The second sequel—the third chapter overall—is a very different Mad Max movie than the first two. It’s kooky and a bit extra.

| May 31, 2024

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome took the bold step of eschewing the chase-bound thrills of its predecessors and opted for a stranger dive into what the Wasteland had to offer.

| May 29, 2024

The biggest issue here lies in the story’s drastic 180-degree turn veering to a mainstream-friendly, Lord of the Flies-like territory.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | May 22, 2024

If Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome doesn't live up to the pace and power of its predecessors, its richer visual style and more substantial storyline and characterizations, are a welcome, if not wholly successful, change in emphasis.

| Jul 22, 2022

While Miller explores his individual tonal shifts in his three disparate acts, he uses a visual sense and grandiosity that had become the mainstream—a blockbuster method popularized by Spielberg and George Lucas.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 21, 2022

…it’s a watchable, big budget lo-fi, sci-fi spectacle, but something of an unnecessary pit-stop in the development of Max Rockatansky, and a boring hero we could all probably do without right now…

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 9, 2022

The suspense is still effective and the climactic railroad chase at the conclusion handsomely echoes the other outrageous stunts of the trilogy.

| Original Score: 6/10 | Sep 6, 2020

This is a wild, imaginative action film that truly shows what the power of cinema can accomplish in even the direst of situations.

| Original Score: 8/10 | May 1, 2020

In a sense, it's sort of the Return of the Jedi of the Mad Max series: It's solid, it's engaging, but yeah, it's also a kind of a step down from the previous two

| Nov 9, 2018

It's comic books in a Cuisinart, all costumes and cute monikers and no story, a sort of case history of just what's wrong with sequelitis.

| Jan 4, 2018

It's hard not to wonder why Beyond Thunderdome isn't better.

| Original Score: 6/10 | May 17, 2015

Outrageously sinister, unblinkingly violent, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome is everything that fans of the futurist road warrior could hope for and more.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 13, 2015

This middle portion of the picture becomes dangerously preachy, but just before we and Max are bored, director Miller returns Max to his roots, a screaming chase sequence through a desertlike Australian landscape.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 13, 2015

Beyond Thunderdome is the third in George Miller's Mad Max series, and it closes the trilogy like a lightning blast followed by the ominous, resonant drone of thunder.

| May 13, 2015

There is something to get excited about in this third chapter of the Mad Max series: the powerhouse presence of Tina Turner.

| May 13, 2015

The directors, George Miller and George Ogilvie, borrow from every source they can find; movie buffs can pass the time spotting the Lynch shot, the Leone shot, the Jodorowski shot, and all kinds of others.

| May 13, 2015

The third in Mel Gibson's sci-fi series is the weakest, but it remains a hugely entertaining futuristic spectacular.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 13, 2015

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome isn't a bad movie. It has entertaining sections, decent performances and more than a few provocative images. But it also has a major shortcoming: It's too darned sane.

| May 13, 2015

This infusion of money and production by a major studio gives the film a slightly more polished look, but is inferior to the previous two films in every other way.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | May 13, 2015

If "Mad Max" embraced a geneticist's acumen and "The Road Warrior" a philosopher's spirit, "Thunderdome" is about cold, hard economics - not just in Bartertown's transactions but the market expectations that come with the receipt of studio funding.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 8, 2015