Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome: Enter Aunty Entity

Despite a brutal battle in a metal cage and countless automotive fireballs, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985), the third instalment of the Mad Max series, was a point of relative calm and humanity, with threads of humour, hope and compassion, and a pack of scrappy munchkins who warm up the tone. Most significantly, the casting of Tina Turner as the post-apocalyptic leader Aunty Entity moved it into blockbuster territory. As the hinge point of the five Mad Max films, it opened up the franchise to emotional complexity – and blazed the way for the female warriors who would be the focus of its 21^st-century chapters.  

 In this clip, we see Aunty Entity for the first time, and her entrance is worthy of a noir heroine. Max (Mel Gibson) has been taken to her penthouse, where the soundtrack is provided by her personal saxophonist. She emerges from filmy chiffon curtains with the shoulder pads of a mutated Joan Crawford, the shaved forehead of a Tudor beauty and immense earrings made from auto springs. Turner, who was riding the high of a successful comeback on the back of her hit album Private Dancer (1984), gamely shaved her own hair for the role and wears over 30 kilos of chain mail with effortless swagger. Her body language and the visual setting of her in these queenly frames clearly establishes her power, even before she begins to bargain with Max. (The motion of her hand as she imperiously beckons him closer was Turner’s own idea.)  

Thunderdome may not attract the critical adulation lavished on Mad Max 2 and Fury Road, but the intricacy of its world-building, its emotional light and shade, Turner’s blazing presence and its sheer haute-’80s bombast make it a to-the-max Max to be treasured.  

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