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?

Guest Post: The Drop (2025)

Getting The Drop on Meghan Fahy

By Jonas Schwartz-Owen 

The Drop, a new thriller directed by Christopher Landon (Happy Death Day), lifts storylines from a slew of films, classics like Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much and Wes Craven’s Red Eye, to entertaining schlock like the Doris Day shocker Midnight Lace. Landon has a strong sense of tension and keeps this film entertaining despite well worn material. But it’s Meghan Fahy, who stole scenes in White Lotus’ season two, who keeps audiences riveted. 

Violet (Fahy) ventures onto a blind date for the first time since her husband’s death with Henry, a handsome photographer (Brandon Sklenar). She starts the evening apprehensive and hopeful, mingling with the bartender (Gabrielle Ryan), the unctuous restaurant pianist (Ed Weeks), and other desperate diners, until her date arrives. The evening would have been wonderful, except for the messages bombarding her phone challenging her to play a game. Violet ignores these annoyances until the anonymous stranger demands she kill her date. Her terrorizer appears to have eyes and ears everywhere, and as wily as Violet can get, the harasser appears several steps ahead, and with an armed accomplice inside HER house, with her sister and son. 

Landon, who has taken the tropes of other films like Groundhog Day and Freaky Friday and reinvented them as horror comedies like Happy Death Day and Freaky, doesn’t pervert the genre as much this time. The plot points are rather standard, which is a bit disappointing. To be fair, he didn’t write Drop, unlike the others. Jillian Jacobs and Chris Roach of Fantasy Island and Truth or Dare, two horror duds, had.  Maybe had Landon rewritten the film it would have that sense of something radical. As a director, Landon successfully builds  Hitchcockian tension: a character isolated in a crowded room, long camera moves up to heaven as if god is omniscient but impotent to help. He also achieves a manipulation of sound and of silence to tweak the pressure. 

Fahy is always so likable and here she has the audience completely in her corner, praying for her safety. The cast is charming, with comedian Jeffery Self riotous as the waiter with no sense of personal space. Once they are revealed, the glib villain makes you want to reach through the screen and throttle them, making their eventual downfall all the more delicious. 

In the last year, Christopher Landon has taken single duties in films.  He only wrote Heart Eyes, and only directed this.  Since those films where he has complete control are his most entertaining and successful, perhaps he needs to return to double dipping

40 Years Ago: Back to the Future (1985)

Do you want go back in time? Well, just consider, Back to the Future is 40 years old! Now that fact will take you back!

Yet it’s an appropriate thought with which to commence this review, because Back to the Future and its sequels concern the subject of family, and the inexorable passage of our generations, the passage of time.

Specifically, the trilogy involves the cycle of falling in love, marrying, and raising children. 

Whether we are riding horses or hover boards, the things that matter remain identical, no matter the calendar year. 

To quote Huey Lewis and the News, that’s the “power of love,” right?  

It’s the universal condition that exists regardless of our historical epoch or specific technological know-how.

Intriguingly, Back to the Future’s leitmotif is not a common one, either, for a Hollywood-made time travel film. 

Historically, movies about time travel concern bigger, more “event”-oriented issues. 

What if a man went to the future and discovered the end of the human race? That was the subject of The Time Machine (1960), for example.  

Or what if the U.S. aircraft carrier Nimitz went back in time to the hours before the attack on Pearl Harbor, in 1941 and its crew had the chance to turn the tide of the war on the day it began? That was the subject of The Final Countdown (1980).

Back to the Future differs from the vast majority of time travel movies because of the stakes. The danger suggested by mission failure, simply, is not Earth shattering. 

What’s at stake instead is a personal apocalypse, the “negation” of one’s self because the right prospective family members didn’t connect in the past, and therefore didn’t forge the present that makes you…you.

The danger in all three Back to the Future films is of time being rewritten in a fashion, that, broadly-speaking, does not influence a lot of people, but dramatically influences a few individuals…a family. 

Indeed, the film playfully charts this idea by revealing how Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) does change the course of time on a micro-basis, and how largely, those changes are inconsequential. 

Unnoticed even.

Twin Pines Mall in Hill Valley becomes Lone Pine Mall because a pine tree is accidentally destroyed in 1955. But the location and existence of the mall remains the same.

If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around to notice, does the time line care?

The overall lesson, perhaps, of Back to the Future is that time both connects us and separates us from those we love most. 

Though we may all be at different points on our individual journey or chronology, we have all been -- or one day will be -- the person attending his or her first school dance, or the one who grows up fearing rejection.  

Thus, Back to the Future is about seeing and understanding that parents, children, and even grandparents are all the same, even if the trappings that we believe define them are so very different. 

Back to the Future is, therefore, a generation gap movie that decides, in the end, that there is no generation gap at all, just the passage of time that blocks us, somehow, from recognizing how similar to one another we all are.

“That was the day I invented time travel…”

In 1985, eccentric scientist Doc Brown (Lloyd) unveils to his teenage friend, Marty McFly (Fox) a time machine that he has invented. Equipped with a “flux capacitor,” Doc’s time machine is actually a car, a DeLorean that will break the time barrier when it accelerates to 88 miles an hour.

Marty, who has an unhappy home life because his father, George (Crispin Glover) is constantly being bullied by a thug named Biff Tannen (Thomas Wilson), ends up in the time machine when Libyan terrorists attack and presumably kill Doc Brown.

Marty inadvertently travels back in time to 1955, the year his parents fell in love and shared a first kiss at the Enchantment under the Sea dance. 

But Marty accidentally interferes in their relationship, preventing Lorraine (Lea Thompson) and George from falling in love.  

Marty consults with the Doc Brown of 1955, who determines that a bolt of electricity can get the DeLorean back to the future, and suggests that Marty must play Cyrano for George, so as to restore Marty’s personal time-line.

But even in this era, Biff is a danger to the McFly family, and the family’s fear of rejection could destroy everything.  

Meanwhile, Marty must also determine if he should share with Doc a foreknowledge of his apparent death in 1985…

“Whatever you need to tell me, I’ll learn through the natural progression of time.”

It is apt, perhaps, that the central symbol of Back to the Future is a broken clock; the clock that decorates Hill Valley’s Courthouse.  

As the film opens, the clock has been stuck in place for thirty years, inoperative. It thus no longer performs its intended function: to tell time (though it is still right twice a day.)  

Instead, the clock commemorates an event that everybody remembers. a storm that hit Hill Valley.

In a sense, this is how Marty exists too. 

He is “stuck” in a present that is not entirely happy or satisfying. His father, George, is bullied by his boss, Biff, and his mother, Lorraine, seems to have given up on herself and life. Even Marty’s siblings don’t seem able to realize their potential. Not a one of the McFlys seems to possess any self-confidence at all. 

The stories that George and Lorraine tell about their high school years, and the way that they fell in love, similarly share a “stuck” feeling. Those moments in 1955 are frozen, as if in amber, heard again and again, unchanging, and don’t seem to inform or impact the present. The stories sound more like the beginning of a prison sentence than of an epic love story

If George and Lorraine love each other so much, why don’t they try harder to be happy, to help their children, or to make something of their past? Why they didn't imbue their children with the notion that the future is unwritten, and they can make it whatever they want it to be (to paraphrase Doc in Back to the Future Part III)?

Marty then goes back to 1955, and sees all these (personally) historic and significant moments not as frozen in amber, forever unalterable...but as infinitely malleable; as ones that point a future in one direction, or in another. 

In the end, Marty finds he can tweak the future so that his parents aren’t stuck in the same rut. Through practical experience, in fact, George realizes he doesn't have to be afraid.  He stands up for himself to Biff, in order to save the girl he loves, Lorraine.

The only unfortunate side-effect in the movie, artistically-speaking, of this character trajectory is that it comes down -- in very 1980s fashion -- to money. 

Marty returns to his present and finds that he owns an expensive new pick-up truck, and that his parents are newly fit, youthful, and confident.  His Dad is a best-selling author.

The signs of their success in this time line are, alas, largely monetary. Even Marty’s brother (Marc McClure) has been assimilated into mainstream “success,” dressing in a business suit and tie instead of a fast food restaurant’s uniform.  

The overall point here is a good one: if you can overcome your fears of rejection, or learn to stand up for yourself, you can succeed in life.  It's great that Marty teaches his Dad that lesson, and learns it for himself.

But in a sense, the message plays out in Back to the Future like a yuppie fantasy. Change the past in your favor and you’ll be welcomed back to the present with an upwardly mobile life-style.

The later films, perhaps conscious of such a (presumably unintended) message, travel in a different, and wholly more worthwhile direction. Marty overcomes his fear of being called “chicken” but is not rewarded with money or rock-and roll-stardom, only the knowledge that he will avoid a crippling car accident.  

Thus the two sequels to Back to the Future seem more in line with the lyrics of “The Power of Love,” which state “don’t take money; don’t take fame, don’t need a credit card to ride this train” because love is not about those things that money brings you. It is about the things, instead, that “might even save your life.”

Despite the unnecessarily materialistic outcome of the film's valid and worthwhile message, Back to the Future is exceptionally clever (though its first sequel is even cleverer, frankly…), in the way it diagrams Marty’s journey as one of personal discovery and knowledge.

The things that he might not have really taken the time to care about, like the history of Hill Valley’s Clock Tower, or the Enchantment under the Sea Dance where his parents first kiss, are actually crucial elements that give rise to his very existence. They are as important, in a sense, to his psychic gestalt as his DNA is. 

One thread gets pulled out, and everything falls apart for Marty. He suddenly must also reckon with his Mom and Dad not as parents, but as real, honest-to-goodness people; as vulnerable, flawed human beings.  He sees that Lorraine was not "born a nun," but a young woman looking to buck authority and find love.  He sees that his Dad, like him, is fearful of rejection, and that he assiduously hides his real passion: writing science fiction stories.

The later Back to the Future films deepen significantly the friendship between Marty and Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd), and so further enhance the idea of personal connection as the motivator which makes new and better futures possible, but the same idea is also here, with Marty forced to reckon with his parents as impulsive teenagers.  He has to care for them, as friends.

This viewpoint gives him a new perspective on them, and also on himself. When the moment comes, Marty is able to perform in public, on stage, and not suffer from his familial fear of failure, because he has seen how his dad cowers in the face of a challenge.

Yet -- and here's the rub -- to see and recognize this particular foible in his father, Marty must see George (Crispin Glover) as a young man; as, roughly, a contemporary. 

It’s all too easy to gaze at a middle-aged parent, perhaps and draw the conclusion that age -- thus time itself -- separates you from him, when the contrary is true. Our parents (or our children contrarily), are not alien beings separated from us by strange ways. They are…us, only at a different point in their lives.

The movie actually literalizes this clever idea n-- of generational differences making people seem like aliens -- through visual imagery.

Marty can only get through to his stubborn father by becoming, actually, an E.T., an alien. He dresses up in a bio-hazard suit as "Darth Vader from the Planet Vulcan," and in that guise, is able to make progress with his dad.

Commendably, Back to the Future is one of those films that gets better once you factor in the sequels. Although the critics hated Part II in 1990, I find it to be the strongest of the three films; the Empire Strikes Back of this particular saga.  

But taken as a whole, the three films, by depicting the McFly/Tannen generations of 1885, 1955 and 2015, reveal how the the same story -- the power of love -- gets repeated, one generation to the next.

Every era has its chase in the municipal square, involving either horses, skate-boards or hover-crafts, 

Every era has a karmic (and manure-laden...) comeuppance for a bully.  

Every era involves a love story (Clara and Doc in 1885; Lorraine and George in 1955; Marty and Jennifer in 1985 and 2015), and every generation reveals how places and things change despite the fact that the story of life -- the power of love -- remains the same.

We see the life of the Clock Tower, from construction to damage, to intended re-construction. 

We see the birth of Lyon Estates as a great place to live, and then, years later, dinged by grafitti. 

We see the same in terms of Hilldale, the new development being built in Hill Valley where, in 2015, Marty and Jennifer will live.

The overall idea is, again, simply, that though objects, instruments and trends change radically, the essence of human life, and family, remains the same.

The great thing, of course, is that these ruminations about generations are set against rollicking action scenes (like the rousing skateboard chase), romantic interludes (like the first kiss at the dance), and, of course, a great sense of humor.  

On that final front, Back to the Future is extremely funny, whether pondering the journey of Ronald Reagan -- from Cattle Queen of Montana (1954) to winning the White House again in 1984 -- or imagining that the perfect vehicle for time travel is a DeLorean

As I noted above, these days I actually prefer Back to the Future Part II, but it was this 1985 film that started off the franchise, and proved a gigantic box office hit in 1985. I believe Back to the Future resonated with audiences then (as with now), because Marty's story is not so much about time travel, as the way that time travel can help us bridge a generation gap,