![]() Once the action shifts away from Bartertown and into the community of children that lives just beyond its borders, the theme for Max and the theme for the Children begin to take over. The second half of the cue is an astonishing piece, part action theme, part twisted circus, in which Jarre’s orchestra performs a gyrating, almost obscenely upbeat melodic idea – gleeful death and dismemberment as entertainment for the unwashed masses. The fanfare itself is actually introduced several cues earlier, in the first few moments of “Master Blaster/The Manipulator/Embargo/Entity Humiliated,” cleverly planting the subliminal seed of how the Blaster is the undefeated king of the Thunderdome, and considers it to be his domain. The impressive “Thunderdome” cue is one of the score’s most impressive constructs a rich, but slightly damaged-sounding fanfare flourish that heralds the arrivals of the combatants to the arena like Miklós Rózsa introducing the charioteers into the coliseum in Ben-Hur. There are even some stylistic echoes of other Jarre scores of the period, including Enemy Mine and The Bride, as well as a few subtle allusions to the music he would later write for projects like A Walk in the Clouds. The themes are often offset against Jarre’s wholly unique personal suspense and drama style, which often makes use of unusual, jarring rhythmic ideas, unexpected instrumental textures, and shifts in tone which keep the listener off balance. The Bartertown theme and Aunty’s theme dominate much of the score’s first half, with cues like “Accents 2 Suspense,” “Tragic Saxophone,” “The Discovery,” and “Master in Underworld/Desert Hallucinating” providing variations and developments. A throbbing, dirty jazz theme for Aunty Entity herself appears in the second half of “Heartbeat/Pigrock,” a sordid saxophone melody with a light rock undercurrent and an Ondes Martenot interlude which – like Aunty herself – would be sort of sexy if is wasn’t for all the grime and grease. Steel drums, anvils, and a plethora of additional metallic percussion come together to illustrate Bartertown’s primal, animalistic society where dog eats dog and survival of the fittest is literally the only way to live. After the explosive opening “Main Title,” which pits all manner of percussive ideas against a lonely saxophone and a cooing children’s choir, Max’s theme opens the second cue, a dissonant, eerie piece for Ondes Martenot and didgeridoo that speaks both to the protagonist’s isolation and desperation, and to the arid landscape of the Australian outback where the film is set. Jarre’s score is built around several recurring themes – most notably for Max himself, for Bartertown and Aunty Entity, and for the community of children Max encounters in the film’s second half. Brian May’s scores were surprisingly traditional and classical, albeit imbued with a certain sense of 1970s anarchy, and Jarre’s score follows in their footsteps, making use of the massed ranks of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and augmenting it with a vast array of percussion items and specialty instruments, including three anvils, six pianos, a didgeridoo, a wailing Ondes Martenot, and even a saxophone-heavy jazz section to capture the roaring mayhem of Bartertown itself. Whatever the reason, Miller certainly got a superb replacement in the form of Jarre, who of course knows a thing or two about scoring films set in the desert. The first two Mad Max films were scored by Aussie composer Brian May, who was only 51 years old in 1985 and still very active, and it remains unclear what led to Miller making the switch on this film – the prevailing thinking is that the studio wanted a bigger name. ![]() The score for Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome was composed, somewhat surprisingly, by French Oscar-winner Maurice Jarre. The film was an enormous success – the highest grossing film of the original trilogy – and further cemented Mel Gibson’s box office bankability as a leading man his next film would be the smash hit buddy-cop action movie Lethal Weapon, two years later. In exchange for returning to him his vehicle – which she has scavenged – she forces him in to conflict with Master Blaster, a dwarf and his hulking masked bodyguard, who control Bartertown’s fuel supply to resolve the conflict, Max finds himself taking part in gladiatorial games inside the ‘thunderdome’, an enormous metal arena where people duel to the death. Fifteen years after the events of Mad Max II, Max finds himself in Bartertown, a vicious society of scavengers and opportunists overseen by the ruthless Aunty Entity, played by Tina Turner. The third in director George Miller’s series of Mad Max movies, Beyond Thunderdome once again starred Mel Gibson and continued the adventures of the former Australian Highway Patrol officer Max Rockatansky, as he tries to survive in a post-apocalyptic society.
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