MM3 Tina Turner - Yay or Nay?

[leadcounsel]

Who here liked or disliked Tina Turner in MM3?

Note, I give MM an A+. I give MM2 an A+. Love these two movies. I give MM3 a strong C letter grade. I felt Turner was a neutral character, who unexplainedly showed a total reversal in character. As someone who has studied Sociology, and has a lot of human science education and world experience on human nature (particularly of ruthless people), this was a really screwy twist that was terrible for the movie.

Auntie was a ruthless, politically savvy, power hungry woman. She says she went from nothing to top of the world after the war. Clearly she did that through violent political influence, and ruled with an iron fist. Her henchmen were lethal. Exhibit A is the 'audition' where her henchmen use lethal force to try to kill Max, unsuccessfully. You have to assume they had killed others who auditioned. She essentially hired Max as a hitman. Max is also desperate and ruthless, and accepts the job as a hitman. (Note, I didn't really care for this level of ruthlessness in Max. I view him as a good person, who only kills when someone deserved it or in self defense.). Max redeems himself in the Thunderdome by not killing Blaster when he learns he is a downs-syndrome man.

Auntie's henchmen ruthlessly kill Blaster in Thunderdome. Auntie then essentially signs Max's death warrant, sending him into the desert to die. She's ruthless. She's tried to kill him once during the audition, for merely turning up. She writes him off for crossing her and busting the deal in Thunderdome.

Max survives, and turns up again. A real thorne in Auntie's side. He breaks in, rescues Master and frees prisoners, totally ruins the key methane infrastructure of Bartertown. He steals the train, which collapses the methane pits, probably killing many pigs (which is by itself a life sentence of hard labor). He leads Auntie and her henchmen on a 100 mile chase, wherein Auntie has several of her henchmen killed (including her loyal Ironbar), and many of her irreplaceable vehicles destroyed. At the end, he kills Ironbar, destroys vehicles, and aids in the escape of Master and prisoners. He's captured on the battlefield, and held at gunpoint by Auntie and her henchmen.

Now, if the Toe Cutter, Night Rider, Wez, or Humungus captured him after all of this, he would have been tortured and killed, perhaps drug behind a car, burned, or beheaded. He certainly would have been killed.

So, what does the ruthless, politically savvy, "rule with fear" do, in the face of her henchmen who have Max dead to rights? Does she imprison him to rebuild Bartertown? Does she Max as her personal sex slave? Does she cut off his head to put on a pike at the entrance of Bartertown and a reminder of her power? Nope. She leaves him on the battlefield, along with several useful vehicle parts, and her dead henchmen. What a let down. That ending was an automatic full letter grade reduction on the movie for me. Up until the ending, I would have given the movie a "B" grade. There were a few head-scratchers for me: First, I didn't care for the kids and some of that carefree silliness as I didn't feel that it "fit" in the world. A merry band of teenage survivors was akin to the Ewoks defeating the Empire with sticks and rocks in Star Wars Return of the Jedi. Next, the decision to use the actor from MM2 to play a very similar, yet different role in MM3 was also really puzzling... The skill of a pilot is probably almost unheard of in the MM2 and MM3 world. Yet here we have this pilot who appears in both, same actor and different character with perfect teeth?? Say what? He has a young blonde boy, perhaps the offspring from the Gyro captain and that blonde from MM2? And both he and Max appear to recognize each other... just really confusing.

So, I just found Auntie's totally inconsistent character reversal in sparing Max's life (after he ruined hers) totally unbelievable. And, our hero survived only on the good graces of Auntie. Not very heroic really. He doesn't kill Auntie, and she allows him to live. And that ending was a total let down for me. Huh? Say what??

Max had previously sought revenge or otherwise terminated all the bad guys and most of their henchmen. Auntie, who was evil, and tried to kill him and double crossed him, drives off in the sunset, allowing Max to live. WTF kind of ending is that?

Anyway, that's my viewpoint.

[pauli77]

Max had previously sought revenge or otherwise terminated all the bad guys and most of their henchmen. Auntie, who was evil, and tried to kill him and double crossed him, drives off in the sunset, allowing Max to live. WTF kind of ending is that?

Anyway, that's my viewpoint.

Well, the more I've watched Thunderdome, the more I think it is a really great children's film and so for obvious reasons a beheading or death ending is right lol.

On Auntie, I don't think she was psychotic in the way Toecutter was or even a goal driven psychotic like Humungus. I think Auntie was a tough woman who could order murder but wasn't a stone cold killer.

Also, I think the fact she calls him soldier at the end is significant. I think she sees herself with a bit of a soldier's code and I think she admired his tenacity.

[scfc68]

I think it was also a way of saying things are just, very, very slowly starting to get better. The film ends on a fairly optimistic note of society beginning to rebuild.
She's pretty ruthless but not evil in the way of he Acolytes or The Marauders were in the prev films

I had been thinking of starting a thread for a reappraisal of Thunderdome so I guess this has kickstarted me...

[MachRider]

On Auntie, I don't think she was psychotic in the way Toecutter was or even a goal driven psychotic like Humungus. I think Auntie was a tough woman who could order murder but wasn't a stone cold killer.

Also, I think the fact she calls him soldier at the end is significant. I think she sees herself with a bit of a soldier's code and I think she admired his tenacity.

This. She believes in karma. She let Max go because he has proven his worth in her eyes. She sees herself in him: a determined survivor. Killing him then would be way out of her character. Because she's a survivor herself, she already had a backup plan made up at that moment. She knew how to go on from there (rebuilding Bartertown, going somewhere else, whatever) and killing Max wasnt part of the plan. War was over. She lost.

Or in other words, she knew she's f*cked the moment she saw Max back in Bartertown. Actually she went into damage-control mode when Max challenged her in Thunderdome (we had a deal!). THAT was the moment Max defeated her. It just took her some time to realize and come to terms with it.

Now if somehow that plane failed to get off and she got Master back, I have no doubt Max would end up shuffling shit or in thunderdome again. Or just dead.

Tina Turner did decent acting job too. Nothing too impressive, but still beter than most celebrity-actors do. Ever see 50-Cent "acting"?

[pauli77]

On Auntie, I don't think she was psychotic in the way Toecutter was or even a goal driven psychotic like Humungus. I think Auntie was a tough woman who could order murder but wasn't a stone cold killer.

Also, I think the fact she calls him soldier at the end is significant. I think she sees herself with a bit of a soldier's code and I think she admired his tenacity.

This. She believes in karma. She let Max go because he has proven his worth in her eyes. She sees herself in him: a determined survivor. Killing him then would be way out of her character. Because she's a survivor herself, she already had a backup plan made up at that moment. She knew how to go on from there (rebuilding Bartertown, going somewhere else, whatever) and killing Max wasnt part of the plan. War was over. She lost.

Or in other words, she knew she's f*cked the moment she saw Max back in Bartertown. Actually she went into damage-control mode when Max challenged her in Thunderdome (we had a deal!). THAT was the moment Max defeated her. It just took her some time to realize and come to terms with it.

Now if somehow that plane failed to get off and she got Master back, I have no doubt Max would end up shuffling shit or in thunderdome again. Or just dead.

Tina Turner did decent acting job too. Nothing too impressive, but still beter than most celebrity-actors do. Ever see 50-Cent "acting"?

Yeah.

I wonder as well if Auntie initially saw Max as a challenge to her leadership. She was all about control and been number 1 that she must have thought, for the first time, here's a guy who is my equal. The reality ofc is that Max would have no desire to lead.

She does a good job in my eyes. I would love a biography of her survival prior to Bartertown. In many ways, she is far more interesting than Toecutter, who is your comicbook psychotic.

[MFP_1138]

I really liked Tina Turner in MM3. I thought she was interesting, charismatic, and sexy. And she was an interesting take on a villain instead of being just another Humungus.

Her character was also multi-faceted. Auntie was tough, but she wasn't really a killer. She could have killed Max during his "audition" but she didn't and instead offered him fresh fruit and water. Max called her out on being hired to challenge Master Blaster to a fight in Thunderdome ("I see, real civilized") because technically if Max killed MB it was still within the law, even if the reasons why were somewhat shady ("The reasons don't concern you, just the conditions"). When Max refuses to kill MB, Auntie "plays by the rules" to prevent anarchy in Bartertown and makes Max face the wheel, again following their established laws. During the attack on Bartertown and things are blowing up, she addresses the town that they will rebuild and re-establish order.

As for why she let him go at the end...she definitely respects him in a militaristic regard ("Goodbye Soldier"), but no doubt also respects his adaptability to survive. Max not only beat the previous Gulag punishment, but came back to invade Thunderdome to steal Master away.

Considering how she laughs at him at the end basically says either she had a change of heart, just doesn't care at that point, or she figured he couldn't survive on nothing for a 2nd time and would just let fate take over.

[Redd4]

She was good. After Max got the kids off, there was no reason to kill him, and she respected what he did. She knew he was a good man, and let him live--she walked her talk. She respected Max.

[TheFilmist]

Auntie was never really meant to be a villain. She was meant to act as a parallel to Max - if you remember that these films are essentially textbooks of Campbellian archetypes, then it's pretty obvious. She's the hero who became a tyrant, and succumbs to the necessities of being a leader. We see her emotional vulnerability in her political back and forth with Master Blaster, how she's very truly trying to keep Bartertown together even if the means through which she does so are underhanded, and at the end, her essential sense of honesty rings through.

[MWFV8]

While Auntie is the head of the antagonistic force, it does seem that she's had to accept the world sadly isn't full of people like Max and thus the only way to keep order in Bartertown is to become ruthless. She's a good leader of bad people.

[Mud Guts]

Max was originally going to die at the end of TD but Miller changed his mind, so Aunty had to let him live.