Bust a Deal and Face the Wheel

The comparisons began as soon as we stepped off on the tarmac. The dust in the air, the throngs of people each with their own agendas, the pervasive presence of weaponry wherever you look, the stink of poop in the air: KAF is Barter town.


For those that aren't familiar with the story of Mad Max, and his adventures in the post-apocalyptic Wasteland of central Australia, I must refer you to the movies Mad Max, Mad Max II: The Road Warrior and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. It is in this last installment that Max (Mel Gibson), finds himself under the thumb of Auntie Entity (Tina "I'm Not Even Kidding" Turner), the founder and ruler of Bartertown. This oasis is a center for trade, and all life revolves around business, electricity, and the pig sh*t they use to generate the electricity.

Differences are settled in a pretty reasonable manner, in single combat inside the giant steel cage which is Thunderdome. "Two men enter, one man leaves."

Now, I could go on forever about what a terrific movie that is. It's proof that there is no hard and fast rule binding a movie's position in a trilogy to its quality. Take the Godfather series. I & II are phenomenal, but The Godfather: Part III is just a shadow of the previous two. Maybe it's Sofia Coppola's wooden acting, maybe it's that bizarre and anticlimactic death scene at the end, but it's definitely the weakest of the three. In the case of the Godfather, number II is where it's at. The pinnacle of the series.

The Star Wars trilogy also seems to take this tack. While I like Return of the Jedi, it had the best effects, the dark-clothed Luke, and the death of the Emperor, it also had those damn Ewoks. I mean, they're trying to convince us that an uneducated insurgency can beat down a technologically superior occupier with just sticks and rocks?

Bad example. But in that series as well The Empire Strikes Back is more vibrant and more interesting. You get to meet Yoda, you see Luke develop all of his Jedi skills and it has that great downer ending. While hardly a cliff-hanger, it certainly leaves you hungry for more.

My favorite counterexample to the second film being the best is definitely Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. First off, they get points for Nazis and Sean Connery. They completely left the Nazis out of Temple of Doom, and personally I think the movie suffered for it. Last Crusade combines all of those great elements of comedy, action and Christian mysticism which made the first movie so engaging, and then they throw in a guy getting chopped up by a propeller blade. Kudos to Lucas and Spielberg for that.

And like the Indiana Jones trilogy (and it is a trilogy, I consider the fourth movie so terrible, I'm blotting its existence from the very universe of my perceptions), Mad Max has a kick-ass third movie.

Why did I get off on the trilogy rant? One of the side effects of having a singularly disordered mind. The point was to make the comparison between Bartertown and KAF. How do I get back on the thread, here?

Oh yeah:

Who runs Bartertown? The Canadians. That's who.