MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME
PART III
CHASE & CONCLUSION

PLOT SUMMARY

With no way of getting back to the oasis on their own, Max leads the group secretly inside and down into Underworld. He intends to contact the dwarf, Master, (who is now a slave, without Blaster there for protection), and use his assistance to get home.
The intruders are quickly found out and another battle ensues. With the help of Master and another slave named Pigkiller, who was sentenced to a life in Underworld for killing a pig to feed his family, they defeat the guards. As Max and the kids and Master pile into a train car that is at the center of Underworld, Pigkiller starts it up and rams their way out. Things immediately start collapsing and exploding, as Bartertown is destroyed.
There follows the chase of the junkmobiles as Aunty Entity and her crew go after Max in vehicles pasted together from bits and pieces of vehicles from the past in an effort to get back their dwarf, still, presumably, the only one who knows how to produce electricity. When the train car can go no further on the track it is on, the dwarf, Pigkiller, the kids and Max make their way down into the underground shelter of the man who robbed Max initially, and force him to fly them to safety in his plane. But there isn't enough open space between the plane and the oncoming junkmobiles, for the plane to take off, so Max gets out and drives a truck into the oncoming junkmobiles to clear a path. The plane ascends and Max is left behind on the ground, where Aunty Entity bids the 'raggedy man' farewell, leaving him alive as she heads back to rebuild Bartertown.
The strange remnant of refugees that left in the plane makes its way in the air to the ruins of a city. Years later, Savannah is doing "the tell" in the broken english of her tribe to what has now become a village full of people who have gathered to live in the ruins of the city. Some of the words she uses are similar to the words she used in the earlier tell at the oasis, but now she is more mature and she has the story right:
"This you knows: the years travel fast and time after time I done the tell. But this ain't one body's tell; it's the tell of us all, and you've got to listen it and [re]member, 'cause what you hears today you gotta tell the newborn tomorrow. I's lookin behind us now, into history back. I sees those of us that got the luck and started the haul for home and I 'members how it led us here and how we was heartbroke cause we seen what they once was. One look and we knew'd we'd got it straight. Those what had gone before had the knowin' and the doin' of things beyond our reckonin', even beyond our dreamin'. Time counts and keeps countin' and we knows now, findin' the trick of what's been and lost ain't no easy ride. But that's our track. We gotta travel it and there ain't nobody knows where it's gonna lead.
"Still, in all, every night we does the tell so that we member who we was and where we came from. But most of all we 'members the man who finded us, him that came the salvage, and we lights the city not just for him but for all of 'em that are still out there, cause we knows there'll come a night when they sees the distant light and they'll be comin' home."

- Ken Sanes, 1997

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All pictures copyright Warner Brothers Home Video, 1985.

Robert A. Crawford.
Copyright © 1998

All rights reserved.
Revised: September 08, 2006.