined our lives.

Accordingly, Explorers lionizes innocence…so much so that alien beings are not different creatures to reckon with, but mirrors that validate a childhood perspective on life.  It’s the Peter Pan syndrome. Also in the film, an older policeman, played by Dick Miller recalls that he once dreamed of going to the stars, but that those dreams receded as he grew up. Again, a message is wrought: adults need not apply for the magical Explorers space program. Only the very young, and the very innocent, may board this flight.

Apparently, in space we can only expect to meet beings who will fill our empty spots, not beings who will challenge us to grow, and evolve, and become better than we are.

Clearly, this idea can work beautifully, and even feel magical on occasion, as E.T. and Close Encounters aptly demonstrate. They are great films. 

But Explorers seems to tread a step too far in the same direction, suggesting that imagination, tenacity, and optimism will be rewarded only with a world of perpetual boomer references or allusions, one where Ed Sullivan, Mr. Ed, Bugs Bunny and Tarzan are always on the tube, always repeating their greatest hits.  Explorers reduces all the wonders of the universe to a closed-loop of 1950s nostalgia, and therefore undercuts the very message of great films like Forbidden Planet, or even This Island Earth.   

The scenes here with the goofy, TV-quoting aliens, truly betray the film’s beautiful first half, which strikes a deep chord with me on a personal level in some regard. Specifically, much of the early portions of Explorers involve the building of a spaceship out of junk and spare parts. A tilt-a-whirl ride is the basis for the spaceship that Ben, Wolfgang, and Darren build, but other pieces are added on, and that little ramshackle spaceship is a wondrous thing: a manifestation of childhood imagination.

I remember very clearly when I was a young man, watching as two friends built -- out of whatever they could find -- a raft that they hoped to sail down a nearby river.  I remember seeing them in the neighborhood one day, spare parts on their backs, bags of snacks in their hands, as they prepared for the launch of their “ship.”  I don’t know if the raft ever proved sea worthy, but I have always remembered their joy at the possibility of building a vessel that could carry them…away, to the unknown.  

In ways profound and wondrous, the first half of Explorers captures that youthful feeling of assembling a dream; of building with your own hands a vehicle that could alter your destiny and carry you to new horizons. The early scenes in the film that find the youths experimenting with the alien force bubble and constructing their own ride to the stars remain magical, and meaningful. Indeed, they are so compelling, well-wrought and charmingly performed that the film’s final act plays as all the more disappointing.  If you watch the film closely, you can’t help but love Ben, Wolfgang and Darren.

The Thunder Road (the name of the ship, provided by Darren) and her crew ultimately deserved a journey of discovery and wonder, not one that found the final frontier was just…old TV.  

The promise -- as Ben clearly enunciates it -- is to “go where no man has gone before” (not just a TV reference, but a promise of new territory explored), and see something that humans “can’t even imagine,” something that could qualify as “the greatest thing ever.”

Ask yourself? Do the Looney Tunes alien fit the bill? As the greatest thing ever? As something unimaginable? 

If not, what could the aliens have looked like instead?  Perhaps they could have been being who understood that a dream is best when shared and when built, piece-by-piece with your own hands.  

In the film, Ben and Wolfgang (and eventually Lori and Darren) dream of the technology they need to touch the stars. They share a kind of “hive dream” universe, and yet the childish, bug-eyed aliens we meet in the finale don’t seem capable of having sent these dreams to them. That’s an important disconnect in the film.

Explorers needed aliens who were more like teachers, or benevolent parents, perhaps, than like Bob Hope-quoting bug-eyed juveniles.  Why?  So Ben and the others would see that life wasn’t just disappointment after disappointment, but the possibility of them building a brave new world together.

Explorers also hasn’t aged well in terms of its treatment of Lori (Amanda Peterson). I realize that the film is forty years old, but Lori is a virtual non-character in the film. She is a prize for Ben to “win” at the end of his adventure, and a character who never gets to ride in the Thunder Road, or visit the stars. 

Even when I was fifteen -- forty years ago -- I knew that was wrong. Girls dream big too and possess great imagination, so Lori should have been a major character in the film, not just Ben’s reward for reaching the stars. I trust the anticipated remake of the film will rectify this problem.

Before Explorers, Joe Dante was on something of a roll, having directed Piranha (1978), The Howling (1981), and Gremlins (1984), all terrific films in my estimation. I have read that Explorers went into production, however, without the team settling on an ending. I’m afraid that the absence of a carefully-plotted, coherent third-act shows. It handicaps the film. The film’s first half -- while soaked in Boomer self-indulgence -- nonetheless captures the wonders of childhood, and the amazing feeling of building your destiny, one spare part at a time.  The last half of the film, which wallows in pop culture kitsch, is a misstep for the ages.

To misquote Exeter from This Island Earth, I’m afraid Explorers’ inconsistent approach to its narrative is a grievous wound, one that “will never be healed.”

From the Archive: Superman: The Movie (1978)

Although blockbuster superhero films have come and gone by the dozen since the release of Superman: The Movie in 1978, the Richard Donner film remains, in my opinion, the best film of its type yet produced. 

I make this grand assertion in part because of the film’s layered visual symbolism, which intentionally and methodically equates the life-time journey of Kal-El/Superman with that of a messiah, or Christ figure. 

I make this assertion in part because the 1978 Superman speaks meaningfully about its historical context: the Post-Watergate Age of the mid-1970s.  Specifically Superman is offered up to audiences as a positive role model, a kind of wish-fulfillment alternative for a country that appeared mired in partisanship, bickering, and corruption.  Superman’s promise that he would “never lie” to Lois (and to us) reflects this deep, burning national desire during the mid-1970s for a restoration of belief and trust in our elected leaders.

I make this assertion of greatness for Superman: The Movie, as well, because of the film’s remarkable and epic three act, biographical structure, which actually permits for intense focus on the hero rather than the villain, an absolute rarity in a genre which has distinguished itself largely, by spotlighting ever-kinkier, ever-more perverse antagonists. 

By focusing on Clark Kent’s origin, upbringing, and adult life -- instead of the Lex Luthor’s genesis, for example – Superman: The Movie provides a perfect allegory for the American immigrant experience.  That experience, in short, is about coming to a land of opportunity, assimilating its cherished values, and then living those values at highest level possible.

Buttressed by a sincere, pitch-perfect lead performance by the late Christopher Reeve, Superman: The Movie is also that rarest of breeds: a superhero film that doesn’t wallow in troughs of human ugliness. 

Certainly, the Donner film doesn’t short-change or deny the tragic aspects of its hero’s life, such as the death of his parents and destruction of his world, Krypton.  Yet nor does Superman: The Movie make the grievous, depressing determination that after such a personal tragedy occurs, angst, depression, revenge, and darkness are the only emotions a hero can possibly face, feel, and act upon. 

A real hero can still choose to take to the skies instead of lurking in the shadows, or seething in the dark of night. 

Superman: The Movie concerns a hero who faces tremendous adversity, to be sure.  Superman is a man without a nation (or planet) and a man without a biological family of origin.  And yet his response to such troubles is not to burrow inward and become twisted by hate.  His response is -- simply -- to be kind, to be “a friend” to those who need him; to those who also face adversity.  Because he is strong (physically) Superman can protect those who are like him…but who cannot protect themselves.  This kind of selflessness is, in my opinion, the very quality that should epitomize a superhero, but rarely does in the cinema.

I don’t believe that heroes -- let alone super heroes -- can truly be born through rage, victim hood, or revenge.  Rather, those are the unfortunate qualities of human life to overcome and surpass, not the qualities to dictate the shape of a meaningful and purposeful life.    

Superman: The Movie perfectly embodies this aesthetic. 

Through the dedicated application of visual symbolism and a literate screenplay that focuses on its hero, Superman: The Movie continues to speak to the better angels of human nature, even today.  Although the film’s special effects have certainly aged in the intervening three-and-a-half decades since its theatrical release, the Donner film’s soulful humanity yet resonates and inspires.

An act of revenge may satisfy blood lust temporarily.  But when a superhero soars above us and represents the best of human qualities, the sky is really the limit.   Superman: The Movie embodies that principle, and makes us all believe a man can fly.

“I'm here to fight for truth, and justice, and the American way.”

On the distant, highly advanced world of Krypton, a great scientist, Jor-El (Marlon Brando) warns of imminent planetary disaster, but is ignored.   As disaster and death loom, Jor-El sends away his young son, Kal-El, on a multi-year space voyage to Earth.  There, the boy will grow up with incredible powers, courtesy of Earth’s yellow sun. But he will also grow up isolated and alone…the last of his breed.

On Earth, young Kal-El crashes in rural Kansas.  There, he is adopted by farmers, Jonathan (Glenn Ford) and Martha Kent (Phyllis Thaxter), and raised as their son, Clark Kent (Jeff East). As Clark matures, he resents the fact that he must always hide his powers away from humans.  But after his Earth father dies from a heart attack, Clark decides to pursue a grand destiny.  He heads north and creates, from Kryptonian crystal, a Fortress of Solitude where he can learn about himself and his world.

After twelve years of study, Clark (Reeve) emerges from the Fortress as “Superman,” a caped hero who can fight crime. He heads to Metropolis, where -- as Clark Kent -- he works as a reporter at the Daily Planet.  He soon falls in love with another reporter, Lois Lane (Margot Kidder), but soon learns that she has eyes only for Superman.

When the villainous Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman), launches a deadly real estate scheme to destroy the west coast of America, Superman confronts the twisted genius.  Unfortunately, Luthor has discovered the only substance on Earth that can harm the Man of Steel: a rock from his destroyed world, or Kryptonite…

“The single most important interview since God talked to Moses…”

Unusually, Superman: The Movie embodies three distinctive settings and movements in its final cut.  The first segment or section takes place on distant Krypton, the second in 1950s Kansas, and the third in Metropolis of the 1970s. 

By my critical reckoning, the first “act” or segment of the film concerns Heaven, the second concerns the discovery of a home and humanity, and the third involves achievement of destiny.

Superman: The Movie’s religious imagery remains most powerful in the Kryptonian segment, but continues throughout the picture (and indeed, in Superman II [1981] and even Superman Returns [2006].) 

But let’s discuss Krypton first.  It is a world of radiant, glowing white, a world that, literally, symbolizes Heaven.  When we first see Krypton, we pass through a layer of white mist, which suggests, visually, clouds in Earth’s sky.  In other words, we are moving beyond the Earth and firmament into the realm of the Angels.

Here the Kryptonians gather, led by the God-like Jor-El, whose surname, El means “deity” in Hebrew.

In his first order of business, Jor-El casts out the insurrectionist Zod, who is clearly a stand-in for a similar insurrectionist against God, Lucifer.  Zod and his minions are sent into a kind of living Hell, the “Phantom Zone,” for their crimes.

Following this removal of “evil” from Paradise or Heaven, Jor-El and his world face another, equally unexpected threat: a natural disaster that could destroy it totally. Jor-El’s entreaties to evacuate Krypton are ignored and silenced, and the radiant, formerly-white, heavenly realm turns scarlet red under the increasing light of the Red Sun. In Scripture, scarlet or crimson colors signify suffering, worry, fear and blood, the very opposite of the “purity” and “sanctification” that once represented Krypton’s ideal society.

Jor-El, the “God” figure, then sends his “only son” to Earth, to aid mankind, in a deliberate reflection of John 3:16:  "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.” Kal-El then travels to Earth in a spaceship that some suggest resembles the Star of Bethlehem itself.  He lands in Kansas and becomes the adopted child of Jonathan and Martha Kent. Certainly, there is a trenchant comparison to be made here between Jonathan and Joseph, and Martha and Mary.  They are not, strictly speaking, biological parents of a messiah, but rather instructors in humanity.  

Then, as if to cement the comparison of Kal-El to Jesus Christ, the character is seen -- as a young boy -- standing in a crucifixion-type pose, his arms outstretched.  This signifies, of course, that he is to become the messiah, and perhaps face scorn, even, for his sacrifices (as we see in later movies).

As Superman, Kal-El performs acts that -- in keeping with the Jesus Christ comparison -- are quite miraculous.  He can travel faster than a locomotive, leap higher than a skyscraper, and deflect bullets.  He also explicitly states that he “never lies,” a comment which conforms to the post-Watergate reading of the film, but also the religious allegory.  Where Superman will never “lie” to Lois, Jesus noted that there was “no deceit” in his mouth (Isaiah 53:9) and that “I tell you the truth” (John 8:45).

What’s the point of the religious allegory?  I suppose it is largely, that when a God or a messiah walks among men, he inspires men to be better.  That’s Superman’s gift too.  While he must also face “diseased maniacs” like Lex Luthor, Superman’s very existence proves that a man can live up to ideals like justice for all, or even, on a basic level, honesty towards his peers.  The closing shot of the film see Superman break the fourth wall and cast his eyes upon us, in the audience.   When this man-above-men gazes upon us, he reminds us, too, that we can do the things he does.  We can be friends and heroes to the weak, even if we lack Superman’s otherworldly powers.

Krypton is Heaven. 

Casting out the Insurrectionists to the Hell of "The Phantom Zone."

Heaven becomes Hell.

And Jor-El gives to mankind his only begotten son...

Kal-El, on Earth, stretches out his arms, in crucifix position.

The most visually beautiful segment in Superman: The Movie, I find, is the second or middle one.  This section is set in Kansas, under Big American Sky, and it captures beautifully a Norman Rockwell (1894 – 1978) quality. 

As you may recall, Rockwell often painted imagery of small town life, and his work frequently asked the critical question: what does it mean to be an American?  Such works as Freedom of Speech (1943), The Problem We all Live with (1964), Runaway (1958) and Homecoming Soldier (1945) all focused, laser-like on the idea of the American dream, the American community, and, in some instances, the effort to achieve true social justice for all.  Law and order, heroism, prejudice, and other America-centric topics all found expression in Rockwell’s catalog.

As an immigrant living in America, Kal-El thus gets a lesson in Rockwell-ian Americana in the film’s second movement, and I feel that this view – while undeniably sentimentalized – represents what is best about our nation.  The powerful imagery of windswept wheat fields, of white church steeples, and of productive family farms suggests a simple, honest, corn-fed life of upstanding moral values.  Those values of “truth, justice and the American way” are crucial in forming Superman’s bedrock psyche.  He is not a biological child of America, but through his adoption of our land he understands the value of hard (physical) work, and the value of honesty and truth.  Best of all, he understands something else critical about the American dream: the idea that in America it is not the color of your skin or your land of origin that should matter most. 

Rather, it’s what you do here -- right now -- to contribute to the common good that weighs the heaviest. 

Superman’s story is thus the story of immigrants in America since time immemorial, and it’s no coincidence, I submit, that Superman soon takes Lois on a flight around the Statue of Liberty, an icon welcoming immigrants to our shores.  If Lois is his real life love, then Lady Liberty -- and by extension, America, --represent Superman’s other significant romance.

The scenes set in Kansas purposefully contrast with those set on Krypton, which represented, in a sense, cold intellect as opposed to warm, human heart.. This is significant because the Kryptonians ultimately lost their world because of intellectual arrogance. Clark cannot let the same fate befall his adopted home world.

Big Sky, Rockwell America.

More Big Sky, Rockwell America.

And more.

An immigrant visits Lady Liberty.

The third and final portion or segment of Superman: The Movie concerns America of the movie’s present (meaning 1978).  The Watergate Scandal had recently toppled a President, and America’s heroes of the day were two committed reporters, Woodward and Bernstein.  

Given the public’s dislike of the corporate press today, it is indeed difficult indeed to imagine a time when reporters were widely viewed as ideal protectors of American freedom, but that was indeed the case in the mid-1970s, the same era that gave us investigative reporter Carl Kolchak on The Night Stalker. 

The idea featured here, in both Superman and Kolchak, is that the truth matters more than power.  A reporter could -- armed with the freedom of the press -- fight City Hall, and expose City Hall as corrupt. Even a President was not above the law. 

In Superman: the Movie, Clark thus takes on two noble professions: that of a dedicated journalist, and that of a superhero.  It likely says something about how cynical we’ve become today that we can’t imagine a journalist being an advocate for unbiased, non-partisan truth.

That quote from Superman that I mentioned earlier, “I’ll never lie to you,” not only represents religious allegory then, but political allegory as well. Those words represent a direct quote from then-President Jimmy Carter, who spoke identical words to a scandal-weary American populace in 1976.

As a nation, we were disappointed with our elected leadership, and were searching for a "new hope." As a people, we no longer believed that a man could fly, metaphorically-speaking. Hell, we didn't even believe that our leaders were "good" or "honest." The public faith was broken. But Superman was the real deal...the genuine article. Not only was he good, he actually brought out the best in the people around him.  When he informs Lois that he wants to fight for truth, justice, and the American way, she scoffs at the cliche, warning that he’ll have to fight every elected official in the country.  But Superman boasts a quality that can change everything: the power to inspire.

Lois Lane, as portrayed by Margot Kidder, thus proves a perfect sparring partner for Superman and Clark in Superman: The Movie because she is so deliberately "of" this fast-moving, cynical culture in a way he definitively is not. And yet despite her cynicism, Lois is still absolutely taken with Superman.  This is so, I believe, because all of us - no matter how jaded -- still want very much to believe in "truth, justice and the American way."

In the age of Superman: The Movie (1978), reporters were national heroes.

Clark as latter-day Woodward or Bernstein.

He'll never lie to you...

Christopher Reeves' Superman is the ultimate fish-out-of-water: a principled man living in an unprincipled time. Yet despite this fact, he commits himself to being the savior of this tough, cynical world. It’s a world that some might say doesn't even deserve Superman.  But this Man of Steel reveals that it is not a weakness to be gentle, and not a character flaw to be kind, or honest. A real hero doesn't need to swagger, or be a misanthropic "loner.”

Instead, this is a visitor who is amused and puzzled by mankind. He can be strong and idealistic and baffled all at the same time. He can be sincere without being a wimp.

Accordingly the crises featured in Superman: The Movie are authentically human rather than special effects spectaculars. Over the course of the film, Clark loses two fathers (Jor-El and Jonathan Kent), bids farewell to his Mother, searches for the purpose of his life in the Fortress of Solitude, falls in love with a flawed "modern" human being (Lois) and embraces the stated traditional principles of his adopted country.

And when he angrily violates Jor-El's "non-interference" directive during the film's climax to turn back time to rescue Lois, Superman proves he is no longer a child of cold, emotionless Krypton ...but a real child of America. It's a great character-arc. 

I always find it ironic that superhero movies of recent vintage slather on one villain after the other. Some movies even boast three super-villains for a superhero to combat.  The implication, of course, is that evil is more interesting, dramatically, than good is; that excavating someone who is evil is intrinsically more interesting than examining someone who struggles to do good.  Superman: The Movie reverses that equation. 

This is the very reason why the film is still held up as a paragon of the form by many, or at least counted among the ten best superhero films ever made.  The Donner film’s focus is squarely on the man wearing the cape, not the freak in the grease paint, or the bald maniac. The film may compare Superman to a messiah, but in the Man of Steel, we can all see, too, the potential to achieve our very best self. 

40 Years Ago: Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)

Before he was simply Hollywood's modern-day "Mad Mel," Australian actor Mel Gibson was genre cinema's Mad Max, a futuristic hero and "man with no name" dwelling in an apocalyptic, and then, finally, post-apocalyptic world.  

In terms of narrative structure, the three Mad Max films of the 1970s-1980s (Mad Max [1979], The Road Warrior [1981] and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome [1985]) chart an interesting and highly artistic parallel trajectory. 

Both human civilization itself and Max's original persona as a decent family man collapse at approximately the same time, in the violent, emotionally-searing Mad Max. 

Then, in the absence of law and morality arises much chaos and violence (Road Warrior). Oil is scarce.  The law fails. Nobody trusts anybody on the desolate highways of the future, and survival -- not morality -- proves paramount. Max loses much of his humanity in this world, but manages to hold onto a kernel of it.    

Finally -- at last -- the process of re-building and achieving redemption begin in earnest in Beyond Thunderdome, both for the individual man, Max, and for all of mankind too There is hope. Civilization starts again, and it lights the way home for the road warriors...

It's a terrific  story/character arc, played ably and movingly across three very strong and memorable genre films.

Yet Mad Max fans still debate with passion which film in the action-packed trilogy from George Miller (and the late Byron Kennedy) remains the finest. Like many, I prefer the middle part of the trilogy, the absolutely unsentimental, unrelenting The Road Warrior, by a wide margin. 

When I reviewed that film, I called it "one of the ten great action films of the last thirty years," and highly commended "the aura of danger, anxiety and uncertainty" in the landmark, "startling" effort. 

I still feel the same way. The Road Warrior was one of those rare theatrical experiences (not unlike The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Last House on the Left) in which  actively-engaged audience members felt there was a real danger they might be see something truly unpleasant, or decorum-shattering, on screen. The movie felt downright dangerous.

Interestingly, critics and audiences tend to be sharply divided on the (for now...) final entry in the pantheon, Beyond Thunderdome. Critics, including the late Roger Ebert, praise the third film extravagantly, whereas audiences seem markedly less enthusiastic about this 1985 effort.  

I understand the reasons for both reactions, and in some ways, Beyond Thunderdome is a sharply schizophrenic film.

On the one hand, Beyond Thunderdome is a movie that vividly creates a unique and highly-cinematic world -- Bartertown -- and then memorably populates that environment with an entourage of fascinating, flamboyant characters . 

These include the sexy villain, Aunty Entity (Tina Turner), and her strange, colorful entourage. These retainers possess memorable names such as Scrooloose, Dr. Dealgood, The Collector, and Ironbar, and this element adds to the film's sense of  fun, and wickedness.

Commendably, Thunderdome also treats this one-of-a-kind world with a witty -- but not cheesy--  sense of humor, at least starting out. Even the film's dialogue in the first act is unexpectedly, unremittingly sharp.  

"You can shovel shit, can't you?"

That's all really good stuff for the film reviewers to chew on and ponder, no doubt.  And as Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome kicks in with a jolt, the pop tune by Tina Turner promises a good, dark, pacey excursion into a world we've been to before, only on a grander, more epic, more edgy scale.

But audiences -- especially those who are fans of the earlier films -- may still end up upset or disappointed with this third film because it very obviously assimilates Mad Max into the Hollywood mainstream action mold. 

Suddenly, the lone warrior of the wasteland is encountering cute, resourceful kids, fighting cartoony villains (like the aforementioned, apparently unkillable Ironbar) and even playing the white knight. That last bit (the white knight act) is a critical part of the overall story arc: Max's step-by-step return to the world of "humanity," and, yes, it must exist. By the end of the Mad Max cycle, we understand, Mad Max must no longer be "mad."

Yet it's still hard to escape the impression that -- in the Darwinian world depicted in The Road Warrior -- the Mad Max (and attached kids) we encounter in Thunderdome would simply not survive. 

And Aunty Entity would not retain control of Bartertown for long were she to -- in full view of her battle-hardened troops -- let Max survive after their final clash.  It's not just that Aunty's decision to let Max live feels like an anti-climax when we desperately desire a stirring action scene; it's that it doesn't ring entirely true with what's been established before.

And so this movie just feels...softer than the previous pictures.

So, you can sense the problem with Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.  The first act is stellar, imaginative, even caustic post-apocalyptic nirvana.  The last act is pro forma Hollywood nonsense.

Janet Maslin of The New York Times termed Beyond Thunderdome "the most visually spectacular installment by far, with a few innovations - notably the one of the title - that are far more elaborate than anything George Miller, the director, has attempted before...So if it eventually steers Max into the midst of a tribe of primitive children who regard him as their savior, it can easily be forgiven. This film has showier stunts than its predecessors, and a better sense of humor. It also has Tina Turner, in chain-mail stockings."

That paragraph really gets at the central conflict of Beyond Thunderdome. 

Redemption comes in the end for Max, "the raggedy man" who chooses sacrifice over belonging (as possible payment for his spell as an amoral wanderer in the wasteland). But what about redemption for the movie?  It clearly forsakes its predecessors sense of driving pace, and unromantic view of the human species for a happy ending. 

Is this simply the result of narrative closure, and function of the story arc?  Or is it a flaw that keeps the movie from fully satisfying those who began the journey with Mad Max?

Welcome, to another edition of Thunderdome!

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome finds former policeman and family man Max (Gibson) wandering in a seemingly endless desert, driving a team of camels on his converted automobile...now no more than an old-fashioned wagon. 

A plane dives from the sky and unseats Max from his vehicle.  The plane's pilot, Jedidiah (Bruce Spence), jumps into the driver's seat and rides away, leaving Max behind.

Max survives and heads to Bartertown, a nearby outcropping of "civilization" in the desert.  He hopes to find Jedidiah and re-claim his property, but instead becomes the pawn of Auntie Entity (Tina Turner), Bartertown's benefactor. 

In particular, Entity wants the "King Arab" of the town's energy-producing facility, "Underworld" dead for his repeated attempts to assert authority over her and "embargo" the town's energy. But killing Master (Angelo Rossitto) is harder than it sounds because he is protected by a body guard, the hulking "Blaster."

Auntie strikes a deal with Max to kill Blaster inside the town's arena, a "hall of justice" called "Thunderdome." Max wins the battle, but finds that Blaster suffers from Down Syndrome and possesses "the mind of a child."  Holding on to his code of ethics, Max refuses to kill Blaster, and is -- for "busting a deal"  -- sent into the wilderness on a horse, gulag-style.

In the desert, a tribe of orphan children find Max and worship him as their lost leader, Captain Walker. These "Waiting Ones" believe that Max can lead them home to civilization, to the city, but are in for a disappointment when Max tells them the truth;  that nothing of mankind's previous civilization remains intact. 

When a group of children led by Savannah Nix (Helen Buday) make the trek into the wilderness anyway, Max must rescue them, and, once again, survive the dangers of Bartertown. 

In the months and years following Max's rescue of the children, Savannah and the survivors of "The Waiting Ones" remember men like Max...hoping that they too will return to civilization at last.

"I know you won't break the rules, because there aren't any."

One arena where you can't fault George Miller and George Ogilvie's Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome is in the creation of an intriguing, visually-distinguished, post-apocalyptic world. 

From the film's first aerial shot (looked to be lensed from low planetary orbit, so you can actually see the curve of the Earth...) to the first reveal of Bartertown (a swooping Louma crane shot...) and beyond, this sequel is vetted in extraordinary and dazzling visual fashion.  

The imagination and ingenuity of the production designer, Graham Walker, is on full-display throughout.  And cinematographer Dean Semler captures all the details -- both droll and dirty -- with aplomb.

What remains special about this Mad Max world is how it effortlessly seems both funny and realistic.  The entrance way to Bartertown, for instance is a crowded tunnel where "The Collector" greets newcomers and assesses their skills, followed by a weapons drop-off point. 

After that pit stop, it's daylight...into pandemonium.  There's the humorously named "Atomic Cafe," a peddler hawking fresh water ("what's a little fall-out?"), the "House of Good Deals," and towering over everything, the imposing, palatial residence of Aunty Entity.

Oh, and there's a little place called Thunderdome, a stadium that has entered the American pop culture vernacular in a permanent way (referenced on Mystery Science Theater 3000 and in other productions.) 

You already know the rules....there aren't any.  Two men enter...one man leaves.  

But Thunderdome is fascinating for two reasons. First, the "why" behind its very existence in Bartertown is compelling: the survivors of this world's nuclear apocalypse realized that killing leads to warring and that warring was "damn near the end of us all."  

So here -- perhaps wisely -- violence is limited to this one, awful place. Beyond it, blood lust has no place in Bartertown.  Allegedly, anyway.

The second scintillating aspect of Thunderdome is the orchestration of Max's fight inside it.  The combatants are strung-up on elastic bands and fight in mid-air, reaching for weapons (such as chainsaws and mallets) at the upper apex of the dome. So Max and his opponent, Blaster, whirl, fly, bounce, dip and spin in battle, and it's pretty exciting stuff.  Not to mention staggeringly original.

This is how Time Magazine critic Richard Schickel described the locale: "Thunderdome is both hall of justice and cultural center for Bartertown, presided over by Aunty Entity (Tina Turner), purring like a tiger and claiming she has created civilization's highest flowering since nuclear devastation. Indeed she has, if an imitation of late 20th century city life--all junk, improvisations and random brutality--is your idea of civilization. Thunderdome brilliantly clarifies that irony. Its high-bounding excesses of action simultaneously satisfy and satirize the passion for heedless viciousness that so profoundly moves the action film's prime audience, urban adolescent males."

In other words, the Thunderdome setting provides both the setting for a fantastic, inventive action sequence and a context for some social commentary on our world in the 1980s; the world in which American Gladiators was later born; a world in which action stars such as Stallone and Schwarzenneger were tops at the box office. 

Late in the Thunderdome sequence, Max is introduced to another compelling element of Bartertown's law: The Wheel. As in, "Bust a Deal, Face the Wheel."    

Here, Max faces random justice in front of a giant spinning wheel that satirizes in shape and form the titular Wheel of Fortune (1983 - present) from the popular TV game show with Pat Sajak and Vanna White. Only here the selections on the wheel are matters of life and death: Gulag, hard labor, acquittal, death, Aunty's Choice, forfeit goods, etc. 

"Justice is only a roll of the dice...a turn of the wheel," stresses Dr. Dealgood, importantly. Once more, I should stress that this legal system makes perfect if perverse sense, given the circumstances.  

The "survivors" in this world didn't make it because they were smart...they survived the apocalypse because of luck. Even Aunty Entity acknowledges this fact...she was nobody until the apocalypse made her somebody. The people of Bartertown believe that fickle fate accounts for their survival and continuance, and the Wheel is a kind of legal expression of that fickle sense of fate or destiny.

In toto, the early scenes in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome -- at Bartertown -- reveal much of value about human nature. Aunty Entity wants complete and total control of the town, and is unwilling to share it with Master in the Underworld. One can certainly understand why: he's capricious and enjoys her public humiliation. 

Still, it's difficult to claim the mantel of civilization in one breath while ordering a hit on "family" the next, as Max points out to Aunty.   

But thematically, there's something important going on here.  As one character states in the film, "no matter where you go; there you are."  Mankind -- no matter his aspirations; no matter his new forms of government -- remains the same breed; the same ambitious animal. Even after a world-war and wholesale destruction of the planet surface, Bartertown is still a savage place.

Everything about Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome's first act is filled with invention: the location, the camera-work, the nature of Aunty's entourage, the social commentary, and even the significance of Max's role as the outsider (the film literally compares him to Eastwood's "man with no name" at the inception of the Thunderdome fight).  

These are the reasons why critics adore the film. And in addition to all these accomplishments, the movie also achieves a difficult balance in terms of the sequel format: Thunderdome spins new and interesting territory out of the franchise world rather than simply recycling and revisiting familiar elements from it.

It's the Story of Us All...

But something goes dramatically wrong in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome's final act.  The movie's intellectual, harsh-minded tone gives way to a sort of Hollywood-ish blockbuster mind-set which stresses easy humor and pat solutions over invention and social commentary. 

Cute kids dressed as native warriors take center stage, and the movie attempts to derive humor from their misunderstanding of pre-apocalypse technology (like phonograph records).   his is the "Ewok Paradigm" that also, to some extent, scuttled Return of the Jedi (1983), though admittedly on a lesser scale.

What's the problem? Well, again, it's all about tone. Suddenly Mad Max is a figure of fun and humor, running into a hallway of armed goons, and then running back in the opposite direction towards camera  (like Han Solo on the Death Star in Star Wars). Or worse, punching a bad guy through a vent grate in a moment timed for broad comedy instead of thrills and intensity.

Suddenly, bad guys are getting decked with pots and pans by crockery-wielding tykes. And a dark, monstrous bully-figure like Ironbar morphs before our eyes into a live-action Wily Coyote, surviving deadly incident after deadly incident unscathed until all sense of reality around the character bleeds away, sacrificed for callow, crowd-pleasing visual jokes (like an upturned middle finger as his last gesture of defiance). 

There are some folks who dislike the latter half of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome simply because of the presence of cute children in the action, and I understand that objection.  Again, looking back to The Road Warrior, there was an absolutely unsentimental and brilliant child character: the Feral Kid.  The movie did not play favorites with him, sentimentalize or romanticize him in any way.  He was simply a wild child who grew up in a terrible world and who befriended Max.

Beyond Thunderdome works hard to earn the presence of these children in this particular chapter.  One child even dies in the film, devoured by a sandstorm in the desert. And I understand why the moviemakers wanted children here in the first place: to represent our future; our tomorrows.

But the children have a whimsical way of speaking that feels tonally out-of-place ("Tomorrow-orrow Land,"), and the movie resorts to squeezing gags out of these children (like learning French, or learning how to drive a car) and it's all just too damn cute.

"Cute" is the last thing that fans of The Road Warrior were seeking in a sequel.

Again, I get it.  It's about redemption. It's about Max -- who lost a child himself -- coming to the defense of other children. In that act (and in his final sacrificial move in battle...), Max finally returns to the human race. I appreciate that arc very much; but wish that the obvious humor and terminal cutesies had been more studiously avoided. The same story could have been vetted in less schmaltzy terms. It's the tone of the thing; not necessarily the story itself that I object to.

And alas, it isn't just the presence of cute children that feels like a bow to Hollywood mainstream entertainment in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome's final act, it is also the very resolution of the drama.  A railway line conveniently runs out of Bartertown so Max and the children can escape by train, and then the film provides a thoroughly conventional car chase-styled action scene, with the train at the center of the action. This feels like a very, very pale retread of the blazing, sustained tanker truck pursuit at the end of The Road Warrior. 

Once more, a point of contrast: The Road Warrior's tanker battle absolutely refused to play favorites. The film's female lead character, played by Farscape's gorgeous Virginia Hey, died ingloriously in that hair-raising, exciting sequence.  There was just no sentimentality. 

But in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, kids survive a similar assault by heroically wielding iron cooking pans against ruthless, amoral soldiers. It just feels...wrong. Would this technique have worked against Humongous?

On one hand, you don't want a sequel (or a sequel to a sequel, in this case) to repeat everything from the previous film, but the final battle of Beyond Thunderdome feels like Road Warrior-lite.  Or more appropriately, The Road Warrior re-fashioned for mass, Hollywood-consumption.

In its last twist -- a return to the destroyed 20th century city -- Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome recovers some from the battle's misstep.  This moment has a valedictory, tragic feel.  

Re-building our civilization must begin, and here we detect the first steps; as well as the romantic, hopeful act of lighting candles to bring the desert warriors back. 

It's a nice, emotional closing touch that suggests an optimistic future,  but yet -- again -- it's hard to deny that the Feral Kid's closing narration (as an old man) in The Road Warrior achieves the same goal, only with words instead of images.

Also -- and I realize some people with quibble with me on this -- is it right that Max brings down Bartertown at all?  I think this is a debatable point.  

As bad as it surely is, Bartertown is still the best thing going in this post-apocalyptic world. Violence is limited to the Thunderdome, and there is law there...as well as commerce.  Order has been carved out of chaos; even if it isn't perfect.

Would it not have been better for Max to somehow bring some checks and balances to the place, so it wasn't simply a tyranny?  (And really, isn't that what Master Blaster offered in Underworld in the first place?)  

Going back to our own antiquity, would we cheer a hero in early human culture who brought down the first civilization, even if it did boast a "draconian" code or sense of justice?  I don't think so.  Even imperfect steps towards civilization can be vital ones.

The destruction of Bartertown in the film has never rung true to me. Who is to say that Savannah Nix and her brood -- living in a burnt-out shell of a building -- aren't going to be forced to navigate issues of law and order, justice and punishment too? Will their answers be better than Auntie Entity's?  More humane? Less pragmatic? The movie never really answers that question in satisfactory fashion; it just uses the symbol of children to suggest innocence and a better tomorrow.

So how do you assess a film with an absolutely brilliant first act and a relatively derivative, by the numbers, Hollywood last act?  Well, "this is the truth of it:"  the movie works more often than not; and succeeds more so if you consider it as the final, closing act of a grand trilogy.  There has to be a wrap-up, and it has to be satisfactory (meaning - happy).  We get that in Beyond Thunderdome, even if we don't necessarily want the closure. 

So in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome audiences get one of the greatest, most imaginative fight scenes in recent decades, and a fitting conclusion to a terrific post-apocalyptic saga.  The downside is that audiences also get cute kids, and Hollywood-styled, crowd-pleasing humor.

Do you want the deal or not?